other result is, that familiar things are the oftener regarded as symbols of that spiritual world which gives reality to our being a feeling without which the heart sinks down in dismal and dreary despondency from its sense of hollowness, and with which the heart leaps up with the assurance of its own undying strength. Now, I have referred to these considerations because it is to the very opposite of all this that the soul of Macbeth is brought in the extremity of his career of guilt. It is that condition of mind-the lowest pitch of infidel despair-which looks on life as utterly vain and meaningless. From the innocence of his early days he feels separated by a dread gulf of crime; and, for the future, all is impenetrable darkness. This is the moral catastrophe of the tragedy, and I do not know how I can so well express these opposite conditions to which the soul may be either raised or sunk, than by citing what alone is adequate to express the emotions which accompany them-the language of poetry. The first of them-the exulting joy of a faithful, thoughtful spirit, quickly sensitive to any token which gives assurance of the covenant between things human and divine, and happy in its memory of childhood-has been expressed when a poet exclaimed

"My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began,

So is it now I am a man,

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The child is father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety."*

*Wordsworth's works, p. 27.

Now, by the side of this, listen to what is almost the last voice that comes from the weary soul of Macbeth:

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

The terrors of the tragedy have subsided into this deeply pathetic strain; and, hollow as this contemplative melancholy is, it still wins from us enough of sympathy to make us feel that we are standing amid the ruins of a soul which was worthy of a better destiny.

LECTURE III.*

Hamlet.

IN passing from the tragedy of Macbeth to that of Hamlet, the transition is a very wide one. Both dramas, indeed, have their supernatural agencies-strange, spiritual things made real to the imagination; and the respective heroes are not unlike in a certain constitutional reflectiveness of mind. In the Scottish usurper, as well as in the young Danish prince, there is a touch of philosophy. But, while in the tragedy of Macbeth there is, I may almost say, a throng of supernatural forms detested and terrific-the witches, with all their train of apparitions, that rose around their cauldron, and the blood-boltered spectre of Banquo-in Hamlet there is one solitary and majestic phantom; and, instead of that lurid, supernatural light which was fitfully breaking upon the former tragedy, we seem to behold now one solemn and awful shadow hanging over the course of the drama. The meditative moods of Macbeth's mind

were no more than bubbles, borne onward upon the surface of that rapid and violent tide which hurried the

*December 20th, 1842.

movement of the play; but in Hamlet, the philosophic habit of his intellect is the chief element in the tragedy -the ruling principle which gives to it its gentle and slow progression. Nor is this intellectual character peculiar to the chief person; for, besides the profound and feeling thoughtfulness of Hamlet, you find the insincere and declamatory reasoning of the king, the self-complacent shrewdness of the old politician in Polonius, the fraternal counsels of .Laertes, and, in perfect keeping with the predominant tone of the tragedy, the logic of the captious grave-digger—a most thoughtful, reasoning company. In this respect, it seems to me that this drama, more than any other, may be regarded as eminently reflecting the constitution of Shakspeare's mind -as the production in which he incorporated, more largely than any other, the habits of his intellect.

If the question were asked-What personage in the whole range, not only of dramatic literature, but of all fiction, has gained the deepest, the most pleasing, and universal interest?—the answer, I am inclined to believe, which cultivated minds would be most apt to give, would be, The character of Hamlet. Now it would be a very shallow effort were I to seek an explanation of this deep and widespread interest in the outward story of the play, its plot and incidents and catastrophe. The mystery is not to be solved thus; something more inward must be sought to explain it to show how it is in accordance with our common human-heartedness. Nay, more than this: it is not enough to discover in what respects this poem is illustrative and typical of the mere feelings and thoughts of humanity, for I believe that its sublime philosophy consists in this-that in it we are carried into

that region of our spiritual nature which is not peculiar or variable in different human beings, and which is not susceptible of degrees, such as we attribute to intellect or sentiment; it carries us through the domain of passion and thought into that spiritual region where naught is known but what is illimitable and eternal-the human soul. It need not, therefore, cause our wonder that this tragedy has much about it that is mysterious, obscure, and perplexed to critic and to commentator; for it deals with the greatest of all mysteries-that imperishable principle of the personality of each human being-that eternal something which, at our birth, gathers up for a mysterious combination the earthly elements of our bodies, and, after travelling on through the mortal life, scatters those elements at death like the light, lifeless leaves of autumn. Entertaining the thought I do of the tragedy of Hamlet, I find myself approaching it-to say with diffidence would feebly express it, but with a conviction of the greater or less inadequacy of all criticism for the exposition of its sublime imaginings. It is a subject to be thought upon, much rather than talked of.

Let it, however, be remembered that, according to the plan of my course, I am considering these dramas as illustrations of the main subject of tragic poetry. If, in accordance with the definition given by an ancient philosopher, we traced a chastening of the passions by the agency of pity in King Lear, and in Macbeth by the agency rather of terror, we may discover in Hamlet another of the uses of tragedy in showing that mournful thoughts and the sad conflicts of humanity have a power of their own to make known the strength and weakness of the soul-all that lies hid there, and which men rarely