A& V gives him no concern, for they obtruded themselves into the service, and he thought he had a right to destroy them. He is not less accountable for the distraction and death of Ophelia. He comes to interrupt the funeral designed in honour of this lady, at which both the king and queen were present; and, by such an outrage to decency, renders it still more necessary for the usurper to lay a second stratagem for his life, though the first had proved abortive. He comes to insult the brother of the dead, and to boast of an affection for his sister, which, before, he had denied to her face; and yet at this very time must be considered as desirous of supporting the character of a madman, so that the openness of his confession is not to be imputed to him as a virtue. He apologizes to Horatio afterwards for the absurdity of this behaviour, to which, he says, he was provoked by that nobleness of fraternal grief, which, indeed, he ought rather to have applauded than condemned. Dr. Johnson has observed, that to bring about a reconciliation with Laertes, he has availed himself of a dishonest fallacy i and to conclude, it is obvious to the most careless spectator or reader, that he kills the king at last to revenge himself, and not his father. Hamlet cannot be said to have pursued his ends by very warrantable means; and if the poet, when he sacrificed him at last, meant to have enforced such a moral, it is not the worst that can be deduced from the play; for, as Maximus, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Valentinian, says, "Although Although his justice were as white as truth, "His way was crooked to it; that condemns him." The late Dr. Akenside once observed to me, that the conduct of Hamlet was every way unnatural and indefensible, unless he were to be regarded as a young man whose intellects were in some degree impaired by his own misfortunes; by the death of his father, the loss of expected sovereignty, and a sense of shame resulting from the hasty and incestuous marriage of his mother. I have dwelt the longer on this subject, because Hamlet seems to have been hitherto regarded as a hero not undeserving the pity of the audience; and because no writer on Shakspere has taken the pains to point out the immoral tendency of his character. See REMARKS, p. 217, to 224, in opposition to these strictures. REED. 1707. This quarry cries, on havock !] To cry on, was to exclaim against. I suppose, when unfair sports» men destroyed more quarry or game than was reason➡ able, the censure was to cry, Havock. JOHNSON. 708. What feast is toward in thine infernal cell,] Shakspere has already employed this allusion to the Choc, or feasts of the dead, which were anciently celebrated at Athens, and are mentioned by Plutarch in the life of Antoninus. Our author likewise makes Talbot say to his son in the First Part of King Henry VI. "Now "Now art thou come unto a feast of death." 717. —his mouth,] i. e. the king's. STEEVENS. STEEVENS. 726. Of cruel, &c.] The first quarto, and the folio, read-Of carnal. COLLINS. Carnal is, without doubt, the true reading. The word is used by Shakspere as an adjective to carnage. REMARKS. 728. and forc'd cause ;] Thus the folio. The quartos read-and for no cause. STEEVENS. The first remark of Voltaire on this tragedy, is, that the former king had been poisoned by his brother and his queen. The guilt of the latter, however, is far from being ascertained. The Ghost forbears to accuse her as an accessary, and very forcibly recommends her to the mercy of her son. I may add, that her conscience appears undisturbed during the exhibition of the mock tragedy, which produces so visible a disorder in her husband who was really criminal. The last observation of the same author has no greater degree of veracity to boast of; for now, says he, all the actors in the piece are swept away, and one Monsieur Fortenbras is introduced to conclude it. Can this be true, when Horatio, Osrick, Voltimand, and Cornelius survive? These, together with the whole court of Denmark, are supposed to be present at the catastrophe, so that we are not indebted to the Norwegian Norwegian chief for having kept the stage from va cancy. Monsieur de Voltaire has since transmitted, in an epistle to the Academy of Belles Lettres, some remarks on the late French translation of Shakspere; but alas! no traces of genius or vigour are discoverable in this crambe repetita, which is notorious only for its insipidity, fallacy, and malice. It serves indeed to shew an apparent decline of talents and spirit in its writer, who no longer relies on his own ability to depreciate a rival, but appeals in a plaintive strain to the queen and princes of France for their assistance to stop the farther circulation of Shakspere's renown. Impartiality, nevertheless, must acknowledge, that his private correspondence displays a superior degree of animation. Perhaps an ague shook him when he appealed to the publick on this subject; but the effects of a fever seem to predominate in his subsequent letter to Monsieur D'Argenteuil on the same occasion; for such a letter it is as our John Dennis (while his frenzy lasted) might be supposed to have written. "C'est moi qui autrefois parlai le premier de ce Shakspere: c'est moi qui le premier montrai aux François quelques perles quels j'avois trouvé dans son enorme fumier." Mrs. Montague, the justly celebrated authoress of the Essay on the genius and writings of our author, was at Paris, and in the circle where these ravings of the Frenchman were first publickly recited. On hearing the illiberal expression already quoted, with no less elegance than readiness she replied→→ "C'est "C'est un fumier qui a fertilizé une terre bien ingrate."-In short the author of Zayre, Mahomet, and Semiramis, possesses all the mischievous qualities of a midnight felon, who, in the hope to conceal his guilt, sets the house he has robbed on fire. As for Messieurs D'Alembert and Marmontel, they might safely be passed over with that neglect which their impotence of criticism deserves. Voltaire, in spite of his natural disposition to vilify an English poet, by adopting sentiments, characters, and situations from Shakspere, has bestowed on him involuntary praise. Happily, he has not been disgraced by the worthless encomiums or disfigured by the awkward imitations of the other pair, who "follow in the chace not like hounds that hunt, but like those who fill up the cry." When D'Alembert declares that more sterling sense is to be met with in ten French verses than in thirty English ones, contempt is all that he provokes, such contempt as can only be exceeded by that which every scholar will express, who may chance to look into the prose translation of Lucan by Marmontel, with the vain expectation of discovering either the sense, the spirit, or the whole of the original. STEEVENS. THE END. |