LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. 435 



how convincing soever, to minds differently constituted from our, own, his argu- 

 ments may appear, and however valid they may consider the proofs that he 

 adduced. It is, however, but justice to the lecturer to state what some of his 

 principal arguments were; and thus our readers may come to that conclusion to 

 which their own judgment shall direct them, on the philosophic accuracy of the 

 views displayed by the learned lecturer, or the validity of the objections which 

 we shall occasionally advance. 



Mr. Walter seemed to attach considerable importance to the consideration, that 

 there is, in some men, more than in others, a predisposition, on occasions of great 

 calamity, to those derangements of the head and heart, which give the imagination 

 a control over the understanding — and such a character he considered Hamlet to 

 be. The lecturer supposed that, naturally predisposed as is the Prince of Den- 

 mark, to the reception of melancholy associations of the mind, the combination of 

 calamities which are heaped upon him within a brief extent of time, overwhelm, 

 at last, a mind too weak to bear up against the pressure, and that the melancholy 

 inherent in his temperament, degenerates into a complete derangement of the 

 intellectual system. That such was the predisposition of Hamlet's mind, the 

 lecturer endeavoured to prove by the fact, that even before he has ascertained, 

 from the interview with the ghost, the real cause of his father's death and his 

 mother's speedy marriage with his uncle, his mind is busy in the contemplation of 

 suicide. 



This argument, we conceive, bears some affinity to "Crowner's quest law,'* 

 without, however, being entitled to the full extent of its decision ; for while the 

 sapient coroner decrees, that the man who commits suicide is insane — always 

 excepting the jooor man, who is invariably judged to be in his right wits, and, 

 therefore, is honoured with a stake thrust through his body — our lecturer deter- 

 mines, that merely entertaining the thought of suicide, though better reason 

 intervenes to drive it from the mind — must, of necessity, be a manifestation of an 

 erring intellect ! 



Let us, however, be candid, and acknowledge that Mr. Walter adduces a 

 stronger proof of his position in the incoherency of words and manner apparent 

 in the young prince after his interview with his father's spirit — an incoherency 

 which the lecturer says, cannot be ascribed to the resolution that Hamlet adopts at 

 a subsequent period, to put an antic disposition on : and so conscious does Hamlet 

 seem to be of this weakness of his intellect, that he even alludes to it himself when 

 he says : 



The Devil hath power 

 To assume a pleasing shape— yea, and perhaps 

 Out of my weakness and my melancholy 

 Abuses me to damn me. 



Mr. Walter refers for a further indication of madness in Hamlet, to the fact 

 that he entertains again the contemplation of suicide. But we say in reply, that 

 in the celebrated soliloquy on death, the Prince of Denmark reasons right from 

 right principles, and cannot, therefore, be subject to the acknowledged test of 

 confirmed madmen. It is true that in the interview with Ophelia, which is the 

 next evidence adduced by the Lecturer, he has a better foundation for his 

 arguments — admitting that the scene is correctly performed on the stage, and that 

 Hamlet does treat Ophelia with " cruelty and rudeness." But we have our own 

 conception of this scene; which, however, we will not now venture to exhibit, 

 because it is directly opposed to the received opinion ; and because it would require 

 too much space in the pages of the Analyst to establish. Therefore, although we 

 must leave to Mr. Walter the merit of having proved his position upon this point, 

 with the skill of a man of letters and a metaphysician ; yet we cannot persuade 

 ourselves to give credence to his arguments, how ably soever they have been 

 sustained by him, and how clear soever has been their exposition. That the 

 majority will decide in favour of the Lecturer, we are well convinced — but we 

 would not despair of gaining over some converts to our peculiar views, had 

 we space and opportunity to develope them. We even think that the learned 

 Lecturer himself might be among the number — a triumph that we should 

 consider as the first feather in our cap ; for could we bring his deep-read mind, 

 which moreover, is alike imaginative and metaphysical, to acknowledge the yx%U 



