OBSERVANCES OF SHAKSPEARE. 255 



his wit severe and sarcastic. He is a human Mephostophiles with- 

 out sin, before whom the circumstances of existence are laid bare, 

 the original cause of intent and action is defined, and goodness itself 

 exhibited as the deceitful cloak of selfishness. Thought is ceaseless ; 

 it is a monomania that admits of no pause. The actions of men 

 seem frivolous, and life itself, by a dark comparison with itself, is 

 beheld with indifference, as but a painful suspense. Hamlet was a 

 man to become sick of the uses of the world, scorning what he de- 

 spised. The ambition of the soldier, the phrenzy of the lover, the 

 policy of the courtier — he had tried them all, and left them as a 

 madman's labour. Hamlet, though sceptical as to creeds, was firm- 

 ly religious. But 



*' that the Everlasting had not fixed 

 His canon 'gainst self-slaughter," 



he would have sought in the grave repose from the oppressive tedi- 

 ousness of life. 



Hamlet educationally was a scholar and a gentleman ; the fellow- 

 student of Horatio at Wittenberg, where congregated all the learned 

 men of the day. A metaphysical complexion marks the learning of 

 that time ; the mind was for ever wrestling in the Palestra of ab- 

 stract reasoning. The quiddits of the Aristotelian school occupied 

 the place of experimental philosophy, oppressing the intellect with 

 infinite and intangible ideas. We perceive Hamlet complains to 

 Rosencrantz that he could not reason, though he is continually 

 touching upon his favourite logic : — 



" Ham — O God ! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself 

 a king of infinite space ; were it not that I have bad dreams. 



" Guil. — Which dreams, indeed, are ambition ; for the very substance of 

 the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. 



" Ham. — A dream itself is but a shadow. 



** Ros — Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is 

 but a shadow's shadow. 



" Ham. — Then are our beggars, bodies ; and our monarchs and outstretch'd 

 heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we to the court ? for, by my fay, I can- 

 not reason." 



Yet the genius or reflective faculties of Hamlet made him an expe- 

 rimental philosopher ; he not only idealised, but he observed, and 

 derived no little of his learning from the visible world. His know- 

 ledge of natural philosophy is evidently the result of observation. 

 That he was a diligent student at Wittenberg there is no doubt, 

 and he most probably aspired to attainments of the highest possible 



