AND BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. 65 



The insufficiency of natural beauties, of the harmony of the 

 universe, of the ordinary pursuits of life to produce mental ease, are 

 next exemplified in the address of Hamlet to Rosencrantz and 

 Guildenstern ; and it is a curious fact that most writers on this 

 disease have taken Shakspeare's description of it, finding it so 

 true to nature, and aware that no composition of their own could 

 possibly convey the same ideas so well. '* I have of late, wherefore 

 I know not, lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercise, and 

 indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly 

 frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ; this most ex- 

 cellent canopy, the air, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this ma- 

 jestical roof, fretted with golden fire — why, it appears no other 

 thing to me, than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. 

 What a piece of work is man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite 

 in faculties ! in form and motion, how express and admirable ! in 

 action, how like an angel ! in apprehension, how like a god ! the 

 beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals ! And yet, to me, 

 what is this quintessence of dust ? Man delights not me !" 



The very pursuits of minds thus disposed all tend toward the 

 same subject ; their studies, their favourite authors, have all a mis- 

 anthropic tinge. Thus we find Hamlet introduced reading that 

 passage in the tenth satire of Juvenal, beginning 



" Da spatium vitse, multos da Jupiter annos," 



in which old age is dispraised, and the natural defects attendant 

 upon advanced life set forth in most dishonest satire. Hamlet's 

 madness, like that of melancholy generally, is not one continued 

 stream of mental aberration, not one long uninterrupted chain of 

 monotonous woe, but a moody, wayward affection, pregnant with 

 the most poignant wit, shadowed with the deepest gloom, or occa- 

 sionally, but rarely, breaking forth into paroxysms bordering upon 

 the violence of mania. His accumulated misfortunes — the murder 

 of his father — the marriage of his mother — the derangement of 

 Ophelia — and the loss of his kingdom — render that alienation of 

 mind at length real which was only, in the first instance, assumed 

 as a mask. We. cannot fail to be struck with the peculiar perti- 

 nence and tartness of some of the replies of Hamlet, especially in 

 his conversations with Rosencrantz and Polonius ; and this may be 

 supposed to be discordant with the state of mental disease under 

 which he labours. 



It may appear strange to those who have not studied the subject, 

 that persons possessed of a defective judgment should at any time be 



VOL. V. NO. XVII. I. 



