64 ON THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN MENTAL 



able coincidence that every predisposing and exciting cause by which 

 the author could denote an intention of making his hero subject to 

 paroxysms of insanity, has been clearly developed in the course of 

 the five acts. The stages of the disease are distinctly marked from 

 the first scene of Hamlet's appearance, when he expresses a disrelish 

 of life, until the violent explosion of his madness at the grave of 

 Ophelia/'* 



Hamlet's mind appears, from what we can collect of his previous 

 history, to have been one of great power and depth. Well versed 

 in the literature and philosophy of his day, naturally disposed to 

 retirement, he possessed all the character of Milton's II Penseroso. 

 The arched walk of twilight groves and shadows brown — the studi- 

 ous cloister pale — were the places in which he delighted, and not 

 the pageantry of royalty or the vain delight of giddy pleasure. 

 This natural bias has been recognised on all hands as the precursor 

 of melancholy madness. Hippocrates tells us that the chief reasons 

 which led the citizens of Abdera to suspect Democritus of insanity 

 was, that he forsook the city, and lived in groves and hollow trees, 

 upon a green bank by a brook side, or by a confluence of waters, day 

 and night. 



The first scene in which Hamlet is introduced, shews us the state 

 of his mind and the tedium vitce under which he laboured ; though 

 the tendency to suicide, which it would not have been in an advanc- 

 ed stage of his disease, is controlled by religious fear : 



" Oh ! that this too, too solid flesh would melt, 

 Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew ! 

 Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd 

 His canon 'gainst self-slaughter ! 

 How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 

 Seem to me all the uses of this world ! 

 Fie on't ! O fie ! 'tis an un weeded garden, 

 That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature 

 Possess it merely." 



The truth of this description of the mental state of approaching 

 melancholia, admits of corroboration from numerous and well-au- 

 thenticated facts. Erasmus Darwin tells us of a gentleman who 

 said to him u a ride out in the morning, and a warm parlour and 

 pack of cards in the afternoon, are all that life affords." In a few 

 months afterwards he destroyed himself.t 



* Illustrations of Mania, Melancholia, Craziness, and Demonomania, as dis- 

 played in the characters of Lear, Ophelia, and Edgar, by George Farren. 

 f Darwin's Zoonomia. 



