AND BODILY 8TATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. 223 



around him, he states " that none had seen him writhe or heard 

 him rave ;" he continues— 



" Yet do I feel at times my mind decline 

 But with a sense of its decay : I see 

 Unwonted lights along my prison shine, 

 And a strange demon who is vexing me 

 With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below 

 The feeling of the healthful and the free ; 

 But much to one, who long hath suffered so, 

 Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place, 

 And all that may be borne, or can debase. 

 I thought mine enemies had been but man, 

 But spirits may be leagued with them — all earth 

 Abandons — Heaven forgets me — in the dearth 

 Of such defence the powers of evil can, 

 It may be, tempt me further, and prevail 

 Against the outworn creature they assail.* 



The state of mind to which I have alluded has been still better 

 illustrated by Shakspeare. The ghost of Hamlet's father must 

 have been, in the scene where Hamlet is taxing his mother with 

 her guilt, a creation of his own fancy, since we find it invisible to 

 her, though it was visible to Horatio and his companions in the 

 earlier scenes of the play. And this seems to have been the inten- 

 tion of the poet, to shew how a mind inordinately excited, in a tem- 

 perament liable to wander, could produce phantoms which appeared 

 real. He has placed his hero in this scene in a state of violent ex- 

 citement, but has not made him mad. Thus his mother addresses 

 him, when he points to the ghost of his father : — 



" This is the very coinage of your brain : 

 This bodiless creation ecstasy 

 Is very cunning in." 



He answers 



" Ecstacy ! 

 My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, 

 And makes as healthful music. It is not madness 

 That I have uttered : bring me to the test, 

 And I the matter will re-word ; which madness 

 Would gambol from." 



* The Lament of Tasso. 



