254 



An ESSAY" on the 



As certain critics, however, have thought, feme, that there is 

 an incongruity, others, that there is an immoraUty, in the cha- 

 radler of this perfonage, it becomes a duty in the charitable to 

 juftify the poet, and to revive the office of Horatio, in the 

 defence of his hero. 



To underfland the chara<5ter of Hamlet, we had beft per- 

 haps take it at two different times, before the death of his fa- 

 ther, and after that period ; for while the fubftance is in both 

 the fame, the form is exceedingly different. 



The former of thefe, and which was his radical and general 

 charaifler, was a compound of many particular qualities ; an 

 exceeding high elevation of foul, an exquifite fenfibility to vir- 

 tue and vice, and an extreme gentlenefs of fpirit and fweetnefs 

 of difpofition. With thefe were conjoined the moft brilliant 

 and cultivated talents, an imagination tranfcendently vivid and 

 ftrong, together with what may be called, rather an intuition, 

 than an acquired knowledge of mankind. And there may be 

 added ftill, a fingular gaiety of fpirits, which hardly at any af- 

 ter period, the very gloomieft only excepted, feems to have 

 failed him. 



These being the fundamental properties of Hamlet, we 

 have only to fee what effedls would be produced upon fuch a 

 man, by the villany of his uncle, the murder of his father, the 

 inceft of his mother, and the ghoft of his father calling upon 

 him for revenge. Thefe were the dreadful fp rings which put 

 Hamlet into motion; and in which ftate, Shakespeare brings 

 him upon the ftage. 



I SHOULD venture to imagine, (both from the nature of a 

 character fo extenfive, and from the various motives to a(5lion) 

 that Shakespeare had no particular plan laid out in his mind 

 for Hamlet to walk by, but rather meant to follow him ; and, 

 like an hiftorian, with fidelity to record, how a perfon, fo fin- 

 gularly and marvelloufly made up, {hould ad ; or rather, (to ufe 



the 



