CHJRACrER of HAMLET. 263 



Haft ta'en with equal thanks : and bleft are thofe 

 Whofe blood and judgment are fo well co-mingled 

 That rhey are not a pipe for fortune's finger, 

 To found what ftops Ihe pleafe. Give me that man 

 That is not paflion's Have, and I will wear him 

 In nay heart's core. 



Men praife in others what they love and poflefs in themfelves j, 

 and Hamlet was here drawing fome of the outlines of his own 

 charadler. 



To the principles of morality and a confummate knowledge 

 of mankind, he joined the accomplifhments of learning and 

 the graces of life. His eloquence was fuch as great orators only 

 have poiTefled, rich, tropical, daring, ardent, vehement. The 

 direflions he gives to the players, are models of tafte and laws 

 for the ftage. His wit and fancy feem to have belonged only 

 to himfelf. Even in his charadler of foldier and hero, and 

 which I all along confider as his weaker part, an intrepidity 

 breaks forth at times beyond what is human ; as appears in the 

 ghoft-fcenes, where his courage grows with danger ; where he. 

 is not only unterrified, but fports with what appals the reft of 

 mankind. 



The Hamlet of Shakespeare, taken all in all, feems 

 thus to be the moft fplendid charafler of dramatic poetry ; 

 pofTefling, not one or two great qualities, the ordinary compafs of 

 the heroes in tragedy, of a Lear, an Othello, a Rodrigue, 

 an Horace, but comprehending almoft the whole of what is. 

 beautiful and grand. 



The miftakes which critics feem to have fallen into, can be 

 all traced perhaps to partial and fide-views which they have 

 taken of Hamlet; but which can neither explain his whole 

 charader, nor fufficiently account for the intereft which is ex- 

 cited. 



Sensibility, 



