termined that his hero
should exhibit in his latest hour all the glorious power and all the
nobility and sweetness of his nature. Of the first, the power, I spoke
before,[67] but there is a wonderful beauty in the revelation of the
second. His body already labouring in the pangs of death, his mind soars
above them. He forgives Laertes; he remembers his wretched mother and
bids her adieu, ignorant that she has preceded him. We hear now no word
of lamentation or self-reproach. He has will, and just time, to think,
not of the past or of what might have been, but of the future; to forbid
his friend's death in words more pathetic in their sadness than even his
agony of spirit had been; and to take care, so far as in him lies, for
the welfare of the State which he himself should have guided. Then in
spite of shipwreck he reaches the haven of silence where he would be.
What else could his world-wearied flesh desire?

But _we_ desire more; and we receive it. As those mysterious words, 'The
rest is silence,' die upon Hamlet's lips, Horatio answers:

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Why did Shakespeare here, so much against his custom, introduce this
reference to another life? Did he remember that Hamlet is the only one
of his tragic heroes whom he has not allowed us to see in the days when
this life smiled on him? Did he feel that, while for the others we might
be content to imagine after life's fitful fever nothing more than
release and silence, we must ask more for one whose 'godlike reason' and
passionate love of goodness have only gleamed upon us through the heavy
clouds of melancholy, and yet have left us murmuring, as we bow our
heads, 'This was the noblest spirit of them all'?

2

How many things still remain to say of Hamlet! Before I touch on his
relation to Ophelia, I will choose but two. Neither of them, compared
with the matters so far considered, is of great consequence, but both
are interesting, and the first seems to have quite escaped observation.

(1) Most people have, beside their more essential traits of character,
little peculiarities which, for their intimates, form an indissoluble
part of their personality. In comedy, and in other humorous works of
fiction, such peculiarities often figure prominently, but they rarely do
so, I think, in tragedy. Shakespeare, however, seems to have given one
such idiosyncrasy to Hamlet.

It i