t inquiries
about a certain Gnostic amulet representing the Gorgon's head, a
prize of which he had lately become the happy possessor. On his
telling me that the Arabic word for amulet was _hamalet_, and that
the word meant 'that which is suspended,' I said in a perfectly
thoughtless way that very likely one of the learned societies to
which he belonged might be able to trace some connection between
'hamalet' and the 'Hamlet' of Shakespeare. These idle and ignorant
words of mine fell, as I found, upon a mind ripe to receive them. He
looked straight before him at the bust of Shakespeare on the
bookshelves as he always looked when his rudderless imagination was
once well launched, and I heard him mutter, 'Hamlet--the Amleth of
Saxo-Grammaticus,--hamalet, "that which is suspended." The world, to
Hamlet's metaphysical mind, _was_ "suspended" in the wide region of
Nowhere--in an infinite ocean of Nothing. Why did I not think of this
before? Strange that this child should hit upon it.' Then looking at
me as though he had just seen me for the first time in his life, he
said. 'How old are you, child?' 'Eighteen, father, I said. 'Eighteen
_years_?' he asked. 'Yes, father,' I said with some pique. 'Did you
suppose I meant eighteen months?' 'Only eighteen years,' he muttered,
'a mere baby, in short; and yet he has hit upon what we
Shakespearians have been boggling over for many year?--the symbolical
meaning involved in Hamlet's name. Henry, I prophesy great things for
you.'

An intimacy was cemented between us at once. One of the results of
this conversation was my father's elaborate paper, read before one of
his societies, in which he maintained that Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ was
a metaphysical poem, the great central idea of which was involved in
the name Hamlet, Amleth, or Hamalet--the idea that the universe,
suspended in the wide region of Nowhere, lies, an amulet, upon the
breast of the Great Latona,--a paper that was the basis of his
reputation in 'the higher criticism.'

Shortly after this my father and I spent the autumn in various parts
of Switzerland. One night, when we were sitting outside the chalet in
the full light of the moon, I was the witness of a display of passion
on the part of one whom I had always considered to be a dreamy
book-worm--a passionless, eccentric mystic--that simply amazed me. A
flickering tongue from the central fires suddenly breaking up through
the soil of an English vegetable garden could hardl