s an emendator of Shakespeare. For no one can
consider this passage a translation of the text:

Venez, Dame, venez. Ce J'y consens si doux,
Si spontane de Hamlet m'enchante et m'enivre.
C'est pour moi _le charmant feuillet d'un charmant livre._

That charming page of a delightful book will, we think, be sought for in
the original in vain. Still more delicious is the interpellation into
Hamlet's first soliloquy of the following lines, referring to the
"unweeded garden":

Ces jours qu'on nous montre superbes
Sont un vilain jardin, rempli de folles herbes,
Qui donnent de l'ivraie et certes rien de plus,
Si ce n'est les engins du _cholera morbus_.

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! When _did_ Hamlet talk about
the cholera morbus?

Passing over some minor variations, we come to the brief closing
soliloquy of the scene:

My father's spirit in arms! all is not well;
I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!

Thus Shakespeare, and thus M. de Chatelain:

Le spectre de mon pere--arme! Vraiment ca cloche!
Je flaire, je le crains, _quelqu' anguille sous roche_!

Doubtless Hamlet did "smell a rat," but this is the first intimation we
have had of his scenting an eel.

Thus Hamlet addresses the ghost:

Mais oh dis moi, pourquoi tes ossemens par chance
Deposes dans la tombe, out brise leurs liens,
Pour te jeter ici _comme une langue aux chiens_.

Probably the "ponderous and marble jaws" suggested this extraordinary
comparison.

In the next, act, evidently thinking that poor Ophelia has been
neglected by her creator, M. de Chatelain makes Polonius speak of her to
the king and queen as "un vrai morceau de roi"--a gentle method of
suggesting that she is worthy of the distinguished honor of a royal
alliance. But the fair Ophelia is destined to suffer nearly as unkind
treatment from the hands of her French usher as she endures from her
princely lover. We give entire the translation of her beautiful lament,
which begins--

O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

and which M. de Chatelain thus renders:

Oh! quelle triste fin pour si grande epopee
Le soldat, l'erudit, l'oeil, la langue et l'epee,
Tout cela culbute--perdu. Le noble espoir,
La fleur de ce pays--le plus riant miroir
De la mode toujours;--le plus parfait modele
De gout;--des observes la plus _fine dentelle_--
Entierement a bas! oui, _sans resso