god, kissing carrion."

These purposely obscure lines, I rather think, refer to some thought in
Hamlet's mind, contrasting the lovely daughter with such a tedious old
fool, her father, as he, Hamlet, represents Polonius to himself:--"Why,
fool as he is, he is some degrees in rank above a dead dog's carcase; and
if the sun, being a god that kisses carrion, can raise life out of a dead
dog,--why may not good fortune, that favours fools, have raised a lovely
girl out of this dead-alive old fool?" Warburton is often led astray, in
his interpretations, by his attention to general positions without the due
Shakespearian reference to what is probably passing in the mind of his
speaker, characteristic, and expository of his particular character and
present mood. The subsequent passage,--

"O Jephthah, judge of Israel! what a treasure hadst thou!"

is confirmatory of my view of these lines.

_Ib._--

"_Ham._ You cannot, Sir, take from me any thing that I will
more willingly part withal; except my life, except my life, except
my life."

This repetition strikes me as most admirable.

_Ib._--

"_Ham._ Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and
out-stretched heroes, the beggars' shadows?"

I do not understand this; and Shakespeare seems to have intended the
meaning not to be more than snatched at:--"By my fay, I cannot reason!"

_Ib._--

"The rugged Pyrrhus--he whose sable arms," &c.

This admirable substitution of the epic for the dramatic, giving such a
reality to the impassioned dramatic diction of Shakespeare's own dialogue,
and authorised too, by the actual style of the tragedies before his time
(_Porrex and Ferrex_, _Titus Andronicus_, &c.)--is well worthy of notice.
The fancy, that a burlesque was intended, sinks below criticism: the
lines, as epic narrative, are superb.

In the thoughts, and even in the separate parts of the diction, this
description is highly poetical: in truth, taken by itself, that is its
fault that it is too poetical!--the language of lyric vehemence and epic
pomp, and not of the drama. But if Shakespeare had made the diction truly
dramatic, where would have been the contrast between Hamlet and the play
in _Hamlet_?

_Ib._--

... "Had seen the _mobled_ queen," &c.

A mob-cap is still a word in common use for a morning cap, which conceals
the whole head of hair, and passes under the chin. It is nearly the same
as the night-cap, that is, it is an imitation of it, so as to answ