fence, not excuse, of his
delay. But ungenerous criticism has, by all but universal consent,
accepted his own verdict against himself. So in common life there are
thousands on thousands who, upon the sad confession of a man
immeasurably greater than themselves, and showing his greatness in the
humility whose absence makes admission impossible to them, immediately
pounce upon him with vituperation, as if he were one of the vile, and
they infinitely better. Such should be indignant with St. Paul and
say--if he was the chief of sinners, what insolence to lecture _them_!
and certainly the more justified publican would never by them have been
allowed to touch the robe of the less justified Pharisee. Such critics
surely take little or no pains to understand the object of their
contempt: because Hamlet is troubled and blames himself, they without
hesitation condemn him--and there where he is most commendable. It is
the righteous man who is most ready to accuse himself; the unrighteous
is least ready. Who is able when in deep trouble, rightly to analyze his
feelings? Delay in action is not necessarily abandonment of duty; in
Hamlet's case it is a due recognition of duty, which condemns
precipitancy--and action in the face of doubt, so long as it is nowise
compelled, is precipitancy. The first thing is _to be sure_: Hamlet has
never been sure; he spies at length a chance of making himself sure; he
seizes upon it; and while his sudden resolve to make use of the players,
like the equally sudden resolve to shroud himself in pretended madness,
manifests him fertile in expedient, the carrying out of both manifests
him right capable and diligent in execution--_a man of action in every
true sense of the word_.

The self-accusation of Hamlet has its ground in the lapse of weeks
during which nothing has been done towards punishing the king. Suddenly
roused to a keen sense of the fact, he feels as if surely he might have
done something. The first act ends with a burning vow of righteous
vengeance; the second shows him wandering about the palace in
profoundest melancholy--such as makes it more than easy for him to
assume the forms of madness the moment he marks any curious eye bent
upon him. Let him who has never loved and revered a mother, call such
melancholy weakness. He has indeed done nothing towards the fulfilment
of his vow; but the way in which he made the vow, the terms in which he
exacted from his companions their promise of sile