w how to describe our own faces. But we must
make such observations as we can. It is the one of Shakspeare's plays
that we think of the oftenest, because it abounds most in striking
reflections on human life, and because the distresses of Hamlet are
transferred, by the turn of his mind, to the general account of humanity.
Whatever happens to him we apply to ourselves, because he applies it so
himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a great moraliser; and what
makes him worth attending to is, that he moralises on his own feelings and
experience. He is not a common-place pedant. If _Lear_ is distinguished by
the greatest depth of passion, HAMLET is the most remarkable for the
ingenuity, originality, and unstudied development of character. Shakspeare
had more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has shewn more of it in
this play than in any other. There is no attempt to force an interest:
everything is left for time and circumstances to unfold. The attention is
excited without effort, the incidents succeed each other as matters of
course, the characters think and speak and act just as they might do, if
left entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose, no straining at a
point. The observations are suggested by the passing scene--the gusts of
passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the wind. The whole play
is an exact transcript of what might be supposed to have taken place at
the court of Denmark, at the remote period of time fixed upon, before the
modern refinements in morals and manners were heard of. It would have been
interesting enough to have been admitted as a by-stander in such a scene,
at such a time, to have heard and witnessed something of what was going
on. But here we are more than spectators. We have not only "the outward
pageants and the signs of grief;" but "we have that within which passes
shew." We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the passions living as
they rise. Other dramatic writers give us very fine versions and
paraphrases of nature; but Shakspeare, together with his own comments,
gives us the original text, that we may judge for ourselves. This is a
very great advantage.

The character of Hamlet stands quite by itself. It is not a character
marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of
thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can well
be: but he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and
quick sensibility--t