p with the airy world of contemplation to lay as much stress as he
ought on the practical consequences of things. His habitual principles of
action are unhinged and out of joint with the time. His conduct to Ophelia
is quite natural in his circumstances. It is that of assumed severity
only. It is the effect of disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of
affection suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the scene
around him! Amidst the natural and preternatural horrors of his situation,
he might be excused in delicacy from carrying on a regular courtship. When
"his father's spirit was in arms," it was not a time for the son to make
love in. He could neither marry Ophelia, nor wound her mind by explaining
the cause of his alienation, which he durst hardly trust himself to think
of. It would have taken him years to have come to a direct explanation on
the point. In the harassed state of his mind, he could not have done much
otherwise than he did. His conduct does not contradict what he says when
he sees her funeral,

"I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
Could not with all their quantity of love
Make up my sum."

Nothing can be more affecting or beautiful than the Queen's apostrophe to
Ophelia on throwing the flowers into the grave.

----"Sweets to the sweet, farewell.
I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife:
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave."

Shakspeare was thoroughly a master of the mixed motives of human
character, and he here shews us the Queen, who was so criminal in some
respects, not without sensibility and affection in other relations of
life.--Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt
upon. Oh rose of May, oh flower too soon faded! Her love, her madness, her
death, are described with the truest touches of tenderness and pathos. It
is a character which nobody but Shakspeare could have drawn in the way
that he has done, and to the conception of which there is not even the
smallest approach, except in some of the old romantic ballads.[127] Her
brother, Laertes, is a character we do not like so well: he is too hot and
choleric, and somewhat rhodomontade. Polonius is a perfect character in
its kind; nor is there any foundation for the objections which have been
made to the consistency of this part. It is said that he acts very
foolishly and talks very sensibly. There is no inconsistency in that.