, and a
sea-fight commenced; in the course of which Hamlet, desirous to shew
his valour, with sword in hand singly boarded the enemy's vessel;
while his own ship, in a cowardly manner, bore away, and leaving him
to his fate, the two courtiers made the best of their way to England,
charged with those letters the sense of which Hamlet had altered to
their own deserved destruction.

The pirates, who had the prince in their power, shewed themselves
gentle enemies; and knowing whom they had got prisoner, in the hope
that the prince might do them a good turn at court in recompence
for any favour they might shew him, they set Hamlet on shore at the
nearest port in Denmark. From that place Hamlet wrote to the king,
acquainting him with the strange chance which had brought him back to
his own country, and saying that on the next day he should present
himself before his majesty. When he got home, a sad spectacle offered
itself the first thing to his eyes.

This was the funeral of the young and beautiful Ophelia, his once dear
mistress. The wits of this young lady had begun to turn ever since
her poor father's death. That he should die a violent death, and by
the hands of the prince whom she loved, so affected this tender young
maid, that in a little time she grew perfectly distracted, and would
go about giving flowers away to the ladies of the court, and saying
that they were for her father's burial, singing songs about love and
about death, and sometimes such as had no meaning at all, as if she
had no memory of what had happened to her. There was a willow which
grew slanting over a brook, and reflected its leaves in the stream. To
this brook she came one day when she was unwatched, with garlands she
had been making, mixed up of daisies and nettles, flowers and weeds
together, and clambering up to hang her garland upon the boughs of the
willow, a bow broke and precipitated this fair young maid, garland,
and all that she had gathered, into the water, where her clothes bore
her up for a while, during which she chaunted scraps of old tunes,
like one insensible to her own distress, or as if she were a creature
natural to that element: but long it was not before her garments,
heavy with the wet, pulled her in from her melodious singing to a
muddy and miserable death. It was the funeral of this fair maid which
her brother Laertes was celebrating, the king and queen and whole
court being present, when Hamlet arrived. He knew not what