. He had the temperament of a
man of genius--impatient, animated, eager, swift to feel, to like or
dislike, praise or resent--with a character of rapidity in all his
actions, and even in his meditation, of which he is conscious when he
says, "as swift as meditation." He did not live apart as a student, but
in public as a prince--

"the observed of all observers;"

he was of a free, open, unsuspicious temper--

"remiss,
Most generous and free from all contriving."

He was fond of all martial exercises and expert in the use of the sword.
He was a soldier first, a scholar afterwards; a soldier in his alacrity
to fight

"Until his eyelids would no longer wag;"

a soldier even to

"The glass of fashion, and the mould of form;"

and, above all, a soldier in his sensibility on the point of honour, one
who would think it well

"Greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
When honour is at stake."

And Fortinbras, type of the man of action, recognized in him a kindred
spirit--

"Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally;"

while Hamlet eyed Fortinbras with the envious longing of one who had
missed his career. What must have been the felicity of life to such a
man, whose vivacity no stress of calamity, no accumulation of sorrow
could tame, whose enthusiasm embraced Nature, art, and literature, and
whose delight was always fresh and new, "in this excellent canopy the
air, in this brave o'erhanging firmament,"' and in the spectacle of man
"so excellent in faculty, in form and moving so express and admirable,
in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god?"

Without a warning the blow fell. His father was suddenly struck down;
and while he was indulging a grief, poignant and profound indeed, but
natural, wholesome, manly, his uncle usurped the crown. This second blow
would be acutely felt, but it would rather rouse than prostrate his
energies. There is no passion in Hamlet when there has been no love. And
he had always held his uncle in slight esteem--foreboded something from
his smiling insincerity. He never mentions him without an expression of
contempt, hardly acknowledges him as king; he is a thing--of nothing--a
farcical monarch--"a peacock"--and, in this particular act, no dread
usurper, but a "cut-purse of the realm." Whether he designed to wait or
was prepared to strike, his