isproportion--a constant missing of the
mark, a stretching of the hand for that which is not. How is it possible
to take seriously such a life if you pause to think?

It is not only irrational but visionary. The evanescence and fluency of
Nature would matter little, but man himself, with his ingenuities of wit
and triumphs of ambition, is whirled from form to form in "a fine
revolution if we had the trick to see it." This is a favourite idea, it
lends itself so easily to the contempt of the world--

"Imperious Caesar, dead, and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,"

is only a variation of "a man may fish with the worm that has eat of a
king, and eat of the fish that has fed on the worm."

In this collision with the world, alone and unsupported, Hamlet's
natural buoyancy returns. It is the moment of isolation, but it is the
moment also of intellectual freedom. It is desertion, but it is also
independence. Every incongruity feeds his fanciful and inventive humour.
He follows vanity and affectation with irony and mimicry, removes a mask
with the point of his dexterous wit, and exposes the pretence of virtue
or conceit of knowledge with sarcastic glee, while there is a savour of
retribution in his chastisement of vice. The vivacity of this running
comment, critical and satirical, on the ways and works of men adds much
to the charm of the play, but it is a charm that properly belongs to
the best comedy. And Shakespeare has marked this disengagement of his
hero from the sanguinary plot by reserving the exaltation of verse to
the expression of personal feeling, while the lithe and nimble movement
of his prose follows with its undulating rhythm every turn of Hamlet's
wayward mind, in subtlety of argument or caprice of fancy.

Such is the "preoccupation" of Hamlet, emotional and intellectual. I
have purposely made it seem a separate study, as thus alone could this
fatal "thought-sickness," in which Heaven and Earth seemed to partake,
be treated with the requisite clearness and fulness.

We can see at once that no other claim to the command of his spirit is
likely to succeed. His mind is already haunted. No Ghost can be more
spiritual than his own thoughts, or more spectral than the world around
him. No revelation of a particular crime can rival the revelation lately
made to him of sin in the most holy place--the seat of virtue itself and
heavenly purity. He may acknowledge the ties of filial obedie