nce and the
duty of revenge, but there is no place, nor obligation to
hold, no world to which it may be attached, no faith or interest strong
enough within him to give it vitality, no fruit of good result to be
looked for without. The place is occupied:

"For where the greater malady is fixed
The lesser scarce is felt."

When Hamlet says, "There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it
so," he confesses himself an idealist--that is, one to whom ideas are
not images or opinions, but the avenues of life. They garner up
happiness and they store the harvest of pain; they make the "majestical
roof fretted with golden fire" and the "pestilential cloud." The basis
on which Hamlet's happiness had rested had been suddenly removed, and
with the sanctity of the past the promise of the future had disappeared;
the sky and the earth. He could say to his mother:

"Du hast sie zerstoert
Die schoene Welt;"

but the new world is built of the same materials--that is, absorbing
ideas. The shadow descends till it measures the former brightness; the
revulsion is as great as the enthusiasm.

IV.

Why, then, does he accept the mission of the Ghost? To answer this fully
we must accompany him to the platform.

In this scene Hamlet exhibits in perfection all the elements of
courage--coolness, determination, daring. He is singularly free from
excitement; and this is not because he is absorbed in his own thoughts,
for he easily falls into conversation, and treats the first subject that
comes to hand with his usual felicity and fulness, rising from the
private instance to a public law, and applying it to large and larger
groups of facts till his father's spirit stands before him. Thrilled and
startled he pauses not, "harrowed with fear and wonder like Horatio on
the previous night, but at once addresses it, as he said he would,
though hell itself should gape." No more dignified rebuke ever shamed
terror from the soul than Hamlet administers to his panic-stricken
friends, and when they would forcibly withhold him from following the
Ghost, the steady determination with which he draws his sword is marked
by the play upon words:

"By Heav'n, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me."

In the presence of his father the old life is rekindled within his
filial awe and affection, unquestioned obedience, daring resolve. He
will "sweep to his revenge,"

"And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and vol