ume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter."

And this commandment had forbidden him to taint his mind against his
mother.

But what is his first exclamation when he is released from physical
horror, and his thoughts regain the living world? It is

"O! most pernicious woman!"

This singular phrase is one of Shakespeare's final touches, as does not
appear in the quarto of 1603; and it marks, therefore, his deliberate
intention, and is of the highest significance. He who will hereafter be
so often amazed at his own forgetfulness has already forgotten.

When his friends reappear, Hamlet is in a half-ironical humourous and
assuming an astonishing superiority over ghost and mortal alike informs
them--

"It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you."

But when this honest ghost plays sepulchral tricks, Hamlet shows small
respect to it, and at last, in a tone of almost command, cries--

"Rest! rest! perturbed spirit!"

Does Hamlet slight the command of the Ghost? By no means. He never
repudiates it or even calls it in question. There is no hesitation,
cavil, or debate in the acceptance of it as a duty. But the purpose
cools. It cools even on the platform. What passes within him is hardly a
process of thought, otherwise some intimation of it would be given in
his numerous self-communings. But there is a process prior to thought
in which the relations of things are felt before they are defined, and a
conclusion is reached, and a disposition decided, without the mediation
of the reason. There is a vague attraction this way or that, a blind
forecast and correlation of issues, and the whole being is so influenced
that, while there is no register of result in the memory, there is a
direction of the will and a determination of conduct. From the shadow of
the future that passes thus before his spirit he shrinks averse. To
scramble for a throne--to lord it over such a crew--to be linked to them
as by chains--to return to that polluted Court--to be the centre of
intrigues and hatreds--and for what? To leave the darker deeper evil
untouched. Some process such as this may account for the change from
"sweeping to his revenge" to

"The time is out of joint;--O cursed spite!
That ever I was born to set it right!"

In the meantime, in the well-lit chambers of consciousness, no note is
taken of this shadowy logic. This may appear paradoxical: but the last
of the changes from love to indifference, from faith to do