F RAIMOND SEBONDE[26]; and yet again in the
chapter on THE HISTORY OF SPURINA;[27] and though it seems to be
scholastic in origin, and occurs once or twice before 1600 in English
books, it is difficult to doubt that, like the other phrase above cited,
it came to Shakspere through Florio's Montaigne. The word _discours_ is
a hundred times used singly by Montaigne, as by Shakspere in the phrase
"of such large discourse," for the process of ratiocination.

IV. Then again there is the clue of Shakspere's use of the word
"consummation" in the revised form of the "To be" soliloquy. This, as
Mr. Feis pointed out,[28] is the word used by Florio as a rendering of
_aneantissement_ in the speech of Socrates as given by Montaigne in the
essay[29] OF PHYSIOGNOMY. Shakspere makes Hamlet speak of annihilation
as "a consummation devoutly to be wished." Florio has: "If it (death) be
a consummation of one's being, it is also an amendment and entrance into
a long and quiet night. We find nothing so sweet in life as a quiet and
gentle sleep, and without dreams." Here not only do the words coincide
in a peculiar way, but the idea in the two phrases is the same; the
theme of sleep and dreams being further common to the two writings.

Beyond these, I have not noted any correspondences of phrase so precise
as to prove reminiscence beyond possibility of dispute; but it is not
difficult to trace striking correspondences which, though falling short
of explicit reproduction, inevitably suggest a relation; and these it
now behoves us to consider. The remarkable thing is, as regards HAMLET,
that they almost all occur in passages not present in the First Quarto.

V. When we compare part of the speech of Rosencrantz on sedition[30]
with a passage in Montaigne's essay, OF CUSTOM,[31] we find a somewhat
close coincidence. In the play Rosencrantz says:

"The cease of Majesty,
Dies not alone; but like a gulf doth draw
What's near with it: it is a massy wheel
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoined; which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boisterous ruin."

Florio has:

"Those who attempt to shake an Estate are commonly the first
overthrown by the fall of it.... The contexture and
combining of this monarchy and great building having been
dismissed and dissolved by it, namely, in her old years,