giveth as much overture and entrance as a man will to like
injuries. Royal _majesty_ doth more hardly fall from the top
to the middle, than it tumbleth down from the middle to the
bottom."

The verbal correspondence here is only less decisive--as regards the use
of the word "majesty"--than in the passages collated by Mr. Morley;
while the thought corresponds as closely.

VI. The speech of Hamlet,[32] "There is nothing either good or bad but
thinking makes it so"; and Iago's "'tis in ourselves that we are thus or
thus,"[33] are expressions of a favourite thesis of Montaigne's, to
which he devotes an entire essay.[34] The Shaksperean phrases echo
closely such sentences as:--

"If that which we call evil and torment be neither torment
nor evil, but that our fancy only gives it that quality, it
is in us to change it.... That which we term evil is not so
of itself." ... "Every man is either well or ill according as
he finds himself."

And in the essay[35] OF DEMOCRITUS AND HERACLITUS there is another close
parallel:--

"Therefore let us take no more excuses from external
qualities of things. To us it belongeth to give ourselves
account of it. Our good and our evil hath no dependency but
from ourselves."

VII. Hamlet's apostrophe to his mother on
the power of custom--a passage which, like the
others above cited, first appears in the Second
Quarto--is similarly an echo of a favourite
proposition of Montaigne, who devotes to it the
essay[36] OF CUSTOM, AND NOT TO CHANGE READILY A
RECEIVED LAW. In that there occur the typical
passages:--

"Custom doth so blear us that we cannot distinguish the
usage of things.... Certes, chastity is an excellent virtue,
the commodity whereof is very well known; but to use it, and
according to nature to prevail with it, is as hard as it is
easy to endear it and to prevail with it according to
custom, to laws and precepts." "The laws of conscience,
which we say are born of nature, are born of custom."

Again, in the essay OF CONTROLLING ONE'S WILL[37] we have: "Custom is a
second nature, and not less potent."

Hamlet's words are:--

"That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on....
For use can almost change the stamp of nature."

No doubt the idea is a classic commonplace; and in the early