ellectual keenness, an imagination of a poet, and the
unflinching questioning of the philosopher. Maeterlinck says: "Hamlet
thinks much but is by no means wise." How does Hamlet show he had not
the wisdom of life? Maeterlinck, no doubt, would dwell on his varying
moods, his subtle melancholy, his nature baffled by a supernatural
command. If he was not wise how strange he should have said so many
words of truest wisdom both of Life and Death, "If it be now, 'tis not
to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet
it will come; the readiness is all." We feel that Hamlet was "a being
with springs of thought and feeling and action deeper than we can
search." But the elements in his nature could not resolve themselves
into an inner life of calm. Therefore, according to Maeterlinck, he
was not wise, for he could not conquer his inner fatality--destiny in
himself. Maeterlinck's ideas are very beautiful, and he writes
delightfully, but his test of wisdom is questionable, for Hamlet's
thoughts have captured and invaded and influenced the best minds and
experiences of thinkers for centuries, How many a Shakespearean reader
has _felt_ that Hamlet is one of the very wisest of men as well as one
of the most lovable and attractive! Not his ignorance, but his wisdom
has borne the test of study and time. He did not bear the tragedy of
life when the supernatural entered it, with an unshaken soul, but
ourselves and the realities of life become clearer to us, the more we
read his thoughts. If "it is _we_ who are Hamlet," as Hazlitt said, it
is a great tribute to his universality--but a greater one to
ourselves. Indeed, we learn wisdom, not only from the lucubrations of
the serene and calm, or from Hamlet, magnificent in thought, acute and
playful, but also from Hamlet in his mortal struggles, in his deep
questionings, and his melancholy.

For wisdom "dwells not in the light alone
But in the darkness and the cloud."

IV.

AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY.

Philosophers talk of a philosophy of art, ancient and modern. But this
is unnecessary. Art is always art, or never art, as the case may be;
whether it is art in the days of Pheidias and Praxitiles, of Rafael,
or of Turner, or whether it is not art as in the days of its
degeneration in Greece and Italy. The outward expression of course,
changes, but it changes through individual and national aptitudes, not
from Chronology. That indispensable and indescr