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Oh, Wordsworth, thou too art a poet !-and like Shakspeare,

Read'st the eternal deep
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind

In short, because he penetrated the Sanctuary of Faith, the holy place where Faith alone should dwell, but which, alas! too, too often, since the first temptation, hath been invaded by vain mistrusting curiosity, the dupe and tool of sensual and malignant selfishness, seeking to make the things above sense subject to sense, to enslave spiritual powers to corporal purposes, to circumscribe infinity in formal bounds, and imprison eternity in a chain of conscious moments.

In reproof of this sad desecration of man's possible sanctity, the genius of Shakspeare (for I dare not aver that he foresaw or designed the scope of its workings) created the tragedies of Macbeth and Hamlet. In plain lan guage, (for I am afraid I have been a little mystical,) the ethical purport of those dramas, is to shew the evil and confusion which must be introduced into the moral world by a sensible communication between natural and supernatural beings.

In Shakspeare's age, the possibility

of such communication was an article no less of the philosophic than of the popular creed. The gravest sceptics only dared to doubt the authenticity of certain recorded facts, the legitimacy of certain logical inductions. The learned of our generation (I speak not of the half-learned ignorant) conclude, that there is no such possibility. Not content with questioning the a posteriori evidence of each particular case, they determine a priori, that no conceivable strength of evidence could establish the fact of an apparition, or a magical operation. They do not, all of them, deny the boundless powers of Heaven, nor can they pretend to know all the powers of earth; but between heaven and earth, they admit nothing more than is thought of in their philosophy. Optical delusion, nervous excitement, indigestion, and casual coincidence, are to explain all the mys tery of ancestral fear,-pronounce all extra-scriptural miracles apocryphal, and prove the vast invisible realms of air untenanted.

The central caverns of the hollow earth,
That never heard the sea's tempestuous call,
Nor the dread summons of impatient thunder;
Which not the Earthquake moves, nor solid flood
Of Etna's molten entrails e'er can warm.--
Dread vacancy! Cold, silent, changeless, holds
Of blank privation, and primeval Nothing,
Obstructed by the o'erincumbent World-
Believed of old, the home of wicked Dreams,
Night-walking Fancies, Fiends invisible,
As troubled thoughts!

Geologists, no doubt, give a different account of the matter. But Shakspeare wrote in another age-for men of another generation ;-men, who deemed that no impassable gulf divides the things seen from the unseen powers; who had no corpuscular theories to guard them against the shapings of a passionate imagination-from inhibited hopes, and blind interminable fears-from thoughts that go astray in the wilderness of possibility-from "speculations that are the rottenest part of the core of the fruit of the tree of knowledge." Grievously are they mistaken who think that the revival of literature was the death of supersti

Earth, a Poem.

tion-that ghosts, demons, and exor cists retreated before the march of intellect, and fled the British shore along with monks, saints, and masses. Superstition, deadly superstition, may coexist with much learning, with high civilization, with any religion, or with utter irreligion. Canidia wrought her spells in the Augustan age, and Chaldean fortune-tellers haunted Rome in the sceptical days of Juvenal. Mat thew Hopkins, the witch-finder, and Lilly, the astrologer, were contemporaries of Selden, Harrington, and Milton. Perhaps there was never a more superstitious period than that which produced Erasmus and Bacon.

. Whether Shakspeare believed the popular creed, which his more erudite contemporaries exhausted their booklearning and their logical acuteness to engraft upon the reigning philosophy, and to reconcile with their favourite theories, it is idle to inquire. That in his youth he listened with a faith sincere to all fire-side traditions, may be regarded as certain. That he ever totally and confidently disbelieved them, is exceedingly doubtful.

But his fine sense, and knowledge of the soul, which his imagination extended to all conceivable cases and circumstances, informed him of the moral unfitness of such supernatural intercommunion; and if it did not demonstrate (what has never yet been demonstrated) the physical impossibility, or logical absurdity, of the popular Pneumatology, intimated its inconsistency with the moral welfare of man, and, consequently, with the revealed will of Heaven. Never was poetry more sublimely employed than in rebuking that idolatrous and perverted faith, which transgresses the limits of sense and sympathy, yet stops short of the infallible One, to whom alone faith is due.

The proper state of man can only

be maintained in sympathy and communion with his fellow-men. Nulla salus extra ecclesiam. All legitimate rules, motives, and purposes of action, must be universally explicable and intelligible. All lawful and salutary knowledge must be communicable to every capable understanding. But it is manifest, that one who held intercourse, derived information, received aid, or took orders from a disembodied spirit, no matter of what degree, would be excluded from human sympathy and communion, insulated and excommunicated; his knowledge would no longer be "discourse of reason;" and out of that knowledge duties, or apparent duties, would arise, widely diverging from, and frequently crossing, the prescribed and covenanted track of human conduct-abrogating the public law of conscience. Hence an inward contradiction, a schism in the soul, jarring impulses, and all the harmony of thoughts and feelings like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh. Hence, in impetuous natures, crime impelling crime, and, in medi. tative spirits, a paralytic will, a helpless melancholy madness, rendered the more insupportable by the co-existence of an unimpaired understanding.

INTERSCRIPT.

MY DEAR H.,

I HAVE duly received all your seven successive sheets through the safest of all circulating mediums, the Post-Office; and as I have answered none of them, I hope that you believe me dead. I trust, too, that you have fixed the era of my decease at a period long anterior to the date of your last Epistle-as I should - be sorry that you wrote my Biography, under an impression that I had died seven letters in your debt; for nothing so souring to the sweetest blood as the feeling of having been absurdly treated by a friend whose virtues you had firmly undertaken to commemorate. But, my dear H., how the deuce could I answer your letters-kept, as I have been, in Cimmerian darkness as to your local habitation in this unintelligible world? You have absolutely annihilated time and place, that two friends might be unhappy; and withheld from me the slightest clew by which I could discover your sylvan, champagne, mountainous, city, or suburban retreat. One letter is dated "Wednesday," another "Friday," another "Sunday," and so on-but no hint dropped of the month or year-county or kingdom. Some progress I have made in the study of ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics, under the tuition of my learned and ingenious friend, James Browne, LL.D.; but they throw no light whatever upon the modern Hieroglyphics of the Post-Office department-to the deciphering of which there is a single objection, seemingly insurmountable, namely, that not one red stain in ten thousand has any character at all; so that what appears at one moment to the perplexed spirit of one inquirer long devoted to the study, to mean possibly " Kendal," the very next moment, as a change comes

1

over the spirit of his dream," seems to the sceptic to be "Japan." Methought
I had made out on your Fourth Epistle, as I" turned up its silver lining to
the light," "Constantinople," and presumed that you were about to set off to
Schumla with the Sultan. This was by candle-light; but on trying the stamp
by gas, I could have sworn it was Kidderminster, and that you had sent me
an account of the great strike of the Carpeteers. But to be brief, where you
now are, and have been for the last six months, I am much exhausted and
reduced to a mere shadow by having all in vain been occupied during the
summer in conjecturing; and the only resource left is to address you in Maga.
She will find you out, or the devil is in it, be your tent pitched in Europe,
America, Asia, or Africa. And do, my dear fellow, do, I pray you, remem-
ber not to forget to jot down-through the same channel, if you please-about
what degree of latitude and longitude you are sitting or sailing at date of your
next, so that I may have something more than a mere guess of the hemi-
sphere. Be assured that Scotland stands where it did, and that all the people
are well, and anxious for your arrival in Edinburgh. The city is filling fast,
and the winter, threatens to be a mild one, so don't care about your cough-
nor pay any attention to all that silly nonsense about asthma and consump-
tion. You are neither a whit more asthmatic nor consumptive than people at
large-and as for dyspepsy, I should as readily believe you capable of picking
pockets. Come to us, then, my dear H., do come to us-yourself by the light
coach, your baggage, at least the hairy trunk with the articles, by the heavy
waggon. My housekeeper-fat worthy soul-has been sleeping in the bed set
apart for your honour for several months, so it is well aired; and you need be
under no fear of being blown up by an explosion of fire-damp, as you provi-
dentially were, without serious, or at least permanent injury, on the first
night of your last visit to the Lodge. As we are to see you so soon, I shall
reserve all I have got to say about your Series of Specimens of the great Greek
Poets, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c., till our first game at snap-dragon in the
Sanctum. They will be a new glory in the garland round the forehead of
Maga, who will then be a very Minerva. I agree with you in thinking that
beautiful as she has hitherto been in her budding growth, winning all hearts
and charming all eyes, she is becoming monthly more irresistible in the full-
blown bloom of her matured magnificence. Not one dissentient voice is now
heard from the decision of the world, that she is, out of all comparison, the
finest woman of her age, uniting in her own single self, Harmonious Discord,
Contradiction, all the mental and bodily attractions of an Eve, a Judith, a Cas-
sandra, a Lucretia, a Cleopatra, a Zenobia, and a Semiramis. She is quite wild
about your article on Shakspeare. It is, my dear H., indeed an article to win
any female heart-and poor Emily Callender, after reading your beautiful ex-
planation of Hamlet's behaviour to Ophelia, walked with tears in her fair eyes
away into the Virgins' Bower, where she sat pity-and-love-sick till sunset.
Knowing by experience that strong emotion, when long sustained, becomes
almost unsustainable, I have divided your fine Essay into two parts-and lo!
here I am standing on the "Landing-place," to use the language of one whom
I honour and you reverence-and that I may soon see you in the body coming
dreamily down the avenue, is the warm wish, my dear H., of your affectionate
friend,
CHRISTOPHER North.

BUCHANAN-LODGE,
Oct. 14, 1828.

ON THE CHARACTER OF HAMLET.

MAY not that critical problem, the character of Hamlet, be partly elucidated upon this principle? No fictitious, and few historical personages, have given rise to more controversy. Some commentators hold him up as the pattern of all that is virtuous, noble, wise, and amiable; others condemn him as a mass of unfeeling inconsistency. It is doubted whether his madness be real or assumed. Stevens declares that he must be madman or villain. Boswell, the younger, makes him out to be a quiet, good sort of man, unfit for perilous times and arduous enterprises, and, in fine, parallels him with Charles I. and George III.

Goëthe (in his William Meister) burns, as the children say at hide-andseek, but when about, as it were, to lay hands on the truth, he is blown "diverse innumerable leagues." "It is clear to me," he says," that Shakspeare's intention was to exhibit the effects of a great action imposed as a duty upon a mind too feeble for its accomplishment. Here is an oak-tree, planted in a china vase, proper only to receive the most delicate flowers. The roots strike out, and the vessel flies to pieces. A pure, noble, highly moral disposition, but without that energy of soul which constitutes the hero, sinks under a load, which it can neither support nor resolve to abandon. All his obligations are sacred to him, but this alone is above his powers. An impossibility is required at his hands-not an impossibility in itself, but that which is so to him. Observe how he turns, shifts, advances, and recedes how he is constantly reminding himself of his great commission, which he nevertheless in the end seems almost entirely to lose sight of, and this without recovering his former tranquil lity."

Now, surely, feebleness of mind, the fragility of a china vase, lack of power and energy, are not the characteristics of Hamlet. So far from it, he is represented as fearless, almost above the strength of humanity. He does not "set his life at a pin's fee." He converses, unshaken, with what the stoutest warriors have trembled to think upon, jests with a visitant from darkness, and gathers unwonted vigour from the pangs of death. Nor, in all

his musings, all the many-coloured mazes of his thoughts, is there any thing of female softness-any thing of amiable weakness. His anguish is stern and masculine, stubbornly selfpossessed, above the kind relief of sighs, and tears, and soothing pity. The very style of his more serious discourse is more austere, philosophic,

I had almost said prosaic,-than that of any other character in Shakspeare. It is not the weight and magnitude, the danger and difficulty, of the deed imposed as a duty, that weighs upon his soul, and enervates the sinews of his moral being, but the preternatural contradiction involved in the duty itself, the irregular means through which the duty is promulgated and known.

- Presumptuous as it may appear to offer a new theory on a subject that has exercised so many wits before, or to pretend to know what Shakspeare intended, where his intentions have been so variously conjectured, I will venture to take a cursory view of this most Shakspearean of all Shakspeare's dramas, and endeavour to explain, not justify, the most questionable points in the character of the hero.

Let us, for a moment, put Shakspeare out of the question, and consi◄ der Hamlet as a real person, a recently deceased acquaintance. In real life, it is no unusual thing to meet with characters every whit as obscure as that of the Prince of Denmark; men seemingly accomplished for the greatest ac tions, clear in thought, and dauntless in deed, still meditating mighty works, and urged by all motives and occasions to the performance,-whose existence is nevertheless an unperforming dream; men of noblest, warmest affections, who are perpetually wringing the hearts of those whom they love best; whose sense of rectitude is strong and wise enough to inform and govern a world, while their acts are the hapless issues of casualty and passion, and scarce to themselves appear their own. We cannot conclude that all such have seen ghosts; though the existence of ghost-seers is as certain, as that of ghosts is problematical. But they will generally be found, either by a course of study and meditation too remote from the art and practice of life,-by

designs too pure and perfect to be executed in earthly materials,-or from imperfect glimpses of an intuition beyond the defined limits of communicable knowledge, to have severed themselves from the common society of human feelings and opinions, and become as it were ghosts in the body. Such a man is Hamlet; an habitual dweller with his own thoughts,-preferring the possible to the real,-re fining on the ideal forms of things, till the things themselves become dim in his sight, and all the common doings and sufferings, the obligations and engagements of the world, a weary task, stale and unprofitable. By natural temperament he is more a thinker than a doer. His abstract intellect is an overbalance for his active impulses. The death of his father, his mother's marriage, and his own exclusion from the succession,-sorrow for one pa rent, shame for another, and resentment for himself,-tend still further to confirm and darken a disposition, which the light heart of happy youth had hitherto counteracted. Sorrow contracts around his soul, and shuts it out from cheerful light, and wholesome air. It may be observed in ge neral, that men of thought succumb more helplessly beneath affliction than

the men of action. How many dear friends may a soldier lose in a single campaign, and yet find his heart whole in his winter quarters; the natural decease of one whereof in peace and se curity, would have robbed his days to come of half their joy! In this state of mind is Hamlet first introduced; not distinctly conscious of more than his father's death and mother's disho nour, yet haunted with undefined suspicions and gloomy presentiments,weary of all things, most weary of himself,-without hope or purpose. His best affections borne away, on the ebbing tide of memory, into the glimmering past, he longs to be dissolved, to pass away like the dew of morning. Be it observed, that this longing for dissolution, this fond familiarity with graves, and worms, and epitaphs, is, as it were, the back ground, the bass accompaniment of Hamlet's character. It sounds at ever recurrent intervals like the slow knell of a pompous fu neral, solemnizing the mournful mu sic and memorial pageantry. No soon er is he left alone, in the first scene after his entrance, than he wishes "that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter;" in the last, in articulo mortis, he requests of his only friend,

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.

So little does the dying man love life,
that he holds it the utmost sacrifice of
friendship to endure it. But this de-
sire is not prompted by any anticipa
tion of future bliss; he dreams neither
of a Mahometan paradise, nor a Chris-
tian heaven; his yearning is to melt,
-to die,-to sleep,-not to be. He
delights in contemplating human na-
ture in the dust, and seems to identify
man with his rotting relics. Death,
the most awful of all thoughts, is to
him a mere argument of scorn, con-
victing all things of hollowness and
transiency. Not that he does not be-
lieve in a nobler, a surviving human
being; but the spring of hope is so
utterly dried up within him, that it
flows not at the prospect of immorta-
lity.

It might easily be imagined,-it has even plausibly been asserted, that the appearance of a departed spirit, ad

mitting it to be authenticated, would, so far from a curse and a terror, be a most invaluable blessing to mankind, inasmuch as it would remove every doubt of an hereafter, and demonstrate the existence of a spiritual principle. He that knew what was in the heart of man, and all its possible issues, has declared otherwise: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead;" and even so. The knowledge, the fact, the revelation which finds no companion in the mind,-which remains a mere exception, an isolated wonder,-may cast a doubt on all that was before believed, but can never of itself produce a fruitful or a living faith. Seeing is not necessarily believing; at least, it is not rational conviction, which can only take place on one of two conditions: 1st, If the new truth be itself conform

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