But as soon as he is alone, he begins to reflect upon his situation. When he considers the animation and the feeling expressed by a play"What would he do had er for nothing, a mere fiction, he exclaims, he the motive and the cue for passion that I have." He reproaches himself for his dullness and cowardice, and his submission to injuries when he was prompted to revenge by heaven and hell, and for suffering his resentments to evaporate in words and idle invectives.

Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,

Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face,

Tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie i'the throat

As deep as to the lungs, who does me this,

Ha! why I should take it, &c.

It then occurs to him that the play would be a good method to prove the guilt of his uncle:

I'll have these players

Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks,

I'll tent him to the quick: if he do flinch

I know my course.

He excuses his past inactivity by suggesting doubts of his uncle's guilt and a suspicion that the spirit he had seen might be a devil, and out of his weakness and melancholy might have deceived him. Unlike the fiery and decided Othello, with whom to be once in doubt is once to be resolved, and whose vengeance is as prompt as his suspicions are hasty and unfounded, Hamlet procrastinates the moment of action by pretences which he knows to be frivolous.

When he next appears, we find him meditating upon the subject of suicide. The perplexity of his mind has become intolerable. When he reflects upon the murder of his father, and the villainy of the king, his uncle, his sense of duty, his indignation, and the injunctions of his father's spirit, hurry him into the strongest resolutions of vengeance, and his mind continually reproaches him for his inactivity, but his repugnance to such acts of violence, his disgust with life, and his impression of the utter insignificance of every object of human pursuit, soften and disarm him. He is rather disposed to retire from such a scene, in which he found nothing worthy of his attention, and to seek a refuge from his misfortunes by ceasing to be. But the dread of an unknown futurity forbids such a relief, and throws him back upon the world "to bear those ills he has."

VOL. II.

I

The play, however, is at length performed, and the king stands convicted to the satisfaction of Hamlet. He is now wrought up to a High pitch of resolution.

Now could I drink hot blood

And do such business as the bitter day

Would quake to look on.

In this temper, while he is on his way to see his mother, who had sent for him, he finds the king his uncle, at prayers. He says,

Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying,

And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven,

And so am I revenged?

But here again his evil genius suggests a curious refinement. He thinks that if the king should be killed while he was praying, he would certainly go to heaven, and thus he should lose his revenge. His uncle had killed his father when he was unprepared to die, and a just retaliation required that the king should be served in the same manner. He therefore determines to put off his vengeance until he finds the king engaged in some less holy business, and by that method send his soul to hell. Accordingly he passes by the king without discovering himself.

The conduct of Hamlet upon this occasion is considered as an instance of savage barbarity, and so it would be if the reason which he assigns for the delay of his revenge were the true one. But it really was not his motive. It is inconsistent with the whole of his character. It was evidently a mere pretence to palliate to his own mind, his tardy and indecisive measures. He is continually endeavouring to animate himself to do acts of blood, which, when the time of action arrives, he shrinks from performing. The neglect of this opportunity proves fatal. While he is in conference with his mother, he hears a noise behind the arras, which he mistakes for the voice of the king, and at the impulse of the moment he aims a blow, which kills Pollonius. The consequences are, that he is obliged to leave his country, Ophelia becomes distracted and perishes, and Laertes is made his implacable

foc.

His father's spirit again appears to him while he is conversing with Iris mother, and Hamlet, conscious of his fault, asks,

The ghost replies,

Do not forget. This visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But procrastination continues to steal away his time, though all occasions, as he remarks himself, inform against him. When he sees young Fortinbras leading an army of twenty thousand men to fight for a piece of ground scarcely large enough to bury their slain,

On a mere phantasy and trick of fame,

his conscience reproaches him with indolence and apathy, who had such excitements of his reason and his blood, and let all sleep. When Hamlet should act, he speculates:

The native hue of resolution

Is sickly'd o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And all his enterprises, from an excess of refinement,
Lose the name of action.

He is degraded in his own estimation by remaining in a state of inagtivity and insignificance unworthy of his character. He is conscious of the possession of powers, a capability and godlike reason, which were intended to be exercised, and without which man was reduced to a level with the beasts. But he is withheld by a spell which seems to

him unaccountable.

Whether it be

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on the event,

A thought which quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom,

And even three parts coward. I do not know

Why yet I live to say, this thing's to do

Sith, I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do it.

He resolves once more,

From this time forth,

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.

Yet he suffers himself to be sent away without any attempt to execute his purposes, and narrowly escapes a snare which his uncle had set for his destruction. Even this new treachery of the king does not rouse him to exertion, and we find him on his return again indulging His favourite humour, and considering too curiously, as Horatio tells

him, the circumstances of poor human nature. Yet in every situation he leads us irresistibly along with him. The melancholy gloom which surrounds him, his profound and penetrating understanding, the proud and lofty elevation of his sentiments, softened by distress and by the delicacy and sensibility of his feelings, excite the mingled emotions of affection, esteem, and admiration, and we regret that a more propitious fate had not placed him in a state better calculated for the exercise of his virtues and his talents.

The catastrophe is produced by a new crime of the king who falls by the hand of Hamlet. The guilty are all punished, and though the death of Ophelia be an exception to the rule of poetical justice, yet we cannot consider that of Hamlet to be so. He is the victim of his own weakness and indiscretion.

According to the sentiment of a celebrated critic, the most proper character for tragedy is that of a person who has been himself the cause of his misfortune, and whose misfortune is occasioned by the violence of passion, or by some weakness incident to human nature. "Such a subject" says he, "disposes us to the deepest sympathy and administers useful warning to us for our own conduct. Who does not sympathise with the distresses, the feelings, the weaknesses of Hamlet, and who does not see the fatal effects of indulging those feelings to excess, and of suffering that weakness to become fixed and habitual."

Could he who drew each change of many-coloured life have omitted to delineate a character so important, and one from which so many instructive lessons may be drawn. An instance of talents, virtue, and spirit, rendered useless by a morbid sensibility; a temper too refined and fastidious to admit of steady and regular conduct: an instance too in a more general view, of the fatal effects of indecision.

The great moralist whose name I mentioned before, has described the folly of procrastination as one of the general weaknesses which in spite of the instruction of moralists and the remonstrances of reason prevail to a greater or less degree in every mind, as the most pertinacious, if not the most violent of the passions, always renewing its attacks, and though often vanquished, never destroyed. He had himself felt the influence of that seducement of the imagination by which we are led to believe that another day will bring some support or advantage which we now want, which is employed in forming resolutions which are soon dissipated, and reconciling ourselves to our own cowardice by excuses, which, while we admit them, we know to be absurd. A habit which the calls of reason and conscience cannot correct, which penetration, and discernment serve only to increase, and to bewilder us in the perplexity of various intentions.

The moral of the piece I think is obvious, and in tracing the conduct with a view to ascertain the character of Hamlet, I have had little hesitation in differing in opinion from those who maintain that Shakspeare had drawn a character altogether unnatural, and one which he himself did not understand.

A desire to vindicate a favourite production of a favourite author, has induced me to throw together these remarks, which, though hastily, and, I fear, crudely written, appear to me to be just.

CORRESPONDENCE.

-FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

THE WIFE OF SEGESTES.

THE wife of Segestes in Tacitus is worthy of the canvas. The historian has already given us a picture, and it is the finest ever exhibited since the nativity of genius. I can find nothing in Virgil or Homer equal to it: Creusa and Andromache are viewed with indifference by the side of the wife of Segestes. besieged castle, firm, inflexible, breathing the unsubdued spirit of her husband; no tear falls from her eye, no lamentation bursts from her lip; but lo! she stands a captive in pensive silence, straining her beating bosom with her hands, and fixing her eyes upon her pregnant womb.

I behold her coming forth from the

ATTICUS.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

TAHOPHA, OR THE CASSADA PLANT.

MR. OLDSCHOOL,

THERE are several different species; but the manioc is what is known and planted in the West India Islands. It is a cold poison; the