wished and requested to be, he never would have attempted the assassination of Louis XV. In another equally well attested instance, a father systematically persecuted his children for many years. During the whole of this period he was looked on by the generality as a man of great talent and probity; and it was only after the history of his life had been sifted by several of the best physicians of the day, that a tinge of insanity was perceived to pervade it. He had started with impracticable notions of virtue, and, finding these not realised in the conduct of his children, he conceived a hatred against them, which caused him to persecute his sons, even to destitution, and to accuse his daughters to their husbands of the worst of crimes. In the prosecution of his plans, and in the business of life, he evinced anything but incoherence.

Villemain, in his Mélanges Historiques,' says, 'Shakspeare has represented feigned as often as real madness; finally, he has contrived to blend both in the extraordinary character of Hamlet, and to join together the light of reason, the cunning of intentional error, and the involuntary disorder of the soul." Goethe, again, in his Wilhelm Meister, says :

It is clear to me, 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. In this sense, I find the character of Hamlet consistent throughout. Here is an oak planted in a 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 that constitutes the hero, sinks under a load which it can neither support nor resolve to abandon altogether. 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 shifts, hesitates, advances, and recedes!-How he is continually reminded and reminding himself of his great commission, which he nevertheless, in the end, seems almost entirely to lose sight of, and this without ever recovering his former tranquillity.'

Ingenious and elegant as is this German gloss, we nevertheless think Villemain right in adhering to Malone's opinion. Hamlet, after his father's death, is a totally different being from the hope of Denmark whom Ophelia lauds with such impassioned eloquence, and whom Horatio and Fortinbras both deck with the noblest attributes of our nature. Neither indecision of character nor feigned madness account for Hamlet's actions. His conduct, when he leaps into Ophelia's grave, and the reason he assigns for it, are evidences of a mind diseased. The bravery of his grief put me into a towering passion,' is the poorest of excuses for disturbing, before the august assemblage, the last rites of one whom

he

he so loved, that forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity, make up his sum.' In short, we have no doubt, that Shakspeare intended to display in the character of Hamlet a species of mental malady, which is of daily occurrence in our own experience, and every variety of which we find accurately described by his contemporary, the author of the Anatomie of Melancholy.'

'Suspicion and jealousy (says Burton) are general symptoms. If two talk together, discourse, whisper, jest, he thinks presently they mean him-de se putat omnia-or if they talk with him, he is ready to misconstrue every word they speak, and interpret it to the worst. Inconstant they are in all their actions; vertiginous, restless, unapt to resolve of any business; they will, and they will not, persuaded to and from, upon every occasion: yet, if once resolved, obstinate and hard to be reconciled. They do, and by and by repent them of what they have done; so that both ways they are disquieted of all hands, soon weary. They are of profound judgments in some things, excellent apprehensions, judicious, wise, and witty; for melancholy advanceth men's conceits more than any humour whatever. Fearful, suspicious of all, yet again many of them desperate hair-brains; rash, careless, fit to be assassinates, as being void of all ruth and sorrow. Tædium vitæ is a common symptom; they soon are tired with all things-sequitur nunc vivendi nunc moriendi cupido; often tempted to make away with themselves-vivere nolunt, mori nesciunt: they cannot die, they will not live; they complain, lament, weep, and think they lead a most melancholy life.'

It would be difficult to find a criticism more applicable to the character of Hamlet than in this page of old Burton, who drew the picture as much from himself as from observation made on others. This form of madness (the melancholia attonita of nosologists) begins with lowness of spirits, and a desire for solitude. The very words of Hamlet have been taken by Dr. Mason Good to describe the first stage of the malady.

I have of late, wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth; foregone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fires, why, it appears no other thing to me than a pestilent congregation of vapours.

Thus the external world is either falsely recognised by the perception, or falsely discriminated by the judgment. The objects of former love become the objects of present indifference or dislike. If the temperament be timorous, everything is shunned or suspected; if fierce, a morose and mischievous disposition is engendered. If the unfortunate individuals labour under the scourge of religious terrors, they, like Cowper, almost invariably attempt suicide.

suicide. The ideas of persons so affected are not so incongruous with themselves as with the world around them; they reason acutely in the train of their diseased notions; they draw fanciful conclusions from the most ordinary events, tinging everything with the predominant hues of their own imaginations. This state of mind is compatible with length of life, during which, however, great inequalities of temper and action are observable, so that at one moment the individual shall be comparatively sane, at others wild and incoherent; to-day an agreeable and witty companion —if a poet, inditing a John Gilpin-to-morrow driven by some irresistible impulse to the cord or the dagger.

Perhaps some may find it difficult to believe that Shakspeare observed these minute and almost technical distinctions of madness, which appear to belong rather to the province of the pathologist than that of the poet. But everything is still to be learnt concerning this extraordinary man's habits of study and observation. The variety and individual clearness of his delineations of mental malady leave on our minds no doubt that he had made the subject his especial study, as both Crabbe and Scott certainly did after him, and with hardly inferior success. The various forms of the malady he has described-the perfect keeping of each throughout the complications of dramatic action-the exact adjustment of the peculiar kind of madness to the circumstances which induce it, and to the previous character of the sound man,' leave us lost in astonishment.

6

As in Hamlet, the present character of Jaques is strongly contrasted with his former one, to show the violent change which had been wrought in his nature. He had been a libertine, as sensual as the brutish sting itself;' and now, satiated, he would cleanse the foul body of the infected world.' Shakspeare makes him a muser, a gentle misanthrope, with whose sullen fits so full of matter, the duke loved to cope.' Jaques's account of himself, while it fixes the precise signification of the term melancholy, as understood by Shakspeare, proves how deeply the poet had studied all the various forms of this disorder, and with what art he seized the predominant characteristic in each kind:

I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of my own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects; and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me, is a most humorous sadness.'

Let us again hear Burton:

'Humorous

Humorous they are beyond all measure; sometimes profusely laughing-extraordinary merry-and then again weeping, without a cause; groaning, sighing, pensive, sad, almost distracted; restless in their thought and actions, continually meditating.

More like dreamers than men awake, they feign a company of antick fantastical conceits.'

This same cast of mind, which Shakspeare has designated as melancholy in Jaques, he reproduces in Hamlet, in the gravediggers' scene. There are the same fantastic musings, a similar train of conceits, a wild mixture of pathos, wit, and ribaldry, which, had the scene been in the Forest of Arden, might have been uttered by Jaques, without doing violence to the 'keeping' of that exquisitely drawn character; and it is immediately after such a preparation, be it observed, that Shakspeare has represented Hamlet in that towering passion which impels him to outrage all decency by leaping into Ophelia's grave, This sudden transition from placid musing to rage is unintelligible, if it be not intended to show the wayward disposition of the melancholy mind. Garrick, in his corrected edition of this play, expunged the grave-diggers' scene, as injuring the general effect. But this is not the only instance in which Shakspeare has preferred a close imitation of nature, however painful, to what is called the dignity of the drama. In the fourth act of Lear, the king is represented in the last degradation of madness, scampering off the stage; and an attendant exclaims :—

A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch-
Past speaking of in a king.'

Of that lighter species of melancholy which Shakspeare has delineated in the character of Jaques, we have an admirable portraiture-perhaps the original-in the account of Hippocrates's visit to Democritus.

'Democritus,' says Burton, was a little wearish old man, very melancholy by nature, averse from company in his latter days, and much given to solitariness. After a wandering life he settled at Abdera, a town in Thrace, and was sent for thither to be their lawmaker, recorder, or town-clerk, as some will, or, as others, he was there bred and born. Howsoever, it was there he lived at last, in a garden in the suburbs, wholly betaking himself to his studies and a private life, saving that sometimes he would walk down to the haven, and laugh heartily at such a variety of ridiculous objects which there he saw.'*

A most

* 6 Burton,' says Mr. Grainger, 'wrote his Anatomie with a view of relieving his own melancholy, but increased it to such a degree, that nothing could make him laugh

A most urgent letter was despatched to Hippocrates in the name of the senate and people of Abdera, to entreat him to come and visit Democritus.

He lives (they say) forgetful of everything, but more especially forgetful of himself; watching day and night, and treating all that passes around him with the utmost derision, as utterly insignificant. Does one marry, does another harangue the people, is a third engaged in merchandise—is one a magistrate, another an ambassador— or, on the contrary, is one dismissed from office by the people, is a second sick, is a third wounded, does a fourth die,-Democritus equally laughs at all. He affirms, that the air is full of images; and that he understands the notes of birds. Now and then, rising in the night-time, he walks about with great gravity, singing to himself. He tells us that he sometimes travels immense journeys into infinite space, and finds innumerable Democrituses, doubles of himself.'

In the letter to Damagetus, the physician's first view of Abdera and his patient is thus described:

'We found at the gates, expecting our arrival, a mixed multitude of both sexes, old and young, all in deep sorrow. Philopomen was eager to conduct me to his house; but I told them, that my first object was to see Democritus. This declaration drew forth great applause. I was then escorted through the forum, some going before me, others following, but all imploring me to save their philosopher. Proceeding to a little hill, close to the city, shaded with poplars, we obtained a view of the house of Democritus-and of himself, sitting on a stone seat under a plane tree, clothed in a short tunic, squalid, pale, emaciated, and with a long beard. Near him, on the right hand, a rivulet in soft murmurs glided down the green bank. Here in perfect composure he was seated, holding a book on his knees, while others lay beside him on the ground. At a little distance were heaped together the carcases of animals which he had dissected. We observed him sometimes intensely engaged in writing, and at other times he would stop, apparently in deep contemplation. He would soon afterwards rise, and take a walk, and, after inspecting the entrails, sit down again. "You behold," said the Abderites standing beside me, "how melancholy is the life of Democritus, and in how deplorable a state of insanity he is. He knows neither what he wishes, nor what he does." I desired them to remain where they were until I should hear him speak, examine his person, and ascertain the reality of the disease.

'Having descended a precipice so steep that it was with difficulty I could keep my feet, I came upon him when he was under the influence of some divine impulse, and was committing his thoughts to writing. I therefore stood still, watching for a favourable opportunity when he should lay down his pen. This he

laugh but going to the bridge-foot, and hearing the ribaldry of the bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him into a violent fit of laughter. Before he was overcome with this horrid disorder, he, in the interval of his vapours, was esteemed one of the most facetious companions of the university.'