let, are affected at the enormity of what you have done; the sun is inflamed with anger, and the earth, contemplating your unnatural crime, is sorrowful and sick, just as she would be at the approach of the general dissolution of the world. 241. "Look here, upon this picture, and on this."

It is, I think, an egregious misconception, and a wretched device to make Hamlet come prepared with a couple of miniature pictures, for the purpose of expressing his reproaches at the queen's conduct, and to utter these reproaches while he is seated on a chair:-the pictures pointed at are, surely, the portraits at length, of the late king and of the usurper, the latter, Gertrude might naturally enough have introduced into her closet, while prudence and decency still retained the former there and this representation would materially improve the action of the scene.

"Look here upon this picture," &c. These pictures should, certainly, be whole lengths, hanging in the queen's closet.

LORD CHEDWORTH. 242. "A station like the herald Mercury."

Bishop Newton has remarked that this passage may have suggested Raphael's graceful posture: Like Maía's son he stood,

"And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance

fill'd

"The circuit wide. Parad. Lost. B. V. V. 285.

"Hic primum paribus nitens Cyllenius alis

"Constitit.

243. "

En. IV. 253.

LORD CHEDWORTH.

Assurance of a man."

Avouched perfection: the thought occurs again in Julius Cæsar :

244.

Nature might stand up,

66 And say to all the world, this was a man."

Sense, sure, you have,

"Else, could you not have motion."

"Motion" for volition, will, inclination; we still say of a voluntary act, it was of his own motion; sense, here, stands for reason, or the faculty of judging and comparing.

245.

Sense, to ecstasy was ne'er so

thrall'd,

"But it reserv'd some quantity of choice,
"To serve in such a difference."

Thus, in Cymbeline:

"Ideots, in such a case of difference, would
"Be wisely definite."

"Could not so mope.

Some words have been lost; perhaps like these:

246. "

Or be deluded thus."

Gives the charge."

Cries on, gives the signal for attack.
"O, Hamlet, speak no more."
"Hamlet" is a useless hypermeter.

"As will not leave their tinct."

As will not quit their places: it is a quaint expression for permanent stains: spots and tincts are the same thing; or perhaps the poet would require the places where the tincts are to move from the

tincts, in the same manner as it is said in Julius Cæsar that:

'

"His coward lips did from their colour fly."

An enseamed bed.”

Whatever sense may be attached to this word, enseamed," I cannot help preferring that which the quarto (1611) exhibits," incestuous." It is an anticlimax to go from so strong an expression as "rank sweat," to the less forcible one, greasy. 247. "

O, speak (to me) no more.' This "to me" appears a stupid interpolation.

And put it in his pocket."

I am convinced that Shakspeare, when he was writing in verse, knew how to maintain it; and was tenacious of the measure. A particle is wanting here; perhaps Hamlet was going on:

And put it in his pocket, a

No more."

What follows wants regulation:

"A king of shreds and patches."

Perhaps, all unseemly.

248. "Alas! he's mad."

This is interpolated or an ejaculation of the

actor.

249. "Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, "Starts up, and stands on end."

Your hair, which had been composed, as it were, in bed. There is here, I suspect, a coarser image than the editors seem to have recognised:

the allusion, I believe, is to the worms which extrude and start forth from excremental inertion. I wish the queen had introduced a more savory simile.

Preaching to stones,

"Would make them capable."

Capable," Mr. Malone says, signifies “intelligent;" I think it only means susceptible, sensible; thus, in the 4th Act:

She chaunted snatches of old tunes,

"As one incapable of her own distress."

250. "

66

Lest, with this piteous action, you convert
My stern effects."

Lest pity supercede revenge. My effects" means, the effects produced in my mind by your murder," &c.

66

My father, in his habit as he liv'd."

This I never thought to have any other meaning than, my father, in the garb or mode of attire that distinguished him when he was alive.

66

Do you see nothing there?"

There is a palpable impropriety in the usual manner of exhibiting this scene on the stage.Upon this question of Hamlet's we see the queen turning anxiously and slowly her looks about the room as if she expected to find the object referred to; whereas she entertains no such apprehension, but is solely occupied in anxiety at her son's distraction. The actresses make the queen as mad as Hamlet, and are generally applauded for their

mistake.

1

Some word is wanting to the measure; perhaps,

"How! ecstasy !"

Avoid what is to come."

I know not how this is to be explained or understood; what is to come cannot be avoided; perhaps we should read:

Avoid what else will come."

i. e. Without repentance.

Farquhar has committed a similar inaccuracy in The Beaux Stratagem, where Archer says,"Past pleasures, for ought I know, are the best, for such we are sure of; whereas, those that are to come may disappoint us." Such language, from Foigard, would have been in character.Archer might have said, those that are in prospect, only, may disappoint us.

166 Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg;

Yea, curb and woo, for leave to do him good."

This is very ill-expressed: Virtue is designated by the neuter pronoun; and Vice is made masculine in him. As to the sense of "curb," I cannot agree in Mr. Steevens's interpretation; bend and truckle, the ordinary meaning of the word, I think, is more convenient; Virtue, in her zeal to do good, even to Vice, must sometimes pull in or restrain, and sometimes advance her kind offices, i. e. woo.

252. Queen. “O Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart in twain."

Ham. "O, throw away the worser part

of it,

"And live the purer with the other half."