remembrance of his former repulse of her loving behaviour, nor of his denial of having ever loved her, and he has equally forgotten his violent conduct and language, as insane persons alone do, and do so remarkably. Nor is what he says or does consistent with a rational anxiety, however intense, to watch the success of a device to which he attached, when shaping it, a great importance as the means of solving a serious question, and of dissipating a horrible suspicion, and thus determining his future course of action. All his actions and all his words are those of a distempered man, unmindful of the respects and proprieties of life. He never becomes composed; never recovers himself. He goes on jesting with Ophelia, as if incapable of deeper matter; and when the performance of the players has affrighted the king and sent all the noble audience away, and he is left with Horatio alone, before whom he has no motive for maintaining an antic disposition, he still talks wildly. Since the sad night of his interview with his father's ghost he has, in some quieter hour, entrusted Horatio with the whole revelation made to him; but now, even with Horatio, he

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speaks as strangely as he formerly did with Horatio and Marcellus together, immediately after that unearthly discourse and when he was surfeited with recent horrors. As no gravity then resulted from that interview, so no gravity now results from his conviction that the ghost was a true ghost, the tale of the murder true, and his uncle the murderer. He takes no counsel with his friend. He exclaims that he will "take the ghost's word for a thousand pound," just as recklessly as he had said "It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you." His words are now, as they were then, wild and hurling. No resolution springs up in his mind; it is all disordered and unbalanced. He quotes doggerel verses, and calls for the recorders.

Just when he is in this unsettled humour, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern approach: they come to him, sent by the queen. Their presence chafes him, and in

the short conversation with them he assumes a contemptuous air, and baffles them with scoffing words, which amusingly and precisely resemble the expressions of certain persons partially insane, who delight in the

power of exercising a cultivated intellect in bewildering plain people. This acuteness in putting their questioners out of countenance and averting their unwelcome inquiries, is well known to those experienced in the ways of the insane, and, although not combined with consistent and reasonable actions, is often extremely embarrassing to the inexperienced.

GUIL. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

HAM. Sir, a whole history.

GUIL. The king, sir,—

HAM. Ay, sir, what of him?

GUIL. Is, in his retirement, marvellous distempered.

HAM. With drink, sir?

GUIL. No, my lord, rather with choler.

HAM. Your wisdom should show itself more richer, to signify this to his doctor; for, for me to put him to his purgation, would, perhaps, plunge him into far more choler.

GUIL. Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.

HAM. I am tame, sir, pronounce.

GUIL. The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.

HAM. You are welcome.

GUIL. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother's commandment: if not, your pardon, and my return, shall be the end of my business.

HAM. Sir, I cannot.

GUIL. What, my lord?

HAM. Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased. But, sir, such answers as I can make you shall command; or rather, you say, my mother: therefore, no more, but to the matter; my mother, you say,

Ros. Then thus she says: Your behaviour hath struck her with amazement and admiration.

HAM. O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother !—But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration? Impart.

Ros. She desires to speak with you in her closet, ere you go to bed.

HAM. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further trade with us?

At this point in the conversation, Rosencrantz appears to find something less unfriendly and discouraging in Hamlet's manner towards him, and appeals to the former friendship existing between them :

Ros. My lord, you once did love me.

HAM. So I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

Whereupon, although the acknowledgment is somewhat equivocal, Rosencrantz ventures to ask him, plainly, what is the matter with him, and Hamlet as ingeniously baffles him :

Ros. Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do, surely, but bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friends.

HAM. Sir, I lack advancement.

Rosencrantz perseveres; until Hamlet becomes impatient, and, some one entering with a recorder, he rebukes him by insisting on his playing upon it, which when Rosencrantz professes his utter inability to do, Hamlet addresses him angrily :

HAM. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think that I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

Even with Horatio his words have wanted coherence and government, and now, with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they are mocking, and indicative of much excitement. In the latter case he is doubtless angry because he knows they have been employed to watch his words and to try to penetrate his thoughts; but