would have been foiled, and that his arrows, as he ex

presses it,

Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aim'd them.

But the king has reason to conclude that Laertes still meditates revenge, and this unlooked-for return of Hamlet suggests to him the means of making that revenge effectual, and no less serviceable to himself. Hence ensues a dialogue in which the utter wickedness of the king and the dishonour of Laertes are equally expressed. The king tells Laertes that if Hamlet be really returned, he will work him to an exploit that will be fatal to him, and yet which will be ascribed to accident even by his mother. Laertes wishes to be the instrument of this accident, the accident being murder. Yet when the king prefaces this bloody business by telling him that in his absence a certain Norman gentleman had praised him, above all others, for his art and exercise in defence, and most especially for his rapier, adding,

Sir, this report of his

Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy

That he could nothing do, but wish and beg
Your sudden coming o'er to play with him.
Now, out of this,-

these words, however cautiously framed, appear to move in him some feeling of shame, for he could scarcely fail to see that he was to be made an assassin; and he interrupts the king's detail, saying,

-Why out of this, my lord?

upon which the king, perceiving that he must proceed stealthily rather than fast, exercises his experience on the impulsive disposition of the younger man, and appeals to his scarcely smothered revenge, and with full

success:

KING. Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without a heart?

KING. Not that I think you did not love your father
But that I know love is begun by time,

And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.

*

But, to the quick of the ulcer;

Hamlet comes back :—what would you undertake,

To show yourself your father's son in deed

More than in words?

LAER.

To cut his throat i' the church.

The king has gained his point, and, without further misgivings, imparts his plan :

KING. Hamlet, return'd, shall know you are come home ; We'll put on those shall praise your excellence,

And set a double varnish on the fame

The Frenchman gave you; bring you, in fine, together,
And wager on your heads: he, being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated, and, in a pass of practice,
Requite him for your father.

Even this foul play is insufficient to satisfy the blind revenge of Laertes, and he rejoins that he will anoint his sword with an unction bought of a mountebank, the slightest touch of which, blood being drawn, is mortal. The king, now bolder grown, and much delighted with this working villany, adds that to make the event surer still, he will have poisoned drink ready for Hamlet when, in the fencing, he is hot and dry.

Security seems now within his eager grasp; security from one who, he suspects, knows all his villany, and during whose life he can never more feel safe. But he still dreads the possibility of failure, so that if the substitution of a sword for a foil, and even of a poisoned sword, should miss, no criminality should be shrunk from to make Hamlet's murder sure :

And that our drift look through our bad performance,
'Twere better not assay'd; therefore this project
Should have a back, or second, that might hold
If this should blast in proof. Soft ;-let me see;
We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings,—
I ha't.

When in your motion you are hot and dry,

(As make your bouts more violent to that end,)
And that he calls for drink, I'll have preferr'd him
A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venomed stuck,
Our purpose may hold there.

This conversation is broken in upon by the queen announcing to Laertes that his sister is drowned. The maiden's death has been as beautiful and poetical as her life; for this was the manner of it, as related by the queen :

QUEEN. There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There, with fantastic garlands did she come,
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
(That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them ):
There, on the pendant boughs, her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down the weedy trophies, and herself,
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide
And, mermaid-like, a while they bore her up ;
Which time, she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indued

Unto that element: but long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

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