Making night hideous; and we fools of nature,
So horribly to shake our disposition,

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?

And now, at length, the spirit, thus adjured, deigns by a gesture to testify its consciousness; and now Horatio prompts Hamlet that it beckons him to go away with it. Marcellus adds,

MAR. Look, with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removéd ground :

Such an invitation is appalling: Marcellus entreats Hamlet not to accept it: Horatio gives the same counsel. But Hamlet comprehends that the ghost will not speak except to him, and alone; and he determines to follow it and to hear. They still entreat, and at first he reasons with them, alleging his utter disregard of his life, and the want of power, even in a spirit from the world beyond the grave, to injure his soul, a thing immortal as itself. They try every means of preventing his following the still beckoning ghost, urging even the danger of madness arising from what may ensue, and at length

trying forcibly to detain him. His excitement has already become above control; he grows angry, violent, "waxes desperate with imagination," tears himself from them with menaces, and follows his father's spirit, which still waves him forth into darkness and solitude.

So swiftly moves the ghost, and so eagerly follows Hamlet, that his friends lose sight of him, and come up with him no more until the whole conversation with the ghost is ended. But in this reckless following, doubts again assail Hamlet's mind, and at length he stops, determined to go no further. And now, for the first time, the accents of a voice from the tomb fall on the eager and astonished ear of its mortal auditor. The story of an unnatural murder is solemnly detailed, a murder which at once deprived the late king of life, of crown, of queen, and sent him to his account, no reckoning made, with all his imperfections on his head. Long familiarity with the ghost's narrative, even from immature schooldays, has here also made the generality of readers somewhat unmindful of its frightful character. It is told

by a spirit doomed at the end of the relation to return to a place of purgatorial torment, the tale of which, if unfolded, would harrow up the hearer's soul. It discloses to a son the murder of his father, whom he reverenced and loved, and has grieved for even immoderately, as one without hope. The murderer is the present king, the brother of the king murdered, the sinful husband of the king's widow, whose hasty marriage with his uncle has already halfmaddened Hamlet. And all this is told, at once, by a spirit doomed for a certain term to walk the dreadful night, reprieved from the recurrent horrors of more awful days. The manner of the murder, the hard hypocrisy of him that did it, his base and gross espousals, all rush in among the previous troubles of the unhappy prince's mind. The principal incidents have been briefly imparted, for the scent of the early morning air summons the spiritual teller, noble as he was in life, to penance untold. And then the ghost bids farewell, having exhorted Hamlet, indeed, to earthly revenge, not of a murder, but of dishonour, and the disloyal usurpation of a

kingdom; but still in noble and affecting terms enjoining him, however incensed, to show no unkindness to the queen

GHOST. Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven,

And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,

To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
The glowworm shows the matin to be near,

And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire :

Adieu, adieu, adieu! remember me.

These words reach and dwell upon the sense of Hamlet, distracted and almost stupefied as he has become. This terrible interview has left him stricken and bewildered, and all his thoughts in measureless confusion. The sudden burst of determination with which he had assured his father's spirit that, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, he would sweep to revenge the foul and unnatural murder, has passed; and all his direct energy has died away under the depressing influence of the details disclosed to him. When the ghost leaves him, the prostration and distraction of his mind become palpable in his words. This prostra

tion and distraction, and the incoherent words, cannot, it is scarcely necessary to say, be feigned his manner has no witnesses; his words have no auditors. The balance of his mind is lost; the sovereignty of his reason is really gone, as Horatio feared it might, in the retired colloquy with the spirit of his father, so lately hearsed in death. He is left incapable of steady and defined purpose. His thoughts are disordered; his very frame is nearly paralysed; and his rapid meditations are not to be marshalled. and controlled. He sees the heavens above him, and invokes them; he looks upon the earth beneath him, but neither sky nor earth relieve him ; and in his distraction he could almost couple hell itself with them.

HAM. O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? And shall I couple hell?-O fye !-Hold, my heart;

And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,

But bear me stiffly up !-Remember thee?

Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee—
Yea, from the table of my memory

I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,