And these few precepts in thy memory.
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear't, that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice :
Take each man's measure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy:

For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France, of the best rank and station,
Are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all, -to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee."

Here we see the instinct and native disposition of the man; but when his object is to obtain an account of the mode of life his son is leading in Paris, he descends to subterfuge and manœuvre; even with their servant Rinaldo, who is about to join his young master; giving him licence to lie, and traduce the conduct of Laertes at home, in order that he may induce his French associates to betray any irregularities that he may have committed in their company. This scene is the first of the 2d Act; and a masterpiece of writing it is ;-at that point of it especially where the old man hurries himself out of breath with explanation, and suddenly forgetting the thread of his instruction, exclaims :-" Where was I? Where was I?" It is like a dialogue taken in shorthand.

Again, in the scene with his daughter, (the conclusion of the one just quoted,) when she comes running in to inform him of Hamlet's altered behaviour, how characteristic is the self-rebuke of the practised courtier, in having desired her to decline the prince's advances, and refuse his letters; and with what close and practical experience he concludes his observation upon her report :

"That hath made him mad.

I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
I had not quoted him; I fear'd he did but trifle,
And meant to wreck thee; but, beshrew my jealousy!
It seems as proper to our age

To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions,

As it is common for the younger sort

To lack discretion."

Here, we see, he regrets his over-caution; for, that he would have promoted (and rationally) a safe alliance for his daughter with the heir to the throne: yet afterwards, in conversation with the king and queen, he makes a merit of having confronted her, and solely on the ground of the disparity of their conditions:

"Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star;

This must not be and then I precepts gave her,
That she should lock herself from his resort,
Admit no messengers, receive no tokens."

How accurately does all this shuffling and moral imbecility square with the temporising courtier! Yet again; his tendency to manœuvre and insincerity are noticeable in his making Ophelia act a part in the scene he had contrived for discovering whether the madness of Hamlet were confirmed

Read on this book;
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness."

And then the genuine nature of the honourable man stares out of the artificial man of society. He says to himself :

"We are oft to blame in this,

'Tis too much prov'd, -that with devotion's visage,
And pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.".

So thorough, so pliant, and hard-working a courtier is he, that he even offered to act the eaves-dropper to the king, that he may report to him the result of the interview between Hamlet and his mother-an act which brings upon him so terrible a retribution; but which, at the same time, preaches a caustic moral to all disreputable, uncompromising timeservers: the moral being the more stringent in his case, because, by nature, Polonius possessed an instinct of honour and self-respect, which a course of unworthy pliancy and intrigue (perhaps almost inseparable from his office) had soiled and tainted.

In introducing the character of the ill-starred and forlorn Ophelia, I will, previously, take occasion to offer a remark or two upon that part of the celebrated dissertation on Hamlet, by Goethe, in his "Wilhelm Meister," which bears upon one phase in her conduct.

The eminent German critic starts with the position that Ophelia possessed a temperament which would lead her to become an easy prey wherever her fancy had been attracted; and, having taken that point, he draws his conclusions from the warnings given to her by both father and brother, to be upon her guard in admitting the addresses of the Lord Hamlet; and he crowns his inferences by quoting the snatches of songs she sings during her madness, as the foregone conclusions of a mind (to use the mildest term) not tempered with the chariest discretion, or habituated to the most delicate associations.

Now, all this appears to me the question-begging of one who would merge all love into the sensual, at the expense of the id.al-a conclusion totally unwarrantable in the case of Ophelia; for the only confession we have of her love for Hamlet is wholly comprised in the absorbing adoration of his intellectual endowments-a higher order of love than Goethe seems to think her capable of even discovering. With a passionately chaste lament, she says:

"Oh! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observ'd of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sov'reign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh."

This is not the language of a gross or even a light-minded female, which Goethe, with all his wariness, and ingenuity of expression, would have his readers think Ophelia to be. Nor would Shakespeare have given to her a complaint of such character and tone, had she been deceived, and then deserted by Hamlet. Moreover, we may be sure that she was notin any form a victim to her wantonness, or his infidelity; for, after her death, in an ecstacy of genuine passion, he says:-" I loved her above forty thousand brothers!" And he would not have used that language had his intercourse with her been a merely illicit one.

As to that branch of the critic's argument, drawn from the warning of Ophelia's father and brother, it is unnecessary to remind any adult that such a precaution is perfectly consistent with the most spotless purity of heart, where that heart is wholly occupied and absorbed by the one sentiment and passion of love and admiration: the father and brother both

F

recognising the irresponsible position of the prince; and this, joined with their fears and jealousy lest she bewray the family honour; while that is a natural precaution on their part, (both being men of the world, and the artificial world of a court-and such a court as that of Claudius the murderer and adulterer ;) whatever the precaution (I say) on their part, it by no means involves, or even implies, a laxity on hers.

With regard to the critic's inuendo (and this is the least reputable of his insinuations) respecting her real character, drawn from the songs she sings during her insanity; Goethe, as a psychologist, ought to have known that no such conclusion can be drawn from the actions of a person under that suspension :-on the contrary, it is an argument of her native innocence of character; and Shakespeare knew this two hundred years before Goethe lived; experience constantly reminding us that insane people are wont to be, for the time, the total opposites of their real natures-your madmen plotting to kill those whom they most loved when in a state of sanity; your profligates breaking forth into piety; your pious into blasphemies; and your most reserved and chaste indulging in a laxity of expression astonishing to those who knew their former course of life and principles. And, after all, these same snatches of songs, alluded to by Goethe, and which, by the way, consist of two, and not much in those, they display the constant thought and contrivance of the poet to carry on within as well as without the scene a continuity and consistency of thought, as well as of action in the character. Upon referring again to the passage for my present purpose, I can come to no other conclusion than that he intended to convey in those wanderings of Ophelia the reflected lights of past reflections in her sane moments, resulting from the warning and advice that had been given to her in admitting the advances and protestations of her royal lover; but that they were intended to be the foregone con