he sour and surly melancholy of
discontent; in Jaques a whimsical self-pleasing melancholy; in Antonio
in the _Merchant of Venice_ a quiet but deep melancholy, for which
neither the victim nor his friends can assign any cause.[41] He gives to
Hamlet a temperament which would not develop into melancholy unless
under some exceptional strain, but which still involved a danger. In the
play we see the danger realised, and find a melancholy quite unlike any
that Shakespeare had as yet depicted, because the temperament of Hamlet
is quite different.

(2) Next, we cannot be mistaken in attributing to the Hamlet of earlier
days an exquisite sensibility, to which we may give the name 'moral,' if
that word is taken in the wide meaning it ought to bear. This, though
it suffers cruelly in later days, as we saw in criticising the
sentimental view of Hamlet, never deserts him; it makes all his
cynicism, grossness and hardness appear to us morbidities, and has an
inexpressibly attractive and pathetic effect. He had the soul of the
youthful poet as Shelley and Tennyson have described it, an unbounded
delight and faith in everything good and beautiful. We know this from
himself. The world for him was _herrlich wie am ersten Tag_--'this
goodly frame the earth, this most excellent canopy the air, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.'
And not nature only: 'What a piece of work is a man! how noble in
reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and
admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!'
This is no commonplace to Hamlet; it is the language of a heart thrilled
with wonder and swelling into ecstasy.

Doubtless it was with the same eager enthusiasm he turned to those
around him. Where else in Shakespeare is there anything like Hamlet's
adoration of his father? The words melt into music whenever he speaks of
him. And, if there are no signs of any such feeling towards his mother,
though many signs of love, it is characteristic that he evidently never
entertained a suspicion of anything unworthy in her,--characteristic,
and significant of his tendency to see only what is good unless he is
forced to see the reverse. For we find this tendency elsewhere, and find
it going so far that we must call it a disposition to idealise, to see
something better than what is there, or at least to ignore deficiencies.
He says to Laertes, 'I loved you ever,' and he descr