an existence, could have been shadowed out only in the colors of
poetry. When a character deals solely or chiefly with this world and its
events when it acts and is acted upon by objects that have a palpable
existence, we see it distinctly, as if it were cast in a material mould,
as if it partook of the fixed and settled lineaments of the things on
which it lavishes its sensibilities and its passions. We see in such
cases the vision of an individual soul, as we see the vision of an
individual countenance. We can describe both, and can let a stranger
into our knowledge. But how tell in words, so pure, so fine, so ideal an
abstraction as Hamlet? We can, indeed, figure to ourselves generally his
princely form, that outshone all others in manly beauty, and adorn it
with the consummation of all liberal accomplishment. We can behold in
every look, every gesture, every motion, the future king,--

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword,
Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state;
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
Th' observ'd of all observers.

"But when we would penetrate into his spirit, meditate on those things
on which he meditates, accompany him even unto the brink of eternity,
fluctuate with him on the ghastly sea of despair, soar with him into the
purest and serenest regions of human thought, feel with him the curse of
beholding iniquity, and the troubled delight of thinking on innocence,
and gentleness, and beauty; come with him from all the glorious dreams
cherished by a noble spirit in the halls of wisdom and philosophy, of a
sudden into the gloomy courts of sin, and incest, and murder; shudder
with him over the broken and shattered fragments of all the fairest
creations of his fancy,--be borne with him at once, from calm, and
lofty, and delighted speculations, into the very heart of fear, and
horror, and tribulations,--have the agonies and the guilt of our mortal
world brought into immediate contact with the world beyond the grave,
and the influence of an awful shadow hanging forever on our
thoughts,--be present at a fearful combat between all the stirred-up
passions of humanity in the soul of man, a combat in which one and all
of these passions are alternately victorious and overcome; I say, that
when we are thus placed and acted upon, how is it possible to draw a
character of this sublime drama, or of the mysterious being who is its
moving spirit? In him, his character an