d situation, there is a
concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity. There is
scarcely a trait of frailty or of grandeur, which may have endeared to
us our most beloved friends in real life, that is not to be found in
Hamlet. Undoubtedly Shakspeare loved him beyond all his other creations.
Soon as he appears on the stage we are satisfied: when absent we long
for his return. This is the only play which exists almost altogether in
the character of one single person. Who ever knew a Hamlet in real life?
yet who, ideal as the character is, feels not its reality? This is the
wonder. We love him not, we think of him, not because he is witty,
because he was melancholy, because he was filial; but we love him
because he existed, and was himself. This is the sum total of the
impression. I believe that, of every other character either in tragic or
epic poetry, the story makes part of the conception; but of Hamlet, the
deep and permanent interest is the conception of himself. This seems to
belong, not to the character being more perfectly drawn, but to there
being a more intense conception of individual human life than perhaps
any other human composition. Here is a being with springs of thought,
and feeling, and action, deeper than we can search. These springs rise
from an unknown depth, and in that depth there seems to be a oneness of
being which we cannot distinctly behold, but which we believe to be
there; and thus irreconcilable circumstances, floating on the surface of
his actions, have not the effect of making us doubt the truth of the
general picture."[41]

This is all most admirable, most eloquent, most true! but the critic
subsequently declares, that "there is nothing in Ophelia which could
make her the object of an engrossing passion to so majestic a spirit as
Hamlet."

Now, though it be with reluctance, and even considerable mistrust of
myself, that I differ from a critic who can thus feel and write, I do
not think so:--I do think, with submission, that the love of Hamlet for
Ophelia is deep, is real, and is precisely the kind of love which such
a man as Hamlet would feel for such a woman as Ophelia.

When the heathen would represent their Jove as clothed in all his
Olympian terrors, they mounted him on the back of an eagle, and armed
him with the lightnings; but when in Holy Writ the Supreme Being is
described as coming in his glory, He is upborne on the wings of
cherubim, and his emblem is the dove. E