hours never die. In Ovid they are employed as grooms
in harnessing Apollo's steeds, and if there be any faith in _tempus
fugit_, how can the dead fly? to be sure, Marcellus was a sentinel,
whose duty it is to kill time: but I prefer _dread_ hour! Now for
jump--Mr. Malone says, that in Shakspeare's time, jump and just were
synonimous terms. So they are in our time. Two men of sympathetic
sentiments are said to jump in a judgment. We have also a sect of just
men in Wales called jumpers. Strange that the same motion that carries a
man to heaven should carry a Kangaroo to Botany Bay!

----multi
Committunt eadem diverso crimina fato
Ille crucem pretium sceleris tulit, hic diadema.--_Juv._

I do not think that the modern actors who personate the ghost, pay a
proper attention to the text. It is evident from the above passage, that
the ghost in crossing between the speakers and the audience, should give
a jump, taking special care to avoid both traps and lamps, otherwise he
may "fast in fires," a little too fast. "Gone by our watch," should be
divided thus, "Gone--by our watch;" meaning at this hour, as we compute
the time. Marcellus should here pull out his watch. A man will never
make an actor unless he is particular in these little matters. Horatio
continues thus:

_Hor._ But in the _gross_ and _scope_ of mine opinion,
This bodes some strange _eruption_ to our state.

Johnson will have it that "gross and scope," mean general thoughts and
tendency at large. Alas! that all the scope of his gross frame should
contain so small a meaning! I prefer _guess_ and skip of my opinion;
that is a random notion hastily entertained.

As for the eruption in the state, the reader will bear in mind the jump
of the ghost, and coupling it with the aforesaid eruption, will no
longer wonder that a modern writer couples the word jump with the Norman
invasion:

Hop, step, and jump,
Here they came plump,
And they kick'd up a dust in the island.

O'Keefe has a character in his farce of _The Farmer_, called Jemmy
Jumps, but I cannot with all my diligence, discover that he takes his
name from a love of jumping. Molly Maybush, indeed, gives us a hint of
his fondness for that recreation in the following distich:

Go hop my pretty pet along,
And down the dance lead Bet along.

But if his own evidence is to be believed, (and according to some recent
suggestio