to shadows, and throwing a mist over all
commonplace actualities. It is the nature of thought to be
indefinite;--definiteness belongs to external imagery alone. Hence it is
that the sense of sublimity arises, not from the sight of an outward
object, but from the beholder's reflection upon it;--not from the sensuous
impression, but from the imaginative reflex. Few have seen a celebrated
waterfall without feeling something akin to disappointment: it is only
subsequently that the image comes back full into the mind, and brings with
it a train of grand or beautiful associations. Hamlet feels this; his
senses are in a state of trance, and he looks upon external things as
hieroglyphics. His soliloquy--

"O! that this too too solid flesh would melt," &c.--

springs from that craving after the indefinite--for that which is not--which
most easily besets men of genius; and the self-delusion common to this
temper of mind is finely exemplified in the character which Hamlet gives
of himself;--

... "It cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter."

He mistakes the seeing his chains for the breaking them, delays action
till action is of no use, and dies the victim of mere circumstance and
accident.

There is a great significancy in the names of Shakespeare's plays. In the
_Twelfth Night_, _Midsummer __ Night's Dream_, _As You Like It_, and
_Winter's Tale_, the total effect is produced by a co-ordination of the
characters as in a wreath of flowers. But in _Coriolanus_, _Lear_, _Romeo
and Juliet_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_, &c., the effect arises from the
subordination of all to one, either as the prominent person, or the
principal object. _Cymbeline_ is the only exception; and even that has its
advantages in preparing the audience for the chaos of time, place, and
costume, by throwing the date back into a fabulous king's reign.

But as of more importance, so more striking, is the judgment displayed by
our truly dramatic poet, as well as poet of the drama, in the management
of his first scenes. With the single exception of _Cymbeline_, they either
place before us at one glance both the past and the future in some effect,
which implies the continuance and full agency of its cause, as in the
feuds and party-spirit of the servants of the two houses in the first
scene of _Romeo and Juliet_; or in the degrading passion for shows and
public spectacles, and the overwhelming attachment for the newest