be said?
Hume himself could not but have had faith in this Ghost dramatically, let
his anti-ghostism have been as strong as Sampson against other ghosts less
powerfully raised.

Act i. sc. 1.--

"_Mar._ Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch," &c.

How delightfully natural is the transition, to the retrospective
narrative! And observe, upon the Ghost's reappearance, how much Horatio's
courage is increased by having translated the late individual spectator
into general thought and past experience,--and the sympathy of Marcellus
and Bernardo with his patriotic surmises in daring to strike at the Ghost;
whilst in a moment, upon its vanishing, the former solemn awe-stricken
feeling returns upon them:--

"We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence."

_Ib._ Horatio's speech:--

... "I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day," &c.

No Addison could be more careful to be poetical in diction than
Shakespeare in providing the grounds and sources of its propriety. But how
to elevate a thing almost mean by its familiarity, young poets may learn
in this treatment of the cock-crow.

_Ib._ Horatio's speech:--

... "And, by my advice,
Let us impart what we have seen to-night
Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
The spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him."

Note the inobtrusive and yet fully adequate mode of introducing the main
character, "young Hamlet," upon whom it transferred all the interest
excited for the acts and concerns of the king his father.

_Ib._ sc. 2. The audience are now relieved by a change of scene to the
royal court, in order that Hamlet may not have to take up the leavings of
exhaustion. In the king's speech, observe the set and pedantically
antithetic form of the sentences when touching that which galled the heels
of conscience,--the strain of undignified rhetoric,--and yet in what follows
concerning the public weal, a certain appropriate majesty. Indeed was he
not a royal brother?--

_Ib._ King's speech:--

"And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?" &c.

Thus with great art Shakespeare introduces a most important, but still
subordinate character first, Laertes, who is yet thus graciously treated
in consequence of the assistance given to the election of the late king's
brother instead of his son by Polonius.