upposing this "preoccupation" proved, what is the particular value and
significance of the fact? Before we can answer this we must set the
character of Hamlet in this new light clearly before us.

Shakespeare gives to him the rare nobility of feeling with the keenness
of personal pleasure and pain, the presence or absence of moral beauty.
He is one to whom public falsehood is private affliction, to whom
goodness in its purity, truth in its severity, honour in its brightness,
are the only goods worth a man's possessing, and the rest but a dream
and the shadow of a dream. Hamlet bears his private griefs with proud
composure. We have no lamentation on the death of his father, on the
defection of Ophelia, on his exclusion from the throne. Among the images
of horror and distress that crowd upon his mind in his mother's closet
there is one on which he is silent then, and throughout the play, and
that is her heartless desertion of his cause, as natural successor to
the crown. To make it entirely clear that we have here no type of morbid
weakness and excess, but the portrait of a representative man, we have
only to look at the careful way in which all the other characters are
touched and modelled so as to allow and enhance Hamlet's superiority,
This is true even of Horatio. We have already remarked that in their
scenes with the ghost the manhood of Hamlet is of a higher strain and
dignity. And not only in resolution, but in that other manly virtue of
self-reliance, his superiority is incontestable. Horatio follows Hamlet
at a distance as Lucilius follows Brutus, content if from time to time
he may stand at his side. Whatever is Hamlet's mood he reflects it, for
to him Hamlet is always great. Horatio never questions, presumes not to
give advice, echoes the scorn or laughter of his friend, is equally
contemptuous of the king, and, as he never urges to action, is, if his
friend is supposed to procrastinate, accomplice in his delay. Hamlet
detaches himself from the world and follows his own bent; he will admit
no guidance, and be subject to no dictation. He is not the man to be
hag-ridden like Macbeth, or humoured into remorseful deeds like Brutus.
The strong dramatic feature of his character, the secret of his
attraction on the stage, is his pure and independent personality. Who
has a word of solace from him, but when does he claim it? Who leaves any
mark or dint of intellectual impact on that firm and self-determined
mind? And if