et stands quite by itself. It is not a character
marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of
thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can
well be; but he is a young and princely novice, full of high
enthusiasm and quick sensibility--the sport of circumstances,
questioning with fortune, and refining on his own feelings, and forced
from the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his
situation. He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only
hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no
time to reflect--as in the scene where he kills Polonius; and, again,
where he alters the letters which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
taking with them to England, purporting his death. At other times,
when he is most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, and
skeptical; dallies with his purposes till the occasion is lost, and
finds out some pretense to relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness
again. For this reason he refuses to kill the king when he is at his
prayers; and, by a refinement in malice, which is in truth only an
excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge to a more
fatal opportunity....

The moral perfection of this character has been called in question, we
think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interesting than
according to rules; amiable tho not faultless. The ethical
delineations of "that noble and liberal casuist"--as Shakespeare has
been well called--do not exhibit the drab-colored Quakerism of
morality. His plays are not copied either from "The Whole Duty of Man"
or from "The Academy of Compliments!" We confess we are a little
shocked at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want
of refinement in Hamlet. The neglect of punctilious exactness in his
behavior either partakes of the "license of the time," or else belongs
to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which
makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose
upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of his
own thoughts, and is too much taken up with the airy world of
contemplation, to lay as much stress as he ought on the practical
consequences of things. His habitual principles of action are unhinged
and out of joint with the time. His conduct to Ophelia is quite
natural in his circumstances. It is that of assumed severity only. It
is the effect of disappointe