His Macbeth, pausing, reflective, but, once committed to his course, of desperate courage, exhibits no less distinctly the ambition of the northern chief. The climate hangs over them both. As you could not transplant the jealousy of Othello to the north, so neither could you divorce the ambi. tion of Macbeth from the cold air it breathed, and the wild solitary heath on which it was fostered. There being this exquisite propriety in some of his portraitures, if a difficulty should arise in understanding others, it is allowable to look for the solution with a little curiosity of research. And, in doing this, it is not always an answer to the critic to say-you are suggesting for the poet an idea, which from its very merit, or the importance you attribute to it, could not have been present to his mind; for, if it had, he would not have failed to make better use of it, and to give it distinct expression. This remark would be more applicable in the case of any other author than of Shakspeare, who, partly perhaps from his freedom from such critical inquisition, rarely thinks of explaining what he is about. The reason why he does this or that may not always have been even distinctly reflected on by himself, although it passed through his mind, bringing with it a sense of sure conviction. With him the design and execution seem to have been almost simultaneous; he thought with the chisel in his hand, and wrought out his conceptions as they arose; and thus it is not impossible that an idea which really guided him, might yet have received a very imperfect enunciation, and might fairly admit of a fuller development from the critic, than it had even met with in the mind of the poet himself.

Amongst those discrepancies which have exercised the patience and ingenuity of criticism, the feigned madness of Hamlet is one of the most remarkable. It has been a stumblingblock to several commentators on the play. Let us see whether it will not bear such a representation, as not only to be intelligible, but to add something to our vivid appreciation of the character of Hamlet. We are not about to enter into a complete analysis of that character; after the many brilliant criticisms which have been lately written on the same theme, this would be

a hazardous attempt, and for the most part superfluous; we shall touch merely upon one point, and shall, as much as possible, avoid the repetition of remarks made familiar to all, by the eloquence of a Schlegel, a Goëthe, and a Coleridge.

"For this feigned madness," writes Dr Johnson, "there appears no adequate cause, for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity." The feint is not quite so unconnected with the plot as the worthy doctor would here represent it. One very manifest purpose of adopting such a disguise, was to obtain access to the king in some moment of unguarded privacy, when Hamlet could with certainty accomplish his revenge, or task of retribution. The rambling of a maniac over all parts of the palace, and at all hours, would excite no suspicion; and thus an opportunity might be afforded him of striking the fatal blow. And this end is in some measure answered; for we may attribute to this counterfeit of insanity, that he actually lights upon the King in his chamber while he is kneeling alone and at his prayers; and thus an opportunity is given of executing his revenge, which may not the less advance the piece because it is not taken advantage of. But, though not altogether unconnected with the plot, this pretended insanity effects so little, and is so carelessly sustained, that it might be censured as a bungling contrivance, if it had not a still more intimate connexion with the character and temper of Hamlet himself. It is in him rather than in the plot that the sufficient reason of this disguise is to be detected. A very slight prospect of advantage, or show of policy, was enough to lead him to adopt a stratagem which accorded well with the over-excited and turbulent condition of his thoughts. For these some disguise was at all events to be found some concealment from the observation of men; and to wear the wild mask of insanity was not more toilsome to his spirit, more burdensome and oppressive, than to support that other counterfeit of a smooth, un unruffled, and contented as

and committed the task of retributive justice. After this intercourse with the other world-after having received thus supernaturally a commission so fearful-he who had never been closely knit to society, would feel himself chosen out and separated by an impassable chasm from all other men. His mind was unceasingly agitated by thoughts he could not communicate to others; and he was surrounded by a crowd of courtiers and politicians, with whose interests, and schemes, and projects, his could no longer assume even the ordinary show of participation. A father murdered, a mother wedded to the murderer, himself commissioned to revenge this crime, as yet a profound secret to the worldwith these subjects fastened on his mind, and stinging him perpetually to all moody, and sarcastic, and hostile reflections, he would naturally avoid society would escape, if possible, into solitude; but, if he must mingle with the crowd of courtiersif he must hold communion with them -we feel that an overstrained levity, a wild, bitter, uncertain, variable speech, would be the manner and style of conversation into which he would spontaneously fall. The ordinary tone of social intercourse, would be the last he would willingly or successfully support. Now this feint of madness, while it promised to advance his project in the obvious manner already hinted at, offered a disguise to him self more welcome, and which called for less constraint, than the laboured support of an ordinary, unnoticeable demeanour. The mimickry of madness was but the excess of that levity and wildness which naturally sprung from his impatient and overwrought spirit. It afforded some scope to those disquieted feelings which it served to conceal. The feint of madness covered all even the sarcasm,. and disgust, and turbulence, which it freed in some measure from an intolerable restraint. Nor was it a disguise una

grateful to the moody spirithe grown

indifferent to all the ordinary projects and desires of life. The masquerade brought with it no sense of humiliation-it pleased a misanthropic humour-it gave him shelter and a sort of escape from society, and it cost him little effort. That mingled bitterness and levity which

served for the representation of insanity, was often the most faithful expression of his feelings. And we need hardly add, that a great portion of the beauty of the play would be lost, if we looked upon his extravagant speeches as cold inventions to support a fictitious madness, and did not keep in view their intimate connexion, and the connexion of the counterfeit of madness itself, with the real temper of the man.

It bears out this description, that we find his imitations of lunacy, and the spontaneous expression of his perturbed and over-excited feelings, to be at times scarce distinguishable, so naturally do they flow the one into the other. He deals unsparingly his wild and whirling speech in parts of the play where he cannot be suspected of counterfeiting madness-where he is addressing his confidential friends, and where he is in the most solemn and tragical situations of the drama. After the appearance of his father's spirit, and the horrible disclosure it had made, when he is swearing Marcellus and the rest to secresy as to what they themselves had witnessed, the ghost from beneath adds his voice, and calls on them to "Swear!" What says Hamlet, fresh from the very converse with the dead? "Come on you hear this fellow in the cellarage!" And again, when, by the artifice of the play acted before the King, he has confirmed the testimony of the ghost, and satisfied himself of his uncle's guilt, and he is left alone with his friend Horatio, who is privy to the stratagem, what is the tragedy-speech which Shakspeare has put into his mouth? He repeats some doggerel verses

"Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play," &c.;

and then asks his friend, "Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers (if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me) with two Provençal roses in my raised shoes, get me a fellowship in a

cry of players?" Is it surprising that

one who spoke in this vein in his most confidential moments, should in his intercourse with courtiers and cox

combs

"think it meet

To put an antic disposition on?" Did he fall in with a Polonius, what greater relief than to be allowed, under the license of this counterfeit, to break from and utterly confound the mortal garrulity of that old courtier? Did he encounter an Ophelia, whom he had loved, but whose image he had obliterated, or meant to obliterate, "with all trivial fond records," from the tablet of his memory, what more accordant to his vexed and troubled spirit, than, under the same disguise, to indulge the mingled feelings of regret and renunciation, tenderness and sarcasm, and all the bitter contradictions that were struggling together in his bosom?

It is not to be supposed that the state of mind we have been attempting to describe as prompting to the choice of this disguise, would be one of long continuance; and accordingly we find, towards the close of the piece, that the feint of madness, which has never in fact been very sedulously supported, is laid aside, and that without any seeming embarrassment. As the excitement of his mind wears itselfout, Hamlet assumes an ordinary tone. He jests with the courtier, Osric, as he would have done in his gayer days; and, from that time to the conclusion of the drama, he presents to us the aspect of one exhausted by the violence and intensity of his feelings. The Ghost might appear to him now, we think, and have been seen without a start-the tragedy of life was becoming as indifferent as its pleasures -and the secrets of another world would soon have been as little exciting as they had previously made the inter. ests of this. The bidding of his father's spirit is still remembered; but we might almost doubt whether it would have been fulfilled, if the treachery of the King had not suddenly rekindled his wrath, and called upon him to revenge his own as well as his father's death.

If Shakspeare had not written the play of Hamlet, his critics might, perhaps, have said that, although he had portrayed to admiration the marked and obvious passions of mankindlove, and ambition, and jealousythere was one region into which he

had not entered-a region of more difficult conquest than that airy king. dom of spirits and of fairies which he had subdued and rendered tributary. They might have said that he had never seized upon those deep yet wayward feelings which have no origin in the common objects and notorious purposes of life, but are the changeful creatures of the mind alone-on that reflective melancholy which appears so very causeless to those whom it has never visited-that aspiration which has no aim that discontent which frames no wish that profound indifference and meditative vacancy which disregards and rejects the actual detail and personal interests of human existence, but is never weary of looking at it from aloof, as a thing, upon the whole, of strangest and perpetual mystery. But all this, and more, Shakspeare has shadowed forth in his Hamlet. Whatever had been the fate of the young Prince of Denmark, he would still have been one of those who are ever musing, with perplexed thought, upon themselves their own inscrutable nature-and on mankind at large, and the little good that the great world answers: - one of those who find all action struck with futility, yet recognise that repose without action is impossible-whose mind feeds upon itself-and who never have a passion or purpose but the next moment they turn it into a subject of mere reflection. Thus constituted, he is plunged in circumstances of supernatural horror -the tomb has yielded up its dead, that he might be sent upon a mission of blood-the reflective spirit of the man is overwhelmed he seeks relief in bursts of extravagant and fictitious levity and, in this mood, he picks up the mask of idiotism, and brandishes it not unwillingly; assuming to himself, at the same time, a crafty purpose, which, being little suited to his nature, is but loosely adhered to. Such is our reading of the feigned madness of Hamlet. A mind unhinged, vexed, tortured, and bewildered, adopts as a scheme of action what, after all, is more impulse than policy.

IT is remarkable, in the sense of being noticeable and interesting, but not in the sense of being surprising, that Casuistry has fallen into disrepute throughout all Protestant lands. This disrepute is a result partly due to the upright morality which usually follows in the train of the Protestant faith. So far it is honourable, and an evidence of superior illumination. But, in the excess to which it has been pushed, we may trace also a blind and somewhat bigoted reaction of the horror inspired by the abuses of the Popish Confessional. Unfortunately for the interests of scientific ethics, the first cultivators of casuistry had been those who kept in view the professional service of auricular confession. Their purpose was-to assist the reverend confessor in appraising the quality of doubtful actions, in order that he might properly adjust his scale of counsel, of warning, of reproof, and of penance. Some, therefore, in pure simplicity and conscientious discharge of the duty they had assumed, but others, from lubricity of morals or the irritations of curiosity, pushed their investigations into unhallowed paths of speculation. They held aloft a torch for exploring guilty recesses of human life, which it is far better for us all to leave in their original darkness. Crimes that were often all but imaginary, extravagances of erring passion that would never have been known as possibilities to the young and the innocent, were thus published in their most odious details. At first, it is true, the decent draperies of a dead language were suspended before these, abominations : but sooner or later some knave was found, on mercenary motives, to tear away this partial veil; and thus the vernacular literature of most nations in Southern Europe, was gradually polluted with revelations that had been originally made in the avowed service of religion. Indeed, there was one aspect of such books which proved even more extensively disgusting. Speculations pointed to monstrous offences, bore upon their very face and frontispiece the intimation that they related to cases rare and anomalous. But sometimes casuistry pressed into the most hallowed

recesses of common domestic life. The delicacy of youthful wives, for example, was often not less grievously shocked than the manliness of husbands, by refinements of monkish subtlety applied to cases never meant for religious cognisance_but far better left to the decision of good feeling, of nature, and of pure household morality. Even this revolting use of casuistry, however, did less to injure its name and pretensions than a persuasion, pretty generally diffused, that the main purpose and drift of this science was a sort of hair-splitting process, by which doubts might be applied to the plainest duties of life, or questions raised on the extent of their obligations, for the single benefit of those who sought to evade them. A casuist was viewed, in short, as a kind of lawyer or special pleader in morals, such as those who, in London, are known as Old Bailey practitioners, called in to manage desperate cases to suggest all available advantages to raise doubts or distinctions where simple morality saw no room for either and generally to teach the art, in nautical phrase, of sailing as near the wind as possible, without fear of absolutely foundering.

Meantime it is certain that casuistry, when soberly applied, is not only a beneficial as well as a very interesting study; but that, by whatever title, it is absolutely indispensable to the practical treatment of morals. We may reject the name: the thing we cannot reject. And accordingly the custom has been, in all English treatises on ethics, to introduce a good deal of casuistry under the idea of special illustration, but without any reference to casuistry as a formal branch of research. Indeed, as society grows complex, the uses of casuistry become more urgent. Even Cicero could not pursue his theme through such barren generalizations as entirely to evade all notice of special cases: and Paley has given the chief interest to his very loose investigations of morality, by scattering a selection of such cases over the whole field of his discussion.

The necessity of casuistry might, in fact, be deduced from the very origin and genesis of the word. First came the general law or rule of action. This was like the major proposition of a syllogism. But next came a special instance or case, so stated as to indicate whether it did or did not fall under the general rule. This, again, was exactly the minor proposition in a syllogism. For example, in logic we say, as the major proposition in a syllogism, Man is mortal. This is the rule. And then "subsuming" (such is the technical phrase-subsuming) Socrates under the rule by a minor proposition-viz. Socrates is a man-we are able mediately to connect him with the predicate of that rule, viz. ergo, Socrates is mortal.* Precisely upon this model arose casuistry. A general rule, or major proposition, was laid downsuppose that he who killed any human being, except under the palliations X, Y, Z, was a murderer. Then, in a minor proposition, the special case of the suicide was considered. It was affirmed, or it was denied, that his case fell under some one of the palliations assigned. And then, finally, accordingly to the negative or affirmative shape of this minor proposition, it was argued, in the conclusion, that the suicide was, or was not, a murderer. Out of these cases, i. e. oblique deflexions from the universal rule (which is also the grammarian's sense of the word case) arose casuis try.

After morality has done its very utmost in clearing up the grounds upon which it rests its decisionsafter it has multiplied its rules to any possible point of circumstantiality there will always continue to arise cases without end, in the shifting combinations of human action, about which a question will remain whether they do or do not fall under any of these rules. And the best way for seeing this truth illustrated on a broad scale, the shortest way and the most decisive, is to point our attention to one striking fact, viz. that all law, as

it exists in every civilized land, is nothing but casuistry. Simply because new cases are for ever arising to raise new doubts whether they do or do not fall under the rule of law, therefore it is that law is so inexhaustible. The law terminates a dispute for the present by a decision of a court, (which constitutes our "common law,") or by an express act of the legislature, (which constitutes our "statute law.") For a month or two matters flow on smoothly. But then comes a new case, not contemplated or not verbally provided for in the previous rule. It is varied by some feature of difference. This feature, it is suspected, makes no essential difference: substantially it may be the old case. Ay-but that is the very point to be decided. And so arises a fresh suit at law, and a fresh decision. For example, after many a decision and many a statute, (all arising out of cases supervening upon cases,) suppose that that great subdivision of jurisprudence called the Bankrupt Laws to have been gradually matured. It has been settled, suppose that he who exercises a trade, and no other whatsoever, shall be entitled to the benefit of the bankrupt laws. So far is fixed: and people vainly imagine that at length a station of rest is reached, and that in this direction, at least, the onward march of law is barred. Not at all. Suddenly a schoolmaster becomes insolvent, and attempts to avail himself of privileges as a technical bankrupt. But then arises a resistance on the part of those who are interested in resisting: and the question is raised-Whether the calling of a schoolmaster can be legally considered a trade? This also is settled: it is solemnly determined that a schoolmaster is a tradesman. But next arises a case, in which, from peculiar variation of the circumstances, it is doubtful whether the teacher can technically be considered a schoolmaster. Suppose that case settled: a