the life of man, that swift as quicksilver it courses through all the veins of the body, baking up the blood, and spreading a crust-like leprosy all over the skin. Thus sleeping, by a brother's hand, he was cut off at once from his crown, his queen, and his life; and he adjured Hamlet, if he did ever his dear father love, that he would revenge his foul murder.

And the ghost lamented to his son that his mother should so fall off from virtue, as to prove false to the wedded love of her first husband, and to marry his murderer; but he cautioned Hamlet, howsoever he proceeded in his revenge against his wicked uncle, by no means to act any violence against the person of his mother, but to leave her to Heaven, and to the stings and thorns of conscience. Hamlet promised to observe the ghost's directions in all things, and the ghost vanished.

And when Hamlet was left alone, he took up a solemn resolution, that all he had in his memory, all that he had ever learned by books or observation, should be instantly forgotten by him, and nothing live in his brain but the memory of what the ghost had told him, and enjoined him to do.

Hamlet related the particulars of the conversation which had passed to none but his dear friend Horatio; and he enjoined both to him and Marcellus the strictest secrecy as to what they had seen that night.

The terror which the sight of the ghost had left upon the senses of Hamlet, he being weak and dispirited before, almost unhinged his mind, and drove him beside his reason. And he, fearing that it would continue to have this effect, which might subject him to observation,

and set his uncle upon his guard, if he suspected that he was meditating any thing against him, or that Hamlet really knew more of his father's death than he professed, took up a strange resolution from that time to counterfeit as if he were really and truly mad; thinking that he would be less an object of suspicion when his uncle should believe him incapable of any serious project, and that his real perturbation of mind would be best covered and pass concealed under a disguise of pretended lunacy.

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK.

SECOND READING.

brave, defy, challenge. La-er'tes (-tez).

| priv'y to, informed of.
round'est, most positive.

FROM this time Hamlet affected a certain wildness and strangeness in his apparel, his speech, and behavior, and did so excellently counterfeit the madman, that the king and queen were both deceived, and not thinking his grief for his father's death a sufficient cause to produce such a distemper, for they knew not of the appearance of the ghost, they concluded that his malady was love, and they thought they had found out the object.

Before Hamlet fell into the melancholy way which has been related, he had dearly loved a fair maid called Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius, the king's chief counselor in affairs of state. He had sent her letters and rings, and made many tenders of his affection to her, and importuned her with love in honorable fashion; and she had given belief to his vows and importunities.

But the melancholy which he fell into latterly had made him neglect her, and from the time he conceived the project of counterfeiting madness, he affected to treat her with unkindness and a sort of rudeness. But she, good lady, rather than reproach him with being false to her, persuaded herself that it was nothing but the disease in his mind, and no settled unkindness, which made him less observant of her than formerly; and she compared the faculties of his once noble mind and excellent understanding, impaired as they were with the deep melancholy that oppressed him, to sweet bells which in themselves are capable of most exquisite music, but when jangled out of tune or rudely handled, produce only a harsh and unpleasing sound.

Though the rough business which Hamlet had in hand the revenging of his father's death upon his murderer — did not suit with the playful state of courtship, or admit of the society of so idle a passion as love now seemed to him, yet it could not hinder but that soft thoughts of his Ophelia would come between; and in one of these moments, when he thought that his treatment of this gentle lady had been unreasonably harsh, he wrote her a letter full of wild starts of passion, and in extravagant terms, such as agreed with his supposed madness, but mixed with some gentle touches of affection which could not but show to this honored lady that a deep love for her yet lay at the bottom of his heart.

He bade her to doubt the stars were fire, and to doubt that the sun did move; to doubt truth to be a liar, but never to doubt that he loved; with more of such extravagant phrases.

This letter Ophelia dutifully showed to her father, and

the old man thought himself bound to communicate it to the king and queen, who from that time supposed the true cause of Hamlet's madness was love. And the queen wished that the good beauties of Ophelia might be the happy cause of his wildness, for so she hoped. that her virtues might happily restore him to his accustomed way again to both their honors.

But Hamlet's malady lay deeper than she supposed, or than could be so cured. His father's ghost, which he had seen, still haunted his imagination, and the sacred injunction to revenge his murder gave him no rest till it was accomplished. Every hour of delay seemed to him a sin, and a violation of his father's commands. Yet how to compass the death of the king, surrounded as he constantly was with his guards, was no easy

matter.

Or, if it had been, the presence of the queen, Hamlet's mother, who was generally with the king, was a restraint upon his purpose, which he could not break through. Besides, the very circumstance that the usurper was his mother's husband filled him with some remorse, and still blunted the edge of his purpose. The mere act of putting a fellow-creature to death was in itself odious and terrible to a disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet's was.

His very melancholy, and the dejection of spirits he had so long been in, produced an irresoluteness and wavering of purpose which kept him from proceeding to extremities. Moreover, he could not help having some scruples upon his mind whether the spirit which he had seen was indeed his father, or whether it might not be the devil, who, he had heard, has power to take

any form he pleases, and who might have assumed his father's shape only to take advantage of his weakness and his melancholy, to drive him to the doing of so desperate an act as murder. And he determined that he would have more certain grounds to go upon than a vision or apparition, which might be a delusion.

While he was in this irresolute mind, there came to the court certain players, in whom Hamlet formerly used to take delight, and particularly to hear one of them speak a tragical speech, describing the death of old Priam, King of Troy, with the grief of Hecuba his queen.

Hamlet welcomed his old friends the players, and, remembering how that speech had formerly given him pleasure, requested the player to repeat it, which he did in so lively a manner, setting forth the cruel murder of the feeble old king, with the destruction of his people and city by fire, and the mad grief of the old queen running barefoot up and down the palace with a poor clout upon that head where a crown had been, and with nothing but a blanket upon her loins, snatched up in haste, where she had worn a royal robe, that not only it drew tears from all that stood by, who thought they saw the real scene, so lively was it represented, but even the player himself delivered it with a broken voice and real tears.

This put Hamlet upon thinking: if that player could so work himself up to passion by a mere fictitious speech, to weep for one that he had never seen, for Hecuba that had been dead so many hundred years,

how dull was he, who having a real motive and cue for passion, a real king and a dear father murdered, was yet so little