points our author has excelled. At the folemn midnight hour, Horatio and Marcellus, the fchoolfellows of young Hamlet, come to the centinels upon guard, excited by a report that a Ghost of their late Monarch had, fome preceding nights, appeared to them. Horatio, not being one of the believing vulgar, gives little credit to the story, but bids Bernardo proceed in his relation. BERNARDO. Laft night of all, When yon fame ftar, that's weftward from the pole, The bell then beating one-in Here enters the Ghoft, after you are thus prepared. There is fomething folemn and fublime in thus regulating the walking of the Spirit, by the course of the Star: It intimates a connection and correspondence between things beyond our ken, and above the visible diurnal Sphere. Horatio is affected with that kind of fear, which fuch an appearance would naturally excite. He trembles, and quarter the and turns pale. When the violence of the emotion fubfides, he reflects, that probably this supernatural event portends fome danger lurking in the state. This suggestion gives importance to the phænomenon, and engages our attention. Horatio's relation of the king's combat with the Norwegian, and of the forces the young Fortinbras is, affembling, in order to attack Denmark, seems to point out, from what apprehended peril is to arife. Such appearances, fays he, preceded the fall of mighty Julius, and the ruin of the great commonwealth; and he adds, fuch have often been the omens of difafters in our own ftate. There is great art in this conduct. The true cause of the royal Dane's discontent could not be gueffed at: it was a fecret which could be only revealed by himself. In the mean time, it was neceffary to captivate our attention, by demonftrating, that the poet was not going to exhibit fuch idle and frivolous gambols, as Ghofts are by the vulgar often reprefented to perform. The historical teftimony, that, antecedent to the death of Cæfar, The graves ftood tenantlefs, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets, gives credibility and importance to this phænomenon. Horatio's addrefs to the ghoft is brief and pertinent, and the whole purport of it agreeable to the vulgar con- . ceptions of these matters. HORATIO. Stay, illufion! If thou haft any found, or ufe of voice, Speak to me. If there be any good thing to be done, That may to thee do eafe, and grace to me, If thou art privy to thy country's fate, Or, if thou haft uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, Its vanishing at the crowing of the Cock, is another circumstance of the established fuperstition. Young Hamlet's indignation at his mother's hafty and incestuous marriage, his forrow for his father's death, the character he gives of that prince, prepare the spectator to sympathize with his wrongs and fufferings. The Son, as is natural, with much more vehement emotion than Horatio did, addreffes his Father's fhade. Hamlet's terror, his aftonishment, his vehement defire to know the cause of this vifitation, are irrefiftibly communicated to the fpectator by the following fpeech. HAMLET. Angels and minifters of grace defend us! Be thou a fpirit of health, or goblin damn'd, Bring with thee airs from heav'n, or blafts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com'ft in fuch a queftionable shape, That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane: oh! answer me; Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell, Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws, That thou, dead corfe, again, in compleat fteel, Never did the Grecian Mufe of Tragedy relate a tale fo full of pity and terror, as is imparted by the Ghoft. Every circumstance melts us with compaffion; and with what horror do we hear him fay! GHOST. But that I am forbid To tell the fecrets of my prifon-house, I could a tale unfold; whofe lightest word Thy knotted and combined locks to part, To ears of flesh and blood. All |