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and turns pale. When the violence of the emotion fubfides, he reflects, that probably this fupernatural event portends fome danger lurking in the state. This fuggeftion 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, feems to point out, from what quarter the 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 represented to perform. The historical testimony,

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testimony, that, antecedent to the death of Cæfar,

The graves flood tenantlefs, and the sheeted dead

Did fqueak and gibber in the Roman streets, gives credibility and importance to this phænomenon. Horatio's address to the

ghoft is brief and pertinent, and the whole purport of it agreeable to the vulgar conceptions of these matters.

HORATIO.

Stay, illufion!

If thou haft any found, or use of voice,

Speak to me.

If there be any good thing to be done,

That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,

Speak to me.

If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which happily foreknowing may avoid,
Oh speak!

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, Speak of it.

Its vanishing at the crowing of the Cock, is another circumstance of the established fuperftition.

Young Hamlet's indignation at his mother's hafty and inceftuous marriage, his forrow for his father's death, the character he gives of that prince, prepare the fpectator to fympathize 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 caufe of this vifitation, are irrefiftibly communicated to the spectator by the following speech.

HAMLET.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

Be thou a spirit 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 questionable shape,

That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: oh! answer me;

Let me not burft in ignorance; but tell,
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Why

Why thy canonized bones, hearfed in death,
Have burft their cearments? Why the fepulchre
Wherein we faw thee quietly in-urn'd,

Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws,
To caft thee up again? What may this mean,

That thou, dead corse, again, in compleat steel,
Revifit'ft thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous?

Never did the Grecian Mufe of Tragedy relate a tale fo full of pity and terror, as is imparted by the Ghost. 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
Would harrow up thy foul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like ftars, ftart from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to ftand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine:
But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood.

All

All that follows is folemn, fad, and deeply, affecting.

Whatever in Hamlet belongs to the præternatural, is perfectly fine; the rest of the play does not come within the subject of this chapter.

The ingenious criticifm on the play of the Tempeft, published in the Adventurer, has made it unneceffary to enlarge on that admirable piece, which alone would prove our Author to have had a fertile, a fublime, and original genius.

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