Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/184



HE first edition of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and the first part of the ‘Don Quixote’ of Cervantes appeared in the same year, at the very beginning of the seventeenth century. To us this concurrence seems to be one of significance. It awakened a series of thoughts, in us. In these two types there are embodied two opposite fundamental characteristics of a human being, the two ends of the axis around which the nature of man moves. All men belong, to some extent, to one of these two types; almost every one of us possesses the character of either Hamlet or Don Quixote. It is true that in our times there are far more Hamlets than Don Quixotes; but even Don Quixotes are not wanting. All men live, knowingly or not knowingly, by the strength of their ideal; that is, by the strength of what they consider as truth, beauty, good. Many receive their ideal complete, in definite historically developed forms. They follow this ideal in their life, sometimes forsaking it through the effect of passions or accidents; but