Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/109

94 the godlike qualities of reason, were not given man to rust in him unused, neither were they given to abuse, or one to be used to the exclusion of the other; yet either through too slight an appreciation of his wrongs and duties, or through dwelling with too much forethought upon the probable results of action, he still delays to do that which is to be done. As the text stands, the sentence “Since he that made us,” &c.,

is inapplicable to Hamlet, and contradictory to his own ex pressed opinion of his mental state, and opposed to all we know of it; since the only inference which can be drawn from

it is, that he condemns himself for allowing his reason to rust in him unused, which of all men he did not do. The sentence must rather have been a justification of the use of his reason in forethought; but to make this apparent, and to connect the sense with the fault he immediately finds with himself on the very point of excessive use of forethought, requires an additional sentence, which may have been accidentally omitted. The colloquy with the grave-digger and Horatio in the church-yard affords abundant proof that the biting satire and quaintness of thought, which have been accepted as the antic garb of Hamlet's mind, are quite natural to him when he is playing no part. The opening observation on the in fluence of custom is a favourite theme with him.

When

he wishes to wring his mother's heart, he is apprehensive whether

“ damned custom has not braz'd it so,

That it is proof and bulwârk against sense.” And when he dissuades her from her incestuous intercourse, he says: “That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,

Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this; That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock, or livery, That aptly is put on.”