Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/78

Rh paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust 7 man delights not me, nor woman neither; though, by your smiling, you seem to say so.” How exquisitely is here conveyed the state of the reasoning melancholiac, (melancholia without delusion,) who sees all things as they are, but feels them as they are not. All cheerfulness fled, all motive for action lost, he becomes

listless and inert. He still recognises the beauty of the earth and the magnificence of the heavens, but the one is a tomb, and the other a funereal pall. His reason still shews him the place of man, a little lower than the angels, but the sources of sentiment are dried up, and, although no man-hater, he no

longer derives pleasure from kindly affections. The waters of emotion are stagnant; the pleasant places of the soul are steril and desert.

Hamlet is not slow to confess his melancholy, and indeed it is the peculiarity of this mental state, that those suffering from it, seldom or never attempt to conceal it. A man will conceal his delusions, will deny and veil the excitement of mania, but the melancholiac is almost always readily confi dential on the subject of his feelings. In this he resembles the hypochondriac, though not perhaps from exactly the same motive. The ‘hypochondriac seeks for sympathy and pity; the melancholiac frequently admits others to the sight of his mental wretchedness, from mere despair of relief and con tempt of pity.

Although Hamlet is ready to shew to his friends the mirror of his mind, observe how jealously he hides the cause of its distortion. “But wherefore I know not,” is scarcely con sistent with the truth. In his first soliloquy, which we take to be the key-note of his real mental state, he clearly enough indicates the source of his wretchedness, which the Queen

also with a mother's insight, has not been slow to perceive : “His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage.”