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82 found affection for her has been most skilfully conveyed in the painful effort with which he endeavours to make her

conscious of her position, to set before her a glass where she may see her inmost part, to speak daggers to her, to be cruel, but not unnatural. From the speech,

“A bloody deed ; almost as bad, good mother, As kill a King, and marry with his brother,” it would appear that he entertained some suspicions of his mother's complicity in the murder of his father, and that these words were tentative to ascertain whether her conscience was

sore on that side. From what follows we must suppose this suspicion allayed. The readiness with which Hamlet seizes the opportunity to strike the blow which kills Polonius,

under the belief that he strikes the King, is of a piece with a character too meditative to frame and follow a course of action,

yet sudden and rash in action when the opportunity presents itself. The rapid action with which he utilizes the players, with which he circumvents his treacherous schoolfellows, with

which he at last kills the King, resembles the quick blow which sends to his account “the wretched, rash, intruding fool,” whom he mistakes for his betters. So long as resolution can be “sickled o'er with the pale cast of thought,” so long as time is allowed for any scruple to be listened to, he thinks too precisely on the event, and lives to say the thing's to do. But let the opportunity of action present itself, and he is quick to seize it, as he would have been dilatory in seeking it. It is the meditative, inactive man, who often seizes opportunities for action, or what he takes for such, with the greatest eagerness. Unable to form and follow a deliberate course of action, he is

too ready to lend his hand to circumstances, as they arise without his intervention. Sometimes he fails miserably, as in the death of Polonius; sometimes he succeeds, as when he finds occasion to praise that rashness, which too often stands

him in the place of steady purpose.