Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/166

 a son could describe with impetuous remembrance the kingly qualities which had given birth to him? In his mind's eye, he could always see this father:—

"Look here, upon this picture, and on this: See what a grace was seated on this brow! A combination and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man. This was your husband."

He is that man's son, and not his mother's.

"Ha! have you eyes?"

What devil was it that made you seize upon this other man in a game of blindfold?

"A slave, that is not twentieth part the tithe Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings! A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole And put it in his pocket."

Look there! The dear hallucination of fatherhood! "What would you, gracious figure? "The ghost has come to put this sketch of memory into italics; as if filial appreciation had projected it upon the midnight, in the intensity of recalling his majestic soul. Only a son who was in all respects worthy to be born of Nature's nobleman could pay this debt of being nobly born, and give Imagination's birth to such a sire. See there, he is born! the son is father and mother: inbred posterity conceives its ancestor.

Thus I venture to suppose that, when Hamlet came to his mother, Shakspeare had not deliberated that the