Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/186

 macaronic manner he assumes to indicate his aversion from it. "Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though, I know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy the arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great article; and his infusion of such dearth and rareness, as, to make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror; and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more."

I wonder that the psychologists have not greedily picked up this obscure and fantastic passage as a specimen of his craft in feigning.

But Osrick belonged to the prosaic sort of minds which took up so readily with the theory of Hamlet's madness; all of them incapable of irony, therefore not competent to fly into his meaning; limited, like the dodo and other wingless birds, to running along the plain appearance. "Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him," says Osrick.

So Hamlet could sport, who went towards his death with a presentiment which his soul was great enough to put aside, and also give him breath to say how great it was: "We defy augury: there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all." No crotchet of real or assumed madness could lurk in the repose of such a man.