of their cure, yet, with the knowledge we have of the effects of mind on the body, we may be fairly led to conclude, that great mental anxiety, inordinate ambition, and guilt may produce similar effects."[409:A]
If Shakspeare, more philosopher than poet, had pursued the plan which Dr. Alderson has recommended, he would have injured his tragedy, and wrecked his popularity. We could have spared, indeed, any ocular demonstration of the mute and blood-boultered ghost of Banquo in Macbeth, but had the ghost in Hamlet been invisible and inaudible, we should have lost the noblest scene of grateful terror which genius has ever created.
Nor was it ignorance on the part of Shakspeare which gave birth to the visibility of this awful spectre, for he has told us, in another place, that
"Such shadows are the weak brain's forgeries."[409:B]
and, even in the very play under consideration, he calls them "the very coinage of the brain," and adds,—
"This bodiless creation ecstacy
Is very cunning in;"[409:C]
but he well knew, that as a dramatic poet, in a superstitious age, it was requisite, in order to produce a strong and general impression, to adopt the popular creed, the superstition relative to his subject; and, as Mrs. Montagu has justly observed, "the poet who does so, understands his business much better than the critic, who, in judging of that work, refuses it his attention.—Thus every operation that developes the attributes, which vulgar opinion, or the nurse's legend, have taught us to ascribe to 'such a preternatural Being,' will augment our pleasure; whether we give the reins to our imagination, and, as
spectators, willingly yield ourselves up to pleasing delusion, or, as 'judicious' Critics, examine the merit of the composition."[410:A]
That an undoubting belief in the actual appearance of ghosts and apparitions was general in Shakspeare's time, has been the assertion of all who have alluded to the subject, either as contemporary or subsequent historians. Addison, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, speaking of the credulities of the two preceding centuries, observes, that "our Forefathers looked upon Nature with reverence and horror—that they loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and enchantments.—There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it—the church-yards were all haunted—every common had a circle of fairies belonging to it—and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit[410:B];" and Bourne, who wrote about the same period, and expressly on the subject of vulgar superstitions, tells us, that formerly "hobgoblins and sprights were in every city, and town, and village, by every water, and in every wood.—If a house was seated on some melancholy place, or built in some old romantic manner; or if any particular accident had happened in it, such as murder, sudden death, or the like, to be sure that house had a mark set on it, and was afterwards esteemed the habitation of a ghost.—Stories of this kind are infinite, and there are few villages, which have not either had such an house in it, or near it."[410:C]