To return a moment to the spirit of Hamlet. The human traces found in this pale spectre are great heighteners of our interest in it, and of the probabilities of its existence. The return to Elsinore, and to the platform before the castle, in the night, when the sentinels are on guard—its appearance first to the soldiers on the watch—then to Horatio, who has been induced to watch by the report of it—its sudden appearance, and equally abrupt disappearance—giving an idea of capricious impulses and laws not within the reach of mortal conjecture—its seeking out its son as the confidant of the amazing secret, are all ghost-like, and yet show the shadow of mortality. Its dismal, half-breathed, mysterious revelations of what it is undergoing in its new abode, are spectral to the last degree; but there is nothing which elevates it to a higher and nobler place in our commiseration, than the exquisitely tender allusion to the guilty queen. This is the mortal, always majestic, superior, merciful and refined—but now enlightened and subdued by the influences of its new state.
“But, how-so-ever thou pursu’st this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven,
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
To prick and sting her.”
And then the startled, reluctant, yet abrupt and compelled return.
“Fare thee well at once!
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire;