Hamlet's thinking is always marked by that quality of penetration into and through the thoughts of others, that is called free-thinking. The discovery, as he moved in the spiritual world of established ideas and settled doctrines, apparently immovable, that they were of the same stuff as his own thoughts—were pliant and yielding, and could be readily unwoven by the logic that wove them, would tempt him to move and displace, and build and construct, until he might have a collection of opinions large enough to be termed a philosophy. But it would be gathered rather in the joy of intellectual activity, realizing its own energy, and ravelling up to its own form the woof of other minds, than with any practical bearing on life. All this was a work in another sphere—
"of no allowance to his bosom's truth."
The light of a sovereign manhood and womanhood was reflected on the world around him, and afar on the world of thought—-their greatness reconciled all the contradictions of life. And in pure submission to their control all the various activities of his versatile nature, its irony and its earnestness, its shrewdness and its fancy, its piety and its free-thinking, harmonized like sweet bells not yet jangled or untuned. He lived at peace with all, in fellowship with all; he could rally Polonius without malice, and mimic Osric without contempt.
It is plain that Hamlet looked forward to a life of activity under his father's guidance. He was no dreamer—we hear of "the great love the general gender bear him," and the people are not fond of dreamers. In truth, the Germans have had too much their own way with Hamlet, and have read into him something of their own laboriousness and phlegm. But Hamlet was more of a poet than a professor. He had the temperament of a man of genius—impatient, animated, eager, swift to feel, to like or dislike, praise or resent—with a character of rapidity in all his actions, and even in his meditation, of which he is conscious when he says, "as swift as meditation." He did not live apart as a student, but in public as a prince—
"the observed of all observers;"
he was of a free, open, unsuspicious temper—
"remiss,
Most generous and free from all contriving."
He was fond of all martial exercises and expert in the use of the sword. He was a soldier first, a scholar afterwards; a soldier in his alacrity to fight
"Until his eyelids would no longer wag;"