King. Take thy fair hour, Laertes, time be

thine; (3)

And thy best graces fpend it at thy will.
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my fon---

Ham. A little more than kin, and less than kind.

[Afide.

King: How is it that the clouds still hang on you? Ham. Not so, my Lord, I am too much i th

fun.

Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not, for ever, with thy veiled lids,
Seek for thy noble father in the duft;
Thou knowest'tis common; all that live must die,
Paffing through nature to eternity.

Ham. Ay, Madam, it is common.
Queen. If it be,

Why seems it fso particular with thee?

Ham. Seems, Madam? nay, it is; I know not

feems:

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of folemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shews of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed feem,
For they are actions that a man might play;

(3) Take thy fair hour, Laertes, time be thine,

And thy fair graces; spend it at thy will.] This is the pointing in both Mr Pope's editions; but the Poet's meaning is loft by 't, and the close of the sentence miferably flattened. The pointing I have restored, is that of the best copies, and the sense this; "You have my leave to go, Laertes; make the fairest use you please of your time, and spend it at your will with the fairest graces you are ma

But I have that within which pafleth shew:
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
King. 'Tis fweet and commendable in your na
ture, Hamlet,

To give these mourning duties to your father:
But you must know, your father loft a father; (4)*
That father loft, loft his; and the furviver bound
In filial obligation, for fome term,
To do obfequious forrow.. But to perfevere
In obftinate condolement, is a course
Of impious stubbornness, unmanly grief.
It shews a will most uncorrect to Heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding fimple and unschooled
For what we know must be, and is as common:
As any the most vulgar thing to fenfe,
Why should we, in our peevith oppofition,
Take it to heart? fy! 'tis a fault to Heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to Nature,
To Reafon most abfurd; whose common theme/
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the firit corse till he that died to-day,
" This muit be fo." We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us.
As of a father: for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our threne;

(4) But you must krow, your father loft a father,

That father bis.] This fuppofed refinement is from Mr Pope; but all the editions elfe, that 1 have met with, old and modern, read;

That father lost, loft bis.

The reduplication of which word here gives an energy and elegance, which is much easier to be conceived than explained in terms. And every judicious reader of this Poet must have obferved how frequent it is with him to make this reduplication, where he intends either to affert or deny, augment or diminish, or add a degree of vehiemence to his expreilion.

A

And with't no less nobility of love, (5)
Than that which dearest father bears his fon,
Do I impart tow'rd you. For your intent (6)
In going back to school to Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our defire :
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our fon.
Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers
Hamlet:

I pr'ythee, stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.
Ham. I shall in all my beft obey you, Madam..
King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply;
Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come;
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell;

(5) And with no less nobility of love

Than that which dearest father bears his fon,

Do I impart towards you. But what does the King im part? We want the substantive governed of the verb. The King had declared. Hamlet his immediate fucceffor, and with that declaration, he must mean, he imparts to him as noble a love, as ever fond father tendered to his own fon. I have. ventured to make the text conform with this fenfe.

(6)

For your intent

In going back to school to Wittenberg;] The Poet ufes a prolepfis here; for the university at Wittenberg was opened by Frederick III. elector of Saxony, in the year 1502, feveral ages later in time than the date of Hamlet. But I defign this remark for another purpose. I would take notice, that a confiderable space of years is spent in this tragedy; or Hamlet, as a Prince, should be too old to go to an university. We here find him a scholar refident at that univerfity; but, in act fifth, we find him plainly thirty years old; for the gravedigger had taken up that occupation the very day on which young Hamlet was born, and had followed it, as he says, thirty years.

And the King's rowse the heaven shall bruit again, Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.

Manet HAMLET.

[Exeunt.

Ham. Oh, that this too-too-folid flesh would melt, Thaw, and refolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fixed (7)

(7) Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

His cannon 'gainst felf-flaughter!] The generality of the editions read thus, as if the Poet's thoughts were, Or that the Almighty had not planted his artillery, his refentment, or arms of vengeance against self-murder. But the word which I have restored to the text, (and which was espoused by the accurate Mr Hughes, who gave an edition of this play) is the Poet's true reading. i. e. That he had not refhained fuicide by his express law, and peremptory prohibition. Miftakes are perpetually made in the old editions of our Poet, betwixt those two words, cannon and canon. I shall now fubjoin my reasons why I think the Poet intended to say Heaven had fixed its injunction rather than its artillery. In the first place, I much doubt the propriety of the phrafe, fixing cannon, in the meaning here supposed. The military expreffion, which imports what would be necessary to the sente of the Poet's thought, is mounting or planting cannon; and whenever cannon is faid to be fixed, it is when the enemy become masters of it and nail it down. In the next place, to fix a canon, or law, is the term of the civilians peculiar to this business. This Virgil had in his mind when he wrote;

Æneid. VI.

-Leges fixit pretio, atque refixit. So Cicero, in his Philippic orations; Num figentur rurfus ha Tabule, quas vos decretis veftris vefixiftis? And it was the conftant custom of the Romans to say, upon this occafion, figere legem, as the Greeks before them used the synonymous term νόμον παραπῆξαι, and called their statues thence παραπήγματα. But my last reason, and which sways most with me, is from the Poet's own turn and caft of thought. For, as he has done in a great many more inftances, it is the very sentiment which he falls into in another of his plays, though he has clothed it in different expreffion;

gainst jelf-flaughter

There is a prohibition fo divine,
That cravens my weak hand.

Cymbeline.

His canon 'gainst self-flaughter! O God! oh God!
How weary, ftale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the ufes of this world!

Fy on't! oh fy! 'tis an unweeded garden, [ture,
That grows to feed; things rank, and gross in na-
Poffefs it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead! nay, not fo much; not

two;

So excellent a King, that was, to this,
Hyperion to a fatyr: so loving to my mother, (8)
That he might not let e'en the winds of heaven
Vifit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember?---why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; yet, within a month,

Let me not think---Frailty, thy name is woman! (9)

(8)-so loving to my mother,

That he permitted not the winds of heaven

Visit her face 100 roughly. This is a fophisticated reading, copied from the players in some of the modern editions, for want of understanding the Poet, whose text is corrupt in the old impreffions; all of which that I have had the fortune to fee, concur in reading;

----so loving to my mother,

That he might not beteere the winds of heaven
Vifit her face too roughly.

Beteene is a corruption, without doubt, but not so inveterate a one, but that, by the change of a fingle letter, and the separation of two words mistakenly jumbled together, I am verily perfuaded, I have retrieved the Poet's reading That he might not let e'en the winds of heaven, &c.

(9) -Frailty, thy name is woman!] But that it would difplease Mr Pope to have it supposed that fatire. can have any place in tragedy, (of which I shall have occafion to fpeak farther anon) I should make no fcruple tor pronounce this reflection a fine laconic farcafin. It is as concife in the terms, and, perhaps, more fprightly in the thought. and image, than that fling of Virgil upon the fex, in hist fourth Encid;

--varium et mutabile femper

Famina.