It is unquestionably the original to which Shakespeare resorted. Antiquarians have, indeed, spoken of a lost play, entitled Hamlet, earlier than Shakespeare's, but Charles Knight, in an acute disquisition on this subject, in his recent edition of the tragedies, shows that all the evidence in favour of another Hamlet, may refer to Shakespeare's play itself, allowing it to have been produced at an earlier period than has been supposed.

"You must understand," begins this old narrative, "that long time before the kingdome of Denmark received the faith of Jesus Christ, and embraced the doctrine of the Christians, that the common people in those dayes were barbarous and uncivil. Now, the greatest honour that men of noble birth could at that time win and obtain, was in exercising the art of piracie upon the seas, assayling their neighbours, and the countries bordering upon them; and how much the more, they used to robb, pill and spoyle other provinces, and ilands far adjacent, so much the more their honours and reputation increased and augmented." Of these honourable pirates, who gained so vast a reputation, Horvendile was foremost; he contested the palm with the king of Norway, and a sea-fight was mutually arranged, the victor to have the riches of the ship for his spoils, and give the vanquished noble burial. Horvendile came off conqueror, buried the king "with all honourable obsequies fit for a prince," bereaved the ship of its riches, slew the king's sister as supplementary evidence of his valour, overrun the whole coast and the islands, and just as a modern European hero does under similar circumstances, presented himself at the court of his sovereign in Denmark. The king gave him his daughter, Geruth, in marriage, and a province to govern. These were the parents of Hamlet, the Dane. But sovereignty has its perils, and Horvendile's brother, Fengon, Hamlet's bad uncle in the story, conspired and one day slew the prince at a banquet, having before connived with Hamlet's guilty mother. Here is the first point in the tale, at which Shakespeare has made a huge departure; he has not made the mother a conspirator in the murder, or the murderer's adulterous concubine. The ghoul-like appetite of the rabble might feed on such criminal circumstances, but the great dramatist knew better what was suited to the healthier atmosphere of poetry. He was not writing a Newgate Calendar, but a poem to speak to the soul of man-"a palace of pure art."

Hamlet, like another Brutus, to save his life, assumes the commonest guise of madness; he tears his clothes, wallows with a dirty face in the mire, but is withal suspected of perfect sanity. His uncle, like Satan tempting St. Anthony, thought if he was a sound man at all, he wolud show his humanity in the presence of women. So he let the courtiers put him in the way of temptation. "And, surely," says the history, "the poor prince at this assault had him in great danger, if a gentleman (that in Horvendile's time had been nourished with him) had not shown himself more affectioned to the bringing up he had received with Hamblet, than desirous to please the tirant, who, by all means sought to entangle the sonne in the same nets wherein the father had ended his days. This gentleman bore the courtyers company, more desiring to give the prince instructions what he should do, than to intrap him, making full account that the least shewe of perfect sense and wisdome that Hamblet should make, would be sufficient to cause him to lose his life; and therefore he gave Hamblet intelligence in what danger he was likely to fall, if by anye means hee seemed to obaye, or once like the wanton toys and vicious provocations of the gentlewoman sent thither by his uncle." Hamlet was insensible to the lady and adjudged insane. What an interval between this

common assignation scene and the Ophelia of Shakespeare. If there are any low minds who affect to consider the great dramatist low or immoral, we com. mend them to note this difference.

Then an old counsellor, the original of Polonius, is set behind the arras to over-hear Hamlet's conversation with his mother, and is immediately despatched Hamlet crying out, a rat, a rat! and thrusting his sword through the hangings. These four syllables, it is remarked, are all that Shakespeare has borrowed verbally in his play. To gratify the vulgar readers of the history, Hamlet is made to cut the body in pieces, have it boiled down and thrown to the hogges. How far removed was Shakespeare from a vulgar writer.

Hamlet was evidently too cunning now to be trusted long in Denmark, ant his uncle, like modern politicians, when a functionary is too busy at home, despatched him on a foreign mission. He was sent to England with two companions, who carried letters engraved in wood, commending the king to hang him; but while his attendants slept, Hamlet substituted their names. Before he left Denmark, he had been observed sharpening pieces of wood, and when questioned, replied that he was preparing arrows to avenge his father's death; these he entrusted to his mother on his departure, to keep for him, and on that day year to celebrate his funeral as if he were dead, when he would return. In England Hamlet showed no mean skill in divination, and was promised the King's daughter in marriage. He returned to Denmark on the promised day and enacted a very prosaic version of the return of Ulysses and the slaughter of the suitors. He turned butler and himself helped a large assembly to goblets of wine till they all lay on the floor, when he let down the arras from the walls upon them, pinned the corners with the arrows he had formerly prepared, and set fire to the building, and then Hamlet slew the king in his bedchamber. Hamlet then made an oration to the Danes, and they made him king. The oration is really eloquent. "To what end," said he, "should Hother have punished Balder, if, instead of recompense, the Danes and Swethlanders had banished him to receive and accept the succours of him that desired nought but his ruine and his overthrowe? Who was ever sorrowful to behold the murtherer of innocents brought to his end, or what man weepeth to see a just massacre done upon a tyrant, usurper, villaine, and bloody personage? Bee joyfull, then, (my good friends), make ready the nosegay for this usurping king, burn his abhominable body, boyle his lascivious members, and cast the ashes of him that hath been hurtfull to all the world into the ayre; drive from you the sparkes of pitie, to the end that neither silver, nor chrystall cup, nor sacred tombe may be the restful habitation of the reliques and bones of so detestable a man."

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The scene of this wonderful tale was well placed by the story-teller, in England, before the introduction of Christianity, a period of barbarity, in which the subsequent national honour was not at all concerned-for the King of England is represented as little better than a royal executioner, who does murders by the job. Thus having heretofore despatched the attendants of Hamlet, when that newly crowned monarch returns to him from Denmark, fresh from the slaughter of his old friend Fengon, (whom he had sworn to avenge if any accident of this kind befel him) he sets about to put Hamlet himself out of the way. Thus were kings beset in the old time, and thus the ploughmen and maidens of the Elizabethan time read history in the chimney corner. There were various political quirks and juggles in those days, as in our own. It was

deemed contrary to the sound laws and rights of hospitality to slay Hamlet in the kingdom, but it was perfectly consonant with honourable king-craft to send him to Scotland, where ruled the queen of Scots, a haughty maid, who despised men, and let no suitor return alive. Hamlet was sent to entreat a marriage between the inexorable virgin and the King of England. What will not prowess and war and manly beauty effect in the female heart? The maid fell in love with Hamlet, made him a most dignified speech, full of wonder that he should be affianced to the basely descended daughter of the king of England, and commended to him the proud antiquity of the noble house of Scotland. Hamlet carried her (it was a small matter in an old story for a queen to desert her kingdom) with him to England as his wife; and now the king was bent on his destruction more than ever, but the true love of his affianced, warned Hamlet of every danger, and he returned to Denmark with two wives.

The noble history of Hamlet has now degenerated to a vulgar tale. His Scots wife having been so very unmaidenly and ruthless as a virgin, makes a very bad wife, plots and conspires against her husband, who was slain in battle with Wiglerus, and as might have been expected, the bold and forward queen of Scotland married the conqueror.

The moral of the tale is literal. Hamlet is set up for his "modestie, courtesie, and continencie, who while other made good cheare, continued sober; and where all men sought as much as they could to gather together riches and treasure, hee, simply accounting riches nothing comparable to honour, sought to gather a multitude of vertues, that might make him equall to those that by them were esteemed as gods."

For Shakespeare's interest in this tale, it is the least in the world. When he read this production and sat down to write Hamlet, it was like stepping from a dunghill into a palace. The supernatural interest of the ghost, "the story from the land of spirits," the love of Ophelia, the nice discrimination of overtasked reason and sensibility treading on the verge of madness in Hamlet, the philosophy of courtiers, clowns, and sextons, the deep morality which invests the life of every understanding reader of the play, disclosing the mys tery of existence, and telling secrets that lie hid in the innermost being, the charm of Hamlet the Dane, to students of every age, were all Shakespeare's

own.

REPUTATION.

He who is extremely careful of his reputation is in a fair way to lose what little he has. Like a kitten that is killed by too much fondling, reputation wastes away and perishes when it is nursed too assiduously. Every man who is worthy of any reputation, is capable of forming a tolerably correct opinion of his own merits. It is none but the superficial and unprincipled whose estimation of themselves is graduated wholly on the scale of the popular judgment. No truly great man was ever made so by building his character upon the shifting sands of contemporary fame. The mind that is destined to be great, seeks first its own approval, and cannot be satisfied with the applause of others until it is sensible that it has deserved it. Fame must begin at home, and he has done much toward establishing his reputation, who has learned to act from principle less than from interest. I would, however, be understood