watch. They were indeed fo far rivals, as they were fucceffors to others, and waiting to occupy their places.

HORATIO.

Some strange eruption to the state.

• Some political distemper, which will break out in dangerous confequences.'

I DE M.

That hath a ftomach in it.

Stomach, fays Dr. Johnson, in the times of Shakfpeare, was used for conftancy and refolution. The original, ftomachus, has various fignifications befides the ftomach. -In Cicero, it means, in one place choler; in another, humour, or fancy. Ille mihi rifum magis quam ftomachum. Ludi apparatiffimi, fed non tui ftomachi. In Shakspeare, stomach generally ftands for exceffive pride, or infolence of power. Queen Katharine, fpeaking of Cardinal' Wolfey, He was of an unbounded ftomach.' Henry VIII. act IV. I think, in this place, hath a ftomach in it' means, the bufinefs is of an alarming nature.'

MARCELLUS.

Some fay, that, ever 'gainst that feafon comes
In which our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning fingeth all night long.
And then, they fay, no fpirit dare ftir abroad;
The nights are wholefome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;
So hallow'd, and fo gracious, is the time!

Thefe lines, which are omitted in the reprefentation of the play, are remarkably beautiful; they are invigorated by fancy and harmonized by verfification.

'The

The word fpirit, in the 4th line, fhould be, I think, contracted to fprite, or fp'rit; both are, I believe, familiar to our old dramatists.

No fairy takes,' in the 6th line, is explained by Lear's curfe on Goneril, in the fecond act of that play:

Strike her young bones,

Ye taking airs, with lameness!

Scene II.

The King, Queen, Hamlet, &c.

HAMLE T.

A little more than kin, and lefs than kind.

Hanmer fuppofes that this might formerly have been a proverbial expreffion; but vulgar fayings or proverbs are gathered from fuch things as frequently happen, and not from circumstances and events which are unusual.

The meaning of this line, however variously understood by different commentators, seems to be very obvious.

As I am the rightful heir to the crown, I am more than your relation; I am your king. As you have deprived me of my birthright, and committed the crime of inceft with my mother, it is impoffible I can have any affection or kindness for you.'

It should be obferved, that, whenever Hamlet fpeaks of the King, it is in terms of reproach and of the utmost contempt; nor does he ever seem to pay him the leaft refpe&t, in his behaviour or addrefs, when he speaks to him.

IDEM.

Not fo, my lord; I am too much i'th' fun.

I am fo far from being obfcured with fhadows, that I am scorched with the rays of your funshine.'

QUEEN.

All that live muft die,

Paffing through nature to eternity.

The thought is common; but the expreffion is awfully striking and extremely beautiful.

KING.

No jocund health, that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the loud cannon to the clouds fhall tell.

I cannot think, with Dr. Johnson, that thefe lines particularly mark the king's fondness for drinking. Drunkenness was the national vice, as Hamlet himself afterwards confeffes.

This feems to have been pointed out, by the author, as the King's first appearance in public after his ufurping the crown and marrying his fifter; and is therefore celebrated as a gala-day. He therefore seizes an opportunity to compliment Hamlet's conceffion, as he would fain term it, in his own favour, by firing off the cannon to his honour at every toaft.

I DE M.

To poft

With fuch dexterity to inceftuous fheets.

Dexterity for rapidity.

I DE M.

Would I had met my dearest foe, in heaven,

Ere I had feen that day, Horatio!

This ftrongly marks the refentful, not to fay implacable difpofition, of Hamlet; and is of a piece

with his not putting his uncle to death, in the third act of the play, when he was at his devotion, left, in that inftant, he should send his foul to heaven.

My father!

Where, my lord?

IDEM.

-Me thinks I fee my father!

HORATIO.

Horatio, by that question, imagined that Hamlet faw the fhade of his father.

Scene III.

Laertes and Ophelia.

LAERTE S.

The charieft maid is prodigal enough
If the unmasks her beauty to the moon.
Virtue itself 'fcapes not calumnious strokes ;
The canker galls the infants of the spring.

In the advice of Danaiis to his daughters, in the Suppliants of Æfchylus, to guard against the inticements of youth, there are fome lines, which bear a strong refemblance of Laertes's inftructions to Ophelia.

I fee your blooming age
Inforcing foft defire. I know how hard

To guard the lovely flowers that grace that season.
The queen of love proclaims their opening bloom :
Ah! would the suffer it to remain uncropt!
For, on the delicate tints that kindling glow
On beauty's vermeil cheek, each roving youth
With melting wishes darts the am'rous glance.

POLONIUS.

Coftly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
Eut not exprefs'd in fancy.

Potter's fchylus,

That

That is, not fantastic, tawdry, or foppish.

IDE M.

To thy own felf be true,

Thou canst not then be falfe to any man.

This is agreeable to one of the golden rules of
Pythagoras.

As he drains his draughts of Rhenish down.

The kings of Denmark have been conftant drinkers of Rhenish wine. It was the custom at Copenhagen, when Lord Molefworth was our ambassador to that court, in 1692, for the king to have his beaker of Rhenish.* Drinking to excess was the vice of the court and nation; and our author must have known, that, in his time, the King of Denmark, brother-in-law to James I. had no averfion to large draughts of wine. Sir John Harrington, in a let1 ter to a friend, describes a masque, called the Queen of Sheba, at which the two kings and the whole court were prefent, and all of them most shamefully intoxicated. The Queen of Sheba and his Danish majesty paid and received the fame compliment as Don Quixote and Sancho did to each other, from the operation of a precious balfam in Sancho's ftomach, when the latter, after a bloody battle with the sheep and their herdsmen, was examining the don's mouth, and counting the grinders he had loft in the conflict. The two drunken majefties of GreatBritain and Denmark, fays Harrington, were so far inebriated, that the gentlemen of the bedchamber

B 5

were

*The kettle-drums and trumpets, which are ranged in a large place before the palace, proclaim aloud the very minute when the king fits down to table. MOLESWORTH,