Still he does nothing; and this very speculation on his own
infirmity only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is
not for any want of attachment to his father or abhorrence of his
murder that Hamlet is thus dilatory, but it is more to his taste to
indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime
and refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to put them into
immediate practice. His ruling passion is to think, not to act: and
any vague pretence that flatters this propensity instantly diverts
him from his previous purposes.
The moral perfection of this character has been called in question,
we think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interesting
than according to rules: amiable, though not faultless. The ethical
delineations of 'that noble and liberal casuist' (as Shakespeare has
been well called) do not exhibit the drab-coloured quakerism of
morality. His plays are not copied either from The Whole Duty of
Man, or from The Academy of Compliments! We confess, we are a little
shocked at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the
want of refinement in Hamlet. The want of punctilious exactness in
his behaviour either partakes of the 'license of the time', or else
belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the
character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own
purposes, sit loose upon him.
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