There really are many indications which bear out the praise of the commentators, that this world was not _large_ enough for his genius. His spirits, magicians, monsters, and ghosts, are evidences of it. Other writers have resorted to these materials before him, but only as a mode of acting on human feelings. It was reserved for Shakspeare to make us as well acquainted with the secret heart of a _ghost_ as of a mortal. Hamlet’s spectre not only frightens and startles us—he touches our feelings. We see into that unearthly mind—that solitary, disembodied being—revisiting the scene of its mortal life, but indicating, fearfully, by its stealthy dim night walks—the solemn march with which it goes slow and stately by—its allusions to things too frightful for human ears—its guilty starting at the crowing of the cock, and its hurrying back to its nameless and awful task—its anguish-stricken bewailings over the earthly state of peace and happiness from which it was so ruthlessly hurled—indicating by all these and many more expressive tokens, the dark and sublime load of woe it bears, and appealing to our sympathy with terrible power. Ulrici may have found, in this scene, grounds for his theory.
The character of the unhappy exile from earth to the secret and impenetrable abode of spirits, is drawn with as much reality as that of Hamlet or the grave digger. There are two or three touches of individuality which invest it with a singular attraction. It is not only a ghost; it is _the_ ghost of a particular individual—of a majestic, noble, benevolent, affectionate king, overwhelmed by a mighty calamity: the victim of the most shameful lewdness—the blackest treachery that ever was seen—and deploring, “in fire,” the “foul crimes” done in his “days of nature.” We are not to presume he had been a peculiarly wicked man, but he was _suddenly_ called to his account before he could _prepare himself to die_.
What a sublime hint of Christianity is this, and how fraught with a tremendous lesson to all mankind. Death itself is not the misfortune; it is death to an unprepared spirit. That he was
“Sleeping, by a brother’s hand Of life, of crown, of queen, at once despatched,”
is not so terrible as that he was cut off even in _the blossoms of his sins_—