As to whether the mind of Hamlet be, or be not, touched with madness--this is another point at issue among critics, philosophers, ay, and physicians. To me it seems that he is not so far disordered as to cease to be a responsible human being--that were too pitiable: but rather that his mind is shaken from its equilibrium, and bewildered by the horrors of his situation--horrors which his fine and subtle intellect, his strong imagination, and his tendency to melancholy, at once exaggerate, and take from him the power either to endure, or "by opposing, end them." We do not see him as a lover, nor as Ophelia first beheld him; for the days when he importuned her with love were before the opening of the drama--before his father's spirit revisited the earth; but we behold him at once in a sea of troubles, of perplexities, of agonies, of terrors. Without remorse, he endures all its horrors; without guilt, he endures all its shame. A loathing of the crime he is called on to revenge, which revenge is again abhorrent to his nature, has set him at strife with himself; the supernatural visitation has perturbed his soul to its inmost depths; all things else, all interests, all hopes, all affections, appear as futile, when the majestic shadow comes lamenting from its place of torment "to shake him with thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul!" His love for Ophelia is then ranked by himself among those trivial, fond records which he has deeply sworn to erase from his heart and brain. He has no thought to link his terrible destiny with hers: he cannot marry her: he cannot reveal to her, young, gentle, innocent as she is, the terrific influences which have changed the whole current of his life and purposes. In his distraction he overacts the painful part to which he had tasked himself; he is like that judge of the Areopagus, who being occupied with graver matters, flung from him the little bird which had sought refuge in his bosom, and with such angry violence, that unwittingly he killed it. In the scene with Hamlet,[42] in which he madly outrages her and upbraids himself, Ophelia says very little: there are two short sentences in which she replies to his wild, abrupt discourse:-- HAMLET. I did love you once. OPHELIA. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. HAMLET. You should not have believed me: for virtue cannot so inocculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it. I loved you not. OPHELIA. I was the more deceived. Those who ever heard Mrs. Siddons read the play of Hamlet, cannot forget the world of meaning, of love, of sorrow, of despair, conveyed in these two simple phrases. Here, and in the soliloquy afterwards, where she says,-- And I of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his music vows,