_Hamlet._---- That it should come to this! But two months dead! nay, not so much; not two;-- So excellent a King, that was, to this, Hyperion to a satire: so loving to my mother, That he permitted not the wind of heav’n Visit her face too roughly. Heav’n and earth! Must I remember--why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on; yet, within a month,---- Let me not think--Frailty, thy name is _Woman_! A little month! or ere those shoes were old, With which she follow’d my poor father’s body, Like Niobe, all tears---- Why, she, ev’n she-- (O heav’n! a beast that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn’d longer--) married with mine uncle, My father’s brother; but no more like my father, Than I to Hercules. Within a month!---- Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her gauled eyes, She married.---- Oh, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not, nor it cannot come to good. But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue. _Act 1. sc. 3._ The power of passion to falsify the computation of time, is the more remarkable, that time, which hath an accurate measure, is less obsequious to our desires and wishes, than objects which have no precise standard of less or more. Even belief, though partly an act of the judgment, may be influenced by passion. Good news are greedily swallowed upon very slender evidence. Our wishes magnify the probability of the event as well as the veracity of the relater; and we believe as certain what at best is doubtful. Quel, che l’huom vede, amor li fa invisibile E l’invisibil fa veder amore. Questo creduto fu, che’l miser suole Dar facile credenza a’ quel, che vuole. _Orland. Furios. cant. 1. st. 56._ For the same reason, bad news gain also credit upon the slightest evidence. Fear, if once alarmed, has the same effect with hope to magnify every circumstance that tends to conviction. Shakespear, who shows more knowledge of human nature than any of our philosophers, hath in his _Cymbeline_[44] represented this bias of the mind: for he makes the person who alone was affected with the bad news, yield to evidence that did not convince any of his companions. And Othello[45] is convinced of his wife’s infidelity from circumstances too slight to move an indifferent person. If the news interest us in so low a degree as to give place to reason, the effect will not be quite the same. Judging of the probability or improbability of the story, the mind settles in a rational conviction either that it is true or not. But even in this case, it is observable, that the mind is not allowed to rest in that degree of conviction which is produced by rational evidence. If the news be in any degree favourable, our belief is augmented by hope beyond its true pitch; and if unfavourable, by fear.