it as proper to our age To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions, As it is common for the younger sort To lack discretion] This is not the remark of a weak man. The vice of age is too much suspicion. Men long accustomed to the wiles of life _cast_ commonly _beyond themselves_, let their cunning go further than reason can attend it. This is always the fault of a little mind, made artful by long commerce with the world. II.ii.24 (202,2) For the supply and profit of our hope, Your visitation shall receive such thanks] That the hope which your arrival has raised may be completed by the desired effect. II.ii.47 (203,4) the trail of policy] The _trail_ is the _course of an animal pursued by the scent_. Il.ii.52 (203,5) My news shall be the fruit of that great feast] The _desert_ after the meat. II.ii.84 (204,7) at night we'll feast] The king's intemperance is never suffered to be forgotten. II.ii.86-167 (205,8) My liege, and Madam, to expostulate] This account of the character of Polonius, though it sufficiently reconciles the seeming inconsistency of so much wisdom with so much folly, does not perhaps correspond exactly to the ideas of our author. The commentator Warburton makes the character of Polonius, a character only of manners, discriminated by properties superficial, accidental, and acquired. The poet intended a nobler delineation of a mixed character of manners and of nature. Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in business, stored with observations, confident of his knowledge, proud of his eloquence, and declining into dotage. His mode of oratory is truly represented as designed to ridicule the practice of those times, of prefaces that made no introduction, and of method that embarrassed rather than explained. This part of his character is accidental, the rest is natural. Such a man is positive and confident, because he knows that his mind was once strong, and knows not that it is become weak. Such a man excels in general principles, but fails in the particular application. He is knowing in retrospect, and ignorant in foresight. While he depends upon his memory, and can draw from his repositories of knowledge, he utters weighty sentences, and gives useful counsel; but as the mind in its enfeebled state cannot be kept long busy and intent, the old man is subject to sudden dereliction of his faculties, he loses the order of his ideas, and entangles himself in his own thoughts, till he recovers the leading principle, and falls again into his former train. This idea of dotage encroaching upon wisdom, will solve all the phaenomena of the character of Polonius.