II.ii.625 (230,5) tent him] Search his wounds. II.ii.632 (230,7) More relative than this] [_Relative_, for _convictive_. WARB.] _Convictive_ is only the consequential sense. _Relative_ is, _nearly related, closely connected_. III.i.17 (231,2) o'er-raught on the way] _Over-raught_ is _over-reached_, that is, _over-took_. III.i.31 (232,4) Affront Ophelia.] To _affront_, is only _to meet directly_. III.i.47 (233,5) 'Tis too much prov'd] It is found by too frequent experience. III.i.52 (233,6) more ugly to the thing that helps it] That is, _compared with_ the thing that helps it. III.i.56-88 (233,7) To be, or not to be?] Of this celebrated soliloquy, which bursting from a man distracted with contrariety of desires, and overwhelmed with the magnitude of his own purposes, is connected rather in the speaker's mind, than on his tongue, I shall endeavour to discover the train, and to shew how one sentiment produces another. Hamlet, knowing himself injured in the most enormous and atrocious degree, and seeing no means of redress, but such as must expose him to the extremity of hazard, meditates on his situation in this manner: _Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress_, it is necessary to decide, whether, _after our present state, we are_ to be or not to be. That is the question, which, as it shall be answered, will determine, _whether 'tis nobler_, and more suitable to the dignity of reason, _to suffer the outrages of fortune_ patiently, or to take arms against _them_, and by opposing end them, _though perhaps_ with the loss of life. If _to die_, were _to sleep_, no more, _and by a sleep to end_ the miseries of our nature, such a sleep were _devoutly to be wished_; but if _to sleep_ in death, be _to dream_, to retain our powers of sensibility, we must _pause_ to consider, _in that sleep of death what dreams may come_. This consideration _makes calamity_ so long endured; for _who would bear_ the vexations of life, which might be ended _by a bare bodkin_, but that he is afraid of something in unknown futurity? This fear it is that gives efficacy to conscience, which, by turning the mind upon _this regard_, chills the ardour of _resolution_, checks the vigour of _enterprize_, and makes the _current_ of desire stagnate in inactivity. We may suppose that he would have applied these general observations to his own case, but that he discovered Ophelia. III.i.59 (234,8) Or to take arms against a sea of troubles] [W: against assail] Mr. Pope proposed _siege_. I know not why there should be so much solicitude about this metaphor. Shakespeare breaks his metaphors often, and in this desultory speech there was less need of preserving them.