Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cearments? Why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urn'd,
Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws,
To caft thee up again? What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in compleat steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous?

Never did the Grecian Muse of Tragedy relate a tale so full of pity and terror, as is imparted by the Ghost. Every circumstance melts us with compaffion; and with what horror do we hear him say !

GHOST.

But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold; whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy foul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.

All

All that follows is solemn, sad, and deeply affecting.

Whatever in Hamlet belongs to the præ'ternatural, is perfectly fine; the rest of the play does not come within the subject of this chapter.

The ingenious criticism on the play of the Tempest, published in the Adventurer, has made it unnecessary to enlarge on that admirable piece, which alone would prove our Author to have had a fertile, a fublime, and original genius.

THE

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