Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1810 edition. Excerpt:...that part of heav'n, Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one Here enters the Ghost, after you are thus prepared. There is something solemn and sublime in thus regulating the walking of the spirit, by the course of the star: it intimates a connection and correspondence between things beyond our ken, and above the visible diurnal sphere. Horatio is affected with that kind of fear, which such an appearance would naturally excite. He trembles, and turns pale. When the violence of the emotion subsides, he reflects, that probably this supernatural event portends some danger danger lurking in the state. This suggestion gives importance to the phaenomenon, and engages our attention. Horatio's relation of the king's combat with the Norwegian, and of the forces the young Fortinbras is assembling, in order to attack Denmark, seems to point out, from what quarter the apprehended peril is to arise. Such appearances, says he, preceded the fall of mighty Julius, and the ruin of the great commonwealth; and he adds, such have often been the omens of disasters in our own state. There is great art in this conduct. The true cause of the royal Dane's discontent could not be guessed at: it was a secret which could be only revealed by himself. In the mean time, it was necessary to captivate our attention, by demonstrating, that the poet was not going to exhibit such idle and frivolous gambols, as ghosts are by the vulgar often represented to perform. The historical testimony, that antecedent to the death of Caesar, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets, L 2 gives gives credibility and importance to this phenomenon. Horatio's address to the Ghost is brief and pertinent, and the whole...