clination there is an utter want of evidence. | Spinoza (to whom M. Stahr compares him on Of the occasional remarks in question M. Stahr is not slow to make the most. Even a very common-place poetical panegyric on Frederic II., contributed by Lessing in his youth as a feuilletonist to a Berlin paper, is forced into the argument. The poet says that it would be a happiness to the king, were his people already worthy of him," which is interpreted to mean, "in other words, if it could do without even so intelligent (erleuchtet) a despotism." M. Stahr has also discovered a passage in which Lessing advocates the unity of Germany, though merely for the object of free trade between the States. It would have been well to omit all fruitless speculation as to what Lessing "would have done" had he lived in the times of the great struggle against absolutism," and to confess at once, as the author afterwards does, that Lessing's radicalism was only "theoretic." The biographer perceives Schiller's motto, In tyrannos, visible, though unwritten, on the brow of Minna Von Barnhelm; and quotes more direct evidence from the fragmentary dramas, Spartacus and Henzi, the hero of the latter of which is said to be none other than Lessing himself. Had Lessing felt it to be part of his mission to be a political reformer, he was not the man to give any but a full and complete expression to the passionate longings within him. But he had to fight other battles, and with other foes. The work of his life was to conquer liberty of thought-" the one true lesson," in the words of a modern historian, "worth learning from the Reformation," and the one lesson Lessing had learnt from the history of his country. We had intended to make a few observations on Lessing's plays, whose poetical merits M. Stahr appears to us much to overrate. It is known that he himself wished them excluded from representation on the national stage he was working for; and it is evident that he wrote them, so to speak, more from a sense of duty, as practical examples, than from the instincts of creative genius. It has been remarked that his own inclinations lay rather towards the epos than to the drama-a tendency (barren except of one small but perfect fruit), which, it may be remembered, for a long time hampered Goethe's productive power. The private life of Lessing, like that of more than one occasion), was one of singular and unblemished purity, and furnishes another proof of the certain, but not very profound truth, that freedom of speculation is not, as some have ever been found to hold, the beginning of immorality. His biographer observes (we hope we are not uncharitable in suspecting that we detect in the observation the faintest possible tinge of regret) that— "Lessing is the only one among the heroes of our classical literature, in whose heart, love, full and great, found no entrance till the maturity of manhood. He was forty years old when he met, in Eva König, the wife of his heart, and the story of his life up to that time knows of no passion in any way proved by evidence." M. Stahr, however, insists on the truth of the rumor that Lessing, as early as his nineteenth year, entertained a passing passion for the actress Lorenz, and proceeds to make the most of it. He has also discovered, even against his own judgment, possible evidence, in a poem of eight lines, that his hero was guilty of a "transitory error." His marriage, long delayed by money difficulties, took place in October, 1776, and ere sixteen months had passed, he was a broken-hearted widower, his beloved Eva having followed their first infant to the grave. "My wife is dead," he wrote, "and this experience, too, I have made. I am glad that there cannot be many such experiences remaining for me to make." His studies were now to him, to use his own expression, "laudanum ;" and with a weary heart he bore the burden of the remaining three years of his existence. Yet to those three years we owe Nathan and his Education of the Human Race. Such was the domestic life of this great manone year of happiness, and all the other years full of hope deferred, and of other trials for his own family was a source of anything but comfort to him. His public life may be simply described as a struggle for bare existence. He began it as little better than a literary hack; and ended it as the underpaid librarian of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick. The Elector Palatine generously promised him an annual pension for which he received devoted thanks, but of which his memory was never retentive enough to cause the payment of a single louis d'or. Such was the situation of the "theoretic re publicans," the great German men of letters | exception of the German princes (against of Lessing's time. Klopstock lived on the whom M. Stahr has a parting fling for their pension of a foreign sovereign. Wieland refusal to contribute to Lessing's monuwas a ducal tutor, "probably more to the ment) has been more grateful, and, whether prince's advantage than his own," as Lessing it hails him as the genius of Revolution, wrote to him; and the latter was starved by with Gervinus, or of Evolution, with M. the bounty of two other native Mæcenases. Stahr willingly subscribes to the eloquent He died so poor that Duke Ferdinand was summing-up by the latter of his efforts in obliged to have him buried at the public ex- the search of truth:pense; but his munificence did not extend to the raising of a tombstone. The late Mr. De Quincey has compared the influence of Lessing on his contemporaries in Germany to that of Dr. Johnson on English literature. The comparison has very little point in it; but it would have been well for Lessing if, in a material sense, literature had been honored in him as it was in the person of the doctor. Posterity, with the "The reformer of our national poetry and literature, the creator of our prose, the founder of our stage, the legislator of our critical and aesthetical systems, superior in all their fields to all his contemporaries becomes the reformer of German philosophy begun by Luther, the founder of the historic and theology, the continuer of the great work view of religion, the great apostle of all true progress towards light in his century." IN Mr. Bentley's edition of "The Life and Letters of Washington Irving," edited by his nephew, Pierre M. Irving, there are some very important and interesting additions to the American text, one a thoroughly Washington-Irvingish description of his "cottage and his neices" on the banks of the Hudson, and its " roses and ivy from Melrose Abbey." It was written in February, 1846, during a short visit to Harley street-a welcome holiday snatched from his duties as American minister at Madrid, after he had tendered his resignation-to Mrs. Dawson, who was the Flora Foster of Flitwick, and whose sister, Emily Foster, now Mrs. Fuller, for whom he entertained at one time a warm attachment, furnishes to this volume seventy-nine pages of letters to herself, a diary, and recollections of friendly intercourse with Washington Irving. MESSRS. BOSWORTH AND HARRISON have just issued "The Book of Common Prayer," etc., newly arranged in the order in which it is appointed to be used, printed by the queen's printer, in 32mo., containing all the services, with the Rubrics, without omission or addition. In this edition the several parts of each service are printed in the order in which they are appointed to be used, by means of which a child or any person unfamiliar with the Prayer Book may readily find the places throughout the services. MESSRS. LONGMAN & Co. announce an English dictionary, founded on Dr. Johnson's. The edition of 1773, the last edited by the author, is to form the substratum; Todd's additions are to be used; and all words of recent introduction, whether once obsolete or newly formed, are to find a place. It is to be published in quarto, in parts, the first to appear in the autumn. MESSRS. WILLIAMS AND NORGATE have in the press Mr. R. C. Carrington's "Observations of the Solar Spots," made at Redhill Observatory from 1853 to 1861; also, Dr. Cureton's "Ancient Syriac Documents relative to the Earliest Establishment of Christianity at Edessa," from the year after the Ascension to the fourth century. A MAP of Africa, to illustrate the discovery of the sources of the Nile by Captains Speke and Grant, and showing the route of these explorers, as well as the routes of other recent African travellers, has just been published by Mr. Wyld, of Charing Cross, Geographer to the Queen. DR. AUGUST KNOBEL, well-known for his many and zealous labors in the field of biblical literature, more especially his commentaries and historical investigations on the Old Testament, died a few days ago, at the age of fifty-seven, at Giessen. ENCORES.-The New York Philharmonic Society prints upon its programmes the following judicious rule upon this subject-"Encores cannot be permitted, as the programmes of the concerts are made out with reference to the time occupied by the various pieces, beyond which it does not seem desirable to extend the duration of the performance.” "-Reader. From The Reader. A Study of Hamlet. By John Conolly, M. play, act by act. In the greater part of this examination he proceeds as any careful nonmedical critic might have done - showing that, though there are various passages in the drama which seem to assert distinctly A STUDY of Shakspeare's "Hamlet" by so that Hamlet is only feigning madness, and great a medical authority in lunacy as Dr. though in the course of his conduct he must Conolly is a literary curiosity, sure to attract be supposed as now and then putting on a attention. And this little volume deserves form of madness not his own, yet, on all the attention which it is sure to attract. It principles of human nature and dramatic is extremely well-written-better, even as a consistency, the theory of feigned madness piece of literary criticism and exposition, than throughout becomes untenable and repulsive, many of the commentaries on Shakspeare and must give way to a theory of a real madthat have come from the pens of professedly ness, or unhinging of the mind, partly conliterary men. A vein of gentleness, of ten-stitutional and partly brought about by sudderness, of sweet and sympathetic interest in den circumstance, and one of the characterisall the human affections, pervades it, which may be unexpected in such a veteran of peculiar experience as Dr. Conolly, but which cannot fail to cause a real liking and respect for him, and an increased sense also of the patient kindliness, as well as of the wisdom, into which such arduous medical experience as his may have educated many of his profession. No youth, no lady, could have written with more of gentle feeling, of soothing and benevolent manner in contemplating any ideal instance of bruised humanity, than is shown by this veteran writer, much of whose life has been passed amid spectacles of bruised humanity so various and so terrible that one might think, judging hastily and wrongly, that the edge of his natural tenderness must have been blunted long ago. The amount and the quality of literary culture shown in the book are also more than common; the style is clear, sweet, and flowing; and the taste in matters of poetry true and good. Passages might be quoted of shrewd exposition, and of really useful remark on the present state of dramatic criticism, and of our theatrical representations of Shakspeare's plays. tic peculiarities of which is that it plays with the very idea of madness. Throughout the greater part of this exposition, we say, Dr. Conolly reasons very much as any merely literary critic might have done; and one is rather disappointed at not having more exact reminiscences of asylums and of actual cases of insanity of alleged Hamlet type adduced in corroboration. One can see, however, that, underneath the text, is a fund of such recollections, of actual cases of insanity, and that these recollections, even when not adduced, may have helped Dr. Conolly to his conclusions. Here and there, also-indeed, at every very important point of the story where Hamlet's conduct takes a new turnreferences of a general kind are made to phenomena of actual insanity observed and registered by Dr. Conolly in the course of his experience among the insane. These references are rather more general than we should have liked to have from such an authority as Dr. Conolly when he was writing on such a subject; but they are interesting so far as they go, and a few of them may be quoted and supplied with titles : One characteristic of a healthy brain-He [Hamlet] is constitutionally deficient in that quality of a healthy brain or mind which may be termed its elasticity, in virtue of which should be sustained without damage, and in the changes and chances of the mutable world various trials steadfastness and trust still pre served. Dr. Conolly's main purpose, however, is to combat the idea that Hamlet's madness was -as many of the commentators have argued, and as most actors who have hitherto performed the part have assumed in their representations of it-only a feigned madness, and to show that Shakspeare's real notion was to represent in Hamlet a peculiar and medically-tive minds: Any sudden and sharp mortifiA psychological characteristic of very sensiknown kind of actual insanity, and that, in cation, or any novelty effecting character or carrying out this notion, he has succeeded position, or involving some exposure of the wonderfully. This theory he endeavors to secrets of the heart, creates a hasty resolve, make out by a detailed examination of the generally soon forgotten, to set aside all the past, to re-model all the manner of life, to alter every habit, to sacrifice every customary pleasure and solace, and henceforth to live secluded in gloom and reserve. Hamlet's secretiveness and consciousness of his insanity:-The very exhortation to secresy, shown to be so important in Hamlet's imagination, are but illustrations, of one part of his character, and must be recognizable as such by all physicians intimately acquainted with the beginnings of insanity. It is by no means unfrequent that, when the disease is only incipient, and especially in men of exercised minds, the patient has an uneasy consciousness of his own departure from a perfectly sound understanding. He becomes aware that, however he may refuse to acknowledge it, his command over his thoughts or his words is not steadily maintained, whilst at the same time he has not wholly lost his control over either. He suspects that he is suspected; and anxiously and ingeniously accounts for his oddities. Some times he challenges inquiry, and courts various tests of his sanity, and sometimes he declares that, in doing extravagant things, he has only been pretending to be eccentric, in order to astonish the fools about him, and who, he knew, were watching him. The morning hours of the melancholy mad: -Those whose duties make them conversant with cases of disordered mind, and especially those who have had the unhappiness of seeing it in the form of melancholia of recent invasion, will recognize in the state and actions of Hamlet at this time (i.e., at the time of his wild interview with Ophelia, Act ii., Scene 1) a reflection of what they can scarcely fail to have observed. It is after such watchings, and after unrefreshing sleep succeeding, that the awakening comes not only without relief, but with sharper returns of sorrow, and the troubled ideas of yesterday recur with hideous strength. Sometimes the advancing hours of the day, and their various occurrences, restore the patient to calmness, or, for a time, to reason; but still the morning hours are full of peril, and the truce is treacherous: to the first fury an ominous silence succeeds, and a fixed resolution remains to effect some utterly insane purpose, to sacrifice some victim whose fate is linked with some delusion, or to rush on some frightful mode of self-destruction. "O dear Ophelia, I am ill at ease at these numbers; I have not art to reckon my groans: but that I love thee best, oh, most best, believe it. Adieu. "Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him, "HAMLET." This letter seems usually regarded as a mere extravagance; but it deserves rather ten before Hamlet's abrupt visit to Ophelia graver consideration. It was probably writlast she had received from him written after in her chamber, and might have been the his dreadful scene with the ghost, from him as a kind of remonstrance, conseand wrung quent on the doubt of his truth and honor implied by the repulsion of his letters folwhenever written, his mind was already overlowing immediately after that shock. But shadowed with malady. There is nothing of mocking or jesting in it, but evident and painful proof of shattered power and failing trust. The writer begins extravagantly, then essays verse, and attempts a kind of assertion of his own fidelity; appears unable to go on, under a load of misery; passionately and tenderly, but still sorrowfully, he repeats his profession of love, and in the closing words we perceive only figures of despondency and death. Such a composition cannot be deemed a part of a plan of deception, or a mockery of a tender woman, whose love he had gained, and whom he himself loved. Except as the production of a disordered mind, there is no meaning in it; but it is perfectly consistent with what is observed in letters written every day by persons partially insane, both in and out of asylums, who labor under impulses to express in writing the sentiments occupying their imagination, but find the effort too much for them, and become bewildered, and unable to command words sufficiently emphatic to represent them. In Hamlet's distraction, his thoughts have almost quitted the night scene on the platform; and in his complicated distress they have turned chiefly towards Ophelia. There is considerable risk of error in commenting on the precise application of many words used two centuries before our time; but even the accidental substitution of the word beautified, which Polonius condemns as a vile phrase, for the word beautiful is not at all unlike the literal the writers aim at force, and are not satiserrors occurring often in madmen's letters: fied with ordinary words. Altogether, the style of the letter has so singular a resemblance to that of insane persons of an intel lectual character, but disturbed by insanity, | weeks, or months, or years. Such patients as almost to justify the supposition that Shakspeare had met with some such letter in the curious case-books of his son-in-law, Dr. Hall, of Stratford-upon-Avon. will even re-write words or letters, copying them precisely for presentation every morning. Many of them who are even generally violent, and sometimes dangerous, are yet shrewd enough to challenge those who adAbsence of tenderness a mark of insanity:dress them to prove their madness, asking The diffusion of the element of tenderness them to propose questions or calculations to over the whole of Hamlet's character, how-them, or to examine them as to circumstances ever skilfully effected on the stage, is an un- and times and dates. authorized departure from the delineation of his character by Shakspeare. The disapInfectiousness of insanity:-This accuraupearance of tenderness from a sensitive and lation of madness in one play might seem to irresolute mind, after the shocks of violent afford matter for criticism; but it is not at surprise, and in the confusion of half-formed variance with what, in scenes of complicated and murderous designs, is but one among trouble and trial, physicians see now and the indications of the morbid change that and then examples of husbands becoming has been wrought in the prince's character. insane in the course of the long and hopeless insanity of wives; sensitive women's hearts Ferocity of insanity-Well has Dr. John- failing and reason undermined when a husson said "This speech," [when Hamlet, see-band's madness has broken up their home ing the king at prayer, will not kill him, lest his and ruined every comfortable hope; grieving soul should then go to Heaven] "in which Ham- mothers falling into profound melancholy for let, represented as a virtuous character, is not sons or daughters stricken with mental malcontent with taking blood for blood, but con-ady; and lovers becoming insane when the trives damnation for the man that he would fond object of love has been unexpectedly depunish, is too horrible to be read or to be prived of reason. And of all these things uttered." But it is the speech of a man Shakspeare had observed something, as of uttering maniacal exaggerations of feeling. all things else. Such exaggerations of anger or ferocity are occasionally recognized in the ravings of the mad, but of no other persons, however enraged or depraved. The speech, it is also to be observed, has no listeners; there is nobody by to feign to. The terrible words are the dictation of a mind so metamorphosed by disorder, that all healthy and natural feelings, all goodness and mercy, have been forcibly driven out of it. Anxiety of madmen to prove their sanity. It is curious to observe that the arguments he adduces to disprove his mother's supposition [that he is mad] are precisely such as certain ingenious madmen delight to employ, HAM. Ecstasy! My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, ness That I have uttered: bring me to the test This distinction of Hamlet has been too In Madness vanishing in extreme activity, or near death :-The final scene of the play, although the deaths of four of the personages are included in it, is rendered pathetic, and even dignified, by the demeanor of Hamlet himself, by the dying tokens of his mother's love for him, and by Horatio's faithful attachment and profound and affectionate grief for his loss. The better part of Hamlet has survived all his mental discomposures. BeLaertes, at the king's request, although fore the fencing begins, he takes the hand of treacherously given to him both by Laertes and the king, and even asks pardon of him for the wrong he did; disclaiming any purposed evil, and ascribing what he did to his madness. . In the shock of all these incidents, Hamlet evinces no mental unsoundness. Death is approaching, stronger than madness. His faculties are forcibly aroused to serious action and fanciful meditations have no more dominion over him. At length, he feels that death is in his veins, and approaching his heart. He thinks he could tell the pale bystanders something: but it cannot be. He has but energy left to prevent Horatio from drinking the remaining poison, as one resolved to die with him after the old Roman fashion. On the whole, Dr. Conolly's theory of the character of Hamlet is well worth considering. Our wretched popular criticism is in the habit of discrediting all such attempts to |