(2) Next, we cannot be mistaken in attributing to the Hamlet of earlier days an exquisite sensibility, to which we may give the name ‘moral,’ if that word is taken in the wide meaning it ought to bear.  This, though it suffers cruelly in later days, as we saw in criticising the sentimental view of Hamlet, never deserts him; it makes all his cynicism, grossness and hardness appear to us morbidities, and has an inexpressibly attractive and pathetic effect.  He had the soul of the youthful poet as Shelley and Tennyson have described it, an unbounded delight and faith in everything good and beautiful.  We know this from himself.  The world for him was herrlich wie am ersten Tag—­’this goodly frame the earth, this most excellent canopy the air, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.’  And not nature only:  ’What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!’ This is no commonplace to Hamlet; it is the language of a heart thrilled with wonder and swelling into ecstasy.

Doubtless it was with the same eager enthusiasm he turned to those around him.  Where else in Shakespeare is there anything like Hamlet’s adoration of his father?  The words melt into music whenever he speaks of him.  And, if there are no signs of any such feeling towards his mother, though many signs of love, it is characteristic that he evidently never entertained a suspicion of anything unworthy in her,—­characteristic, and significant of his tendency to see only what is good unless he is forced to see the reverse.  For we find this tendency elsewhere, and find it going so far that we must call it a disposition to idealise, to see something better than what is there, or at least to ignore deficiencies.  He says to Laertes, ‘I loved you ever,’ and he describes Laertes as a ‘very noble youth,’ which he was far from being.  In his first greeting of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, where his old self revives, we trace the same affectionateness and readiness to take men at their best.  His love for Ophelia, too, which seems strange to some, is surely the most natural thing in the world.  He saw her innocence, simplicity and sweetness, and it was like him to ask no more; and it is noticeable that Horatio, though entirely worthy of his friendship, is, like Ophelia, intellectually not remarkable.  To the very end, however clouded, this generous disposition, this ‘free and open nature,’ this unsuspiciousness survive.  They cost him his life; for the King knew them, and was sure that he was too ‘generous and free from all contriving’ to ’peruse the foils.’  To the very end, his soul, however sick and tortured it may be, answers instantaneously when good and evil are presented to it, loving the one and hating the other.  He is called a sceptic who has no firm belief in anything, but he is never sceptical about them.