Such men
are always sure of the presence of their highest self on demand. Hamlet
is continually drawing bills on the future, secured by his promise of
himself to himself, which he can never redeem. His own somewhat feminine
nature recognizes its complement in Horatio, and clings to it
instinctively, as naturally as Horatio is attracted by that fatal gift of
imagination, the absence of which makes the strength of his own
character, as its overplus does the weakness of Hamlet's. It is a happy
marriage of two minds drawn together by the charm of unlikeness. Hamlet
feels in Horatio the solid steadiness which he misses in himself; Horatio
in Hamlet that need of service and sustainment to render which gives him
a consciousness of his own value. Hamlet fills the place of a woman to
Horatio, revealing him to himself not only in what he says, but by a
constant claim upon his strength of nature; and there is great
psychological truth in making suicide the first impulse of this quiet,
undemonstrative man, after Hamlet's death, as if the very reason for his
being were taken away with his friend's need of him. In his grief, he for
the first and only time speaks of himself, is first made conscious of
himself by his loss. If this manly reserve of Horatio be true to Nature,
not less so are the communicativeness of Hamlet, and his tendency to
soliloquize.
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