because 'the maintenance of States is probably something beyond our
powers of understanding' [61]--verily, to Shakspere's doughty friends,
such a specimen of humanity as Montaigne must have been quite a new and
strange phenomenon. They were children of an age which achieved great
things because its nobler natures willingly suffered death when the
ideals of their life were to be realised. In them, the fire of
enthusiasm of the first Reformation, of the glorious time of Elizabeth,
was still glowing. They energetically championed the cause of Humanism.
The sublime conceptions of their epoch were not yet marred by that
dark and gloomy set of men whose mischievous members were just
beginning to hatch their hidden plans in the most remote manors of
England.

The friends of Shakspere well understood the true meaning of Hamlet's
words: [62]--'What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth
and heaven?' [63] They easily seized the gist and point of the answer
given to the King's question: [64]--'How fares our cousin Hamlet?'
when Hamlet replies:--

Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish!

Surely, some of them had read the Essay 'On the Inconsistency of our
Actions,' and had smiled at the passage:--

'Our ordinary manner is, to follow the inclination of our appetite--this
way, that way; upwards, downwards; even as the wind of the occasion
drives us. We never think of what _we would have_, but at the moment
we _would have it_; and _we change like that animal_ (the chameleon)
of which it is said that it takes the colour of the place where it
is laid down.' [65]