steps, as clawed the lover in his clutch [76] and shipped him into the
land as if he 'never had been such.'

By none has the relation between Ophelia and Hamlet been better felt and
described than by Goethe. He calls her 'the good child in whose soul,
secretly, a voice of voluptuousness resounds.' Hamlet who--driven
rudderless by his impulse, his passion, his daimon, from one extreme to
the other--drags everything that surrounds him into the abyss, also
destroys the future of the woman that might truly make him happy. He
disowns and rejects her whom Nature has formed for love. At a moment when
fanatical thoughts have mastered his reason, he bids her go to a nunnery.

Once more we must point to the Essay in which Montaigne lays down his
ideas about woman and love. French ladies, he says, study Boccaccio
and such-like writers, in order to become skilful (_habiles_). 'But
there is no word, no example, no single step in that matter which
they do not know better than our books do. That is a knowledge bred
in their very veins ... Had not this natural violence of their desires
been somewhat bridled by the fear and a feeling of honour wherewith
they have been provided, we would be dishonoured (_diffamez_).' Montaigne
says he knows ladies who would rather lend their honour than their
'_coach_.' [77]

'At last, when Ophelia has no longer any power over her own mind,' says
Goethe, 'her heart being on her tongue, that tongue becomes a traitor
against her.' [78]

In the scene of Ophelia's madness, we hear songs, thoughts, and
phrases probably caught up by her from Hamlet. The ideal which man
forms of woman, is the moral altitude on which she stands. Now, let