Tanner, would enable people to more easily re-
sist the demands of appetite : Marshal Saxe rec-
ommends that once a week, at least, food should
not be served out to the troops, to render them,
in case of necessity, less sensible to their priva-
tion. It is equally evident that the habit of hav-
ing had frequent and regular meals wotild tend,
during a famine, to make people cannibals, and
the thing has notoriously happened a thousand
times. Then what is there ridiculous in the idea
that the picture of mothers ready through fam-
ine to devour their children is an illustration of
an adage which says that habit is stronger than
nature, — which says, in efEect, that the habi-
tudes of feeding are stronger than maternal
love? The point is one which the reviewer
might have chewed upon during the intervals of
his fine Shakespearean laughter !

His cachinnatory exercise continues over the
next Promus entry (1404), which is merely "
the," and is considered by Mrs. Pott as a mem-
orandum for forms of ejaculation quite usual
in Shakespeare, such as " the heavens ! " "0
the devil ! " "0 the gods ! " etc. It should
be remarked that these ejaculatory forms are a



34 HAMLET'S NOTE-BOOK.
distinctive though minor feature of the free,
famihar, ordinary, passionate speech which dif-
ferentiates the Shakespeare plays from the more
artificial and magniloquent work of the other
Elizabethan dramatists, and might therefore well
be the subject of a Promus jotting. Mr.
