' Towards them he has, in fact, already done so. His desire
for a threefold oath; his repeated shifting of ground; his swearing
by the sword on which the hands are laid (a custom referable to the
time of the Crusades, and considered tantamount to swearing by the
cross, but which, at the same time, is an older Germanic, and hence
Danish, custom); his use of a Latin formula, _Hic et ubique_--all
these procedures have the evident object of throwing his comrades into
a mystic frame of mind, and to make them keep silence ('so help you
mercy!') as to what they have seen. These are the mysterious means
which those have to use that would make themselves the medium of a
message supernaturally revealed. [5]
A perusal of the fifty-sixth chapter of the first Essay of Montaigne
will show with what great reverence he treated ceremonial customs
and hollow formulas; for instance, the sign of the cross, of which he
'continually made use, even if he be but yawning' (_sic_). It is
not a mere coincidence, but a well-calculated trait in the character of
Hamlet, that in his speech he goes through a scale of exclamations and
asseverations such as Shakspere employs in no other of his poetical
creations. Hamlet incessantly mentions God, Heaven, Hell, and the
Devil, the Heavenly Hosts, and the Saints. He claims protection from
the latter at the appearance of the Ghost. He swears 'by St.
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