[Footnote I.30:
Take thy fair hour! time be thine;
And thy best graces spend it at thy will!
Catch the auspicious moment! be time thine own! and may the exercise of thy fairest virtue fill up those hours, that are wholly at your command!
[Footnote I.31: A little more than kin, and less than kind.] Dr. Johnson says that kind is the Teutonic word for child. Hamlet, therefore, answers to the titles of cousin and son, which the king had given him, that he was somewhat more than cousin, and less than son. Steevens remarks, that it seems to have been another proverbial phrase: "The nearer we are in blood, the further we must be from love; the greater the kindred is, the less the kindness must be." Kin is still used in the Midland Counties for cousin, and kind signifies nature. Hamlet may, therefore, mean that the relationship between them had become unnatural.