The following is an excerpt from “Jane Austen and her Predecessors” by Frank B. Bradbrook.

Darcy, too, refers indirectly to this play [Hamlet]: ‘There is, I believe in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.’ Hamlet’s remarks, from which Darcy’s derive, reflect Elizabethan theories concerning human character and behaviour:

So, oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty [25]
(Since nature cannot choose his origin),
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit, that too much o'er-leavens
The form of plausive manners -- that these men, [30]
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,
His virtues else, be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,
Shall in the general censure take corruption [35]
From that particular fault: the dram of evil
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.