to Shakspeare. BULLER. May we crack nuts? NORTH. By all means. And here they are for you to crack. BULLER. Now for some of your astounding Discoveries. NORTH. If you gather the Movement, scene by scene, of the Action of this Drama, you see a few weeks, or it be months. may There must be time to hear that Malcolm and his brother have reached England and Ireland-time for the King of England to interest himself in behalf of Malcolm, and muster his array. More than this seems unrequired. But the zenith of tyranny to which Macbeth has arrived, and particularly the manner of describing the desolation of Scotland by the speakers in England, conveys to you the notion of a long, long dismal reign. Of old it always used to do so with me; so that when I came to visit the question of the Time, I felt myself as if baffled and puzzled, not finding the time I had looked for, demonstrable. Samuel Johnson has had the same impression, but has not scrutinized the data. He goes probably by the old Chronicler for the actual time, and this, one would think, must have floated before Shakspeare's own mind. TALBOYS. Nobody can read the Scenes in England without seeing long-protracted time. "Malcolm. Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there Weep our sad bosoms empty. Macduff Let us rather Hold fast the mortal sword, and, like good men, NORTH. Ay, Talboys, that is true Shakspeare. No Poet-before or since-has in so few words presented such a picture. No poet, before or since, has used such words. He writes like a man inspired. TALBOYS. And in the same dialogue Malcolm says―― "I think our country sinks beneath the yoke, It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash Is added to her wounds." NORTH. Go on, my dear Talboys. Your memory is a treasury of all the highest Poetry of Shakspeare. Go on. TALBOYS. And hear Rosse, on his joining Malcolm and Macduff in this scene, the latest arrival from Scotland :- lives Expire before the flowers in their caps, NORTH. Words known to all the world, yet coming on the ear of each individual listener with force unweaken'd by familiarity, power increased by repetition, as it will be over all Scottish breasts in secula seculorum. TALBOYS. By Heavens! he smiles! There is a sarcastic smile on that incomprehensible face of yours, sir-of which no man in this Tent, I am sure, may divine the reason. NORTH. I was not aware of it. Now, my dear Talboys, let us here endeavor to ascertain Here we have long time Shakspeare's Time. with a vengeance--and here we have short time; FOR THIS IS THE PICTURE OF THE STATE OF POOR SCOTLAND BEFORE THE MURDER OF MACDUFF'S WIFE AND CHILDREN. BULLER. What? SEWARD. Eh? NORTH. Macduff, moved by Rosse's words, asks him, you know, Talboys, "how does my wife ?" And then ensues the affecting account of her murder, which you need not recite. Now, I ask, when was the murder of Lady Macduff perpetrated? Two dayscertainly not more-after the murder of Banquo. Macbeth, incensed by the flight of Fleance, goes, the morning after the murder Len. Ay, my good lord. Macb. Time, thou anticipat'st my dread exploits : The flighty purpose never is o'ertook, Unless the deed go with it: from this moment, The castle of Macduff I will surprise; "Enter Macbeth as King." "Our great Feast" our "solemn Supper"-"this day's Council"-all have the aspect of new taking on the style of Royalty. "Thou hast it Now," is formal-weighed-and in a position that gives it authority-at the very beginning of an Act-therefore intended to mark time-a very pointing of the finger on the dial. BULLER. Good image-short and apt. TALBOYS. Let me perpend. BULLER. Do, sir, let him perpend. NORTH. Banquo fears "Thou play'dst most foully for it;" he goes no farther--not a word of any tyranny done. All the style of an incipient, dangerous Rule-clouds, but no red rain yet. And I need not point out to you, Talboys, who carry Shakspeare unnecessarily in a secret pocket of that strange Sporting Jacket, which the more I look at it the greater is my wonder-that Macbeth's behavior at the Banquet, on seeing Banquo nodding at him from his own stool, proves him to have been then young in blood. "My strange and self-abuse Is the initiate fear that wants hard use. We are yet but young in deed." He had a week or two before committed a first-rate murder, Duncan's-that night he had, by hired hands, got a second-rate job done, Banquo's-and the day following he gave orders for a bloody business on a more extended scale, the Macduffs. But nothing here the least like Rosse's, or Macduff's, or Malcolm's Picture of Scotland-during those few weeks. For Shakspeare forgot, what the true time was-his own time-the short time; and introduced long time at the same time-why, he himself no doubt knew--and you no doubt, Talboys, know also--and will you have the goodness to tell the "why" to the Tent? TALBOYS. In ten minutes. Are you done? NORTH. Not quite. Meanwhile-Two Clocks are going at once-which of the two gives the true time of Day? BULLER. Short and apt. Go on, Sir. NORTH. I call that an ASTOUNDING DISCOVERY. Macduff speaks as if he knew that Scotland had been for ever so long desolated by the Tyrant-and yet till Rosse told him, never had he heard of the Murder of his own Wife! Here Shakspeare either forgot himself wholly, and the short time he had himself assigned-or, with his eyes open, forced in the long time upon the short--in willful violation of possibility! All silent? TALBOYS. After supper-you shall be answered, NORTH. Not by any man now sitting here -or elsewhere. TALBOYS. That remains to be heard. NORTH. Pray, Talboys, explain to me this. The Banquet scene breaks up in most admired disorder-"stand not upon the order of your going-but go at once,"-quoth the Queen. The King, in a state of great excitement, says to her- "I will to-morrow, (Betimes I will,) unto the weird sisters: One might have thought not quite so tedious; "Witch.-By the pricking of my thumbs Macbeth.-How now, you secret, Black, and It is a "dark Cave,"-dark at all times— and now "by times" of the morning! Now -observe-Lenox goes along with Macbeth -on such occasions 'tis natural to wish 'one of ourselves to be at hand. And Lenox had been at the Banquet. Had he gone to bed after that strange Supper? No doubt for an hour or two-like the rest of "the Family." But whether he went to bed or not, then and there he and another Lord had a confidential and miraculous conversation. TALBOYS. Miraculous! What's Miraculous about it? NORTH. Lenox says to the other Lord— My former speeches have but hit your thoughts, Was pitied of Macbeth-marry he was dead. Who told him all this about Banquo and Fleance? He speaks of it quite familiarly to the "other lord," as a thing well known in all its bearings. But not a soul but Macbeth, and the Three Murderers themselves, could possibly have known anything about it! As for Banquo, "Safe in a ditch he hides," and Fleance had fled. The body may, perhaps in a few days, be found, and, though "with twenty trenched gashes on its head," identified as Banquo's, and, in a few weeks, Fleance may turn up in Wales. Nay, the Three Murderers may confess. But now all is hush; and Lenox, unless endowed with second sight, or clairvoyance, could know nothing of the murder. Yet, from his crowner's 'quest had sitten on the body—and way of speaking of it, one might imagine the report been in the Times between supper and that after-supper confab! I am overthrown-everted-subverted--the contradiction is flagrant-the impossibility monstrous I swoon. BULLER. Water-water. NORTH. Gentlemen, I have given you a 66 all BULLER. Have announced mans, lend me your ears! A dazzling spell is From the New Monthly Magazine. POSTHUMOUS MEMOIR OF MYSELF. BY HORACE SMITH, ESQ. [Continued from the November Number of the Eclectic Magazine.] CHAPTER IX. QUICKLY, too quickly, however, did my thoughts, recurring to my miserable plight, begin to speculate upon the nature of the horrors in which it must inevitably terminate. Should I, recovering my muscular powers and my voice, make desperate and frantic efforts to force up the lid of the coffin; and, failing in that struggle, madly scream and shout for assistance? Faint and forlorn must be such a hope, for the church was an isolated building, and there were neither houses nor footpaths in its immediate vicinity. Even if I succeeded in escaping from the coffin, I should still be a prisoner in the vault, to stumble over the mouldering remains of my forefathers, finally to perish slowly and wretchedly of madness and starvation. One alternative remained. My apparent death might gradually be changed into a real one; life might faint away from me, and I might slide into another world without suffering, and almost without consciousness-an euthanasia for which I put up fresh prayers to the Fountain of Mercy. A new turn was given to my reflections by the striking of the church clock, whose echoes reverberated through the empty edifice with a peculiar solemnity; and I occupied myself in mentally reckoning the minutes till the sound was repeated, to which I listened with a mingled feeling of dismay and consolation. True, it warned me that I was an hour nearer to death, but it proved also that I was not yet completely cut off from the upper world; nay, it seemed to restore me to the living scenes I had quitted, for my mind floating upward on every fresh vibration, dwelt among all the objects and occupations appropriate to that peculiar time. Who can wonder that I should find a melancholy pleasure in the delusion of this waking dream? It was dispelled by a very different sound, by the chirping and twittering of birds, some of them singing from the adjacent yew-tree, and others hopping about, as I conjectured, close to the steps of my vault. Sadness there was in their merriment, for it made my own miserable plight more bitter, and I could not help mentally ejaculating, "Oh, blessed birds! ye have the bright sun and the balmy air for your recreation; ye have wings to convey ye over the whole beautiful expanse of nature; ye have voices to give expression to your delight, and to convert happiness into music; while I—” The contrast was too horrible, and I wrenched my thoughts away from its contemplation. Evening had arrived, and all was silence, when suddenly the church-organ poured forth its rich, swelling, and sonorous volume of sound, followed by the melodious voices of children singing a hymn, and blending into a harmony ineffably sweet and solemn. For a moment I was bewildered, and I should have believed myself under the influence of another dream, had I not recollected that it was Friday evening, when the clerk and organist invariably summoned the charity children to the church, that they might rehearse the singing for the coming Sabbath. Oh! how I yearned to join in their devotions! Oh! with what complacency of soul did I listen to them! Oh! how my heart sank within me when the performance was over, and the church-doors were again locked, and the last lingering footstep was heard to quit the burial-ground! Still, however, did those sacred symphonies vibrate in my ear, enchanting and exciting my fancy, until it conjured up an ideal presentment of surpassing grandeur and glory. Methought I saw the last sun that earth was destined to behold slowly sinking down into the shuddering sea; and a ghastly frown spread itself over the face of nature; and a sable curtain was lowered upon the world; and all was night, and deep darkness, and death :--when lo! in an opposite direction, the veil of heaven was lifted up; the aurora of a new and transcendently | Dr. Linnel had returned sooner than was exbeautiful creation was revealed, its sun shin- pected; his previous suspicions had been ing with a radiant and yet undazzling splen- confirmed by the indecent haste of my budor; and the air was scented with aromatic rial; he had instantly dispatched people to odors; and fair-haired angels, hovering on disinter me; his skill would quickly discover roseate wings, struck their golden harps, at- that I was only in a trance; he would retuning their dulcet and melodious voices to a store me to life; I should be enabled to rechoral anthem, as they majestically floated ward my dutiful and affectionate daughter, around a central throne, upon whose ineffa- to punish my unnatural son, to enjoy, perble glories no human eye could bear to gaze. haps, several years of an existence made How long my faculties were absorbed in the happy by the consciousness that it was free contemplation of this vision I know not, but from reproach in the sight of Heaven, and some hours must thus have slipped away, not unbeneficial to my fellow-creatures. for when it was dispelled by the noise of a Never, no, never, were I to live for a hunstorm rushing across the churchyard, the dred years, shall I forget the flash of ecstasy clock was striking twelve. Heavily did its that electrified my bosom at this moment! iron clang vibrate through the building, and Hope, methought, leapt upon my throbbing send its sullen echoes far and near upon the heart, and clapped her hands, and shouted pinions of the sweeping tempest. aloud in a transport of joy-" Saved! saved! saved!" Midnight! Superstitious as it may be, an undefined fear and awe ever hang about it like a shroud; but how immeasurably more impressive must have been the influence of the hour, with all its ghostly and ghastly associations, to me, inhumed and yet alive! surrounded by the mouldering remains of countless generations, and in actual contact with the corpses or the skeletons of my own forefathers! As if for the purpose of accumulating horrors upon horrors, the war of the elements became momentarily more loud and furious. The wind, which had previously moaned and groaned, now burst into a fierce howl; the yew-tree creaked and rustled as its boughs were lashed by the gust; the rain was driven in rattling plashes against the door of the vault, the steps that led down to it not having yet been covered over; and a splitting peal of thunder that might almost have awakened the dead, seemed to shake the solid earth beneath me. In this terrific outburst the storm had spent its fury, for a lull succeeded, during which a faint sound fell upon mine ear that almost maddened me with excitement. "Gracious heaven!" I exclaimed, in thought, "do my senses deceive me? can that be the tramp of feet? It is it is! They come nearer-nearer-nearer-they descend the steps-hist! hark!-the key rattles in the lock-it turns-the door is opened the door is opened-the door is opened !! CHAPTER X. THE parties who entered the vault, as I quickly discovered by their voices, were the sexton, and Hodges, the foreman, who had superintended all the arrangements of my coffin. What a precious wild night, Master Griffith!" said the latter, "but not more wild and out of the way than the whole of this here day's work. Only to think of Mr. George, when his father's hardly cold, as a man may say, instead of riding home decent, after the funeral, giving a regular blow-out to all our fellows at the Jolly Cricketers,' making some on 'em as drunk as fiddlers, and then setting them to play at leapfrog; and he and Sir Freeman Dashwood laughing fit to split when they tumbled over one another.' "Well, I call that downright scandalous, and disgraceful to all parties, 'specially as he never axed me," replied the sexton. upon The burning indignation with which I listened to this wicked and wanton insult my memory, this outrage upon all decency, was in some degree allayed by the recollection that my quick deliverance and anticipated revival would enable me to show my sense of such unnatural conduct. Miraculous is the lightning speed with which, in a crisis like this, thoughts rush through the mind. In less than a second mine had solved the whole mystery, and II could account for my deliverance from the grave even before it had been accomplished. We sha'n't have much trouble with the coffin," resumed Hodges; "the lid baint half fastened, and I ha'n't screwed it down close, you see, not by a good eighth of an inch." This explained the distinctness with which had heard everything that passed around me, while the air admitted through the crevice may have assisted to preserve my life, |