general inferiority as being a copy from Homer, it particularly falls off from its original in the conception and preservation of character: it does not reach the sublimity and majesty of its model, but it has in a great degree adopted the simplicity, and entirely avoided the rusticity of Homer. Lucan and Claudian in later ages were perhaps as good versifiers as Virgil, but far inferior to him in that fine acquired taste, in which he excelled: they are ingenious but not simple; and execute better than they contrive. A passage from Claudian, which I shall beg the reader's leave to compare with one from Virgil (where he personifies the evil passions and plagues of mankind, and posts them at the entrance of hell, to which Æneas is descending) will exemplify what I have said: for at the same time that it will bear a dispute, whether Claudian's description is not even superior to Virgil's in poetical merit, yet the judicious manner of introducing it in one case, and the evident want of judgment in the other, will help to show, that the reason why we prefer Virgil to Claudian, is more on account of his superiority of taste than of talents. Claudian's description stands in the very front of his poem on Rufinus; Virgil's is woven into his fable, and will be found in the sixth book of his Eneid, as follows: Vestibulum ante ipsum, primisque in faucibus Orci, VIRGIL. Just in the gates and in the jaws of Hell DRYDEN. Protinus infernas ad limina tetra sorores CLAUDIAN. The productions of the human genius will borrow their complexion from the times in which they originate. Ben Jonson says, “that the players often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been (adds he) Would he had blotted out a thousand! which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour, for 1 loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any : he was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped; Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius; his wit was in his own power: would the rule of it had been so too!" I think there can be no doubt but this kind of indignant negligence with which Shakspeare wrote was greatly owing to the slight consideration he had for his audience. Jonson treated them with the dictatorial haughtiness of a pedant: Shakspeare with the carelessness of a gentleman who wrote at his ease, and gave them the first flowings of his fancy without any dread of their correction. These were times in which the poet indulged his genius without restraint; he stood alone and supereminent, and wanted no artificial scaffold to raise him above the heads of his contemporaries; he was natural, lofty, careless, and daringly incorrect. Place the same man in other times, amongst a people polished almost into general equality, and he shall begin to hesitate and retract his sallies; for in this respect poetical are like military excursions, and it makes a wide difference in the movements of a skilful general, whether he is to sally into a country defended by well disciplined troops, or only by an irregular mob of unarmed barbarians. Shakspeare might vault his Pegasus without a rein; mountains might rise and seas roll in vain before him: Nature herself could neither stop nor circumscribe his career. The modern man of verse mounts with the precaution of a riding master, and prances round his little circle full bitted and caparisoned in a prince of the blood royal, brother to the king, and next in consanguinity to the throne after the death of his elder brother the Duke of Clarence: Macbeth, on the contrary, is not in the succes-. sion And to be king Stands not within the prospect of belief. all the formality of a review. Whilst he is thus pacing and piaffering with every body's eyes upon him, his friends are calling out every now and then-" Seat yourself firm in the saddle! Hold your body straight! Keep your spurs from his sides for fear he sets a kicking! Have a care he does not stumble : there lies a stone, here runs a ditch; keep your whip still, and depend upon your bit, if you have not a mind to break your neck!"-On the other quarter his enemies are bawling out“How like a taylor that fellow sits on horseback! Look at his feet, look at his arms! Set the curs upon him; tie a cracker to his horse's tail, and make sport for the spectator!"-All this while perhaps the poor devil could have performed passably well, if it were not for the mobbing and hallowing about him: whereas Shak-witches, who salute Macbeth with their divinaspeare mounts without fear, and starting in the jockey phrase at score, cries out, "Stand clear, ye sons of earth! or, by the beams of my father Apollo, I'll ride over you and trample you into dust!" THERE are two very striking characters delineated by our great dramatic poet, which I am desirous of bringing together under one review, and these are Macbeth and Richard the Third. The parts, which these two persons sustain in their respective dramas, have a remarkable coincidence both are actuated by the same guilty ambition in the opening of the story: both murder their lawful sovereign in the course of it: and both are defeated and slain in battle at the conclusion of it: yet these two characters, under circumstances so similar, are as strongly distinguished in every passage of their dramatic life, by the art of the poet, as any two men ever were by the hand of nature. Let us contemplate them in the three following periods; viz. The premeditation of their crime; the perpetration of it; and the catastrophe of their death. Duncan, the reigning king of Scotland, has two sons: Edward the Fourth of England has also two sons; But these kings and their respective heirs do not affect the usurpers Macbeth and Richard in the same degree, for the latter is | His views therefore being further removed and more out of hope, a greater weight of circumstances should be thrown together to tempt and encourage him to an undertaking so much beyond the prospect of his belief. The art of the poet furnishes these circumstances, and the engine which his invention employs is of a preternatural and prodigious sort. He introduces in the very opening of his scene a troop of sybils or tions, and in three solemn prophetic gratulations hail him Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and King hereafter By Sinel's death I know I'm Thane of Glamis; One part of the prophecy therefore is true; the remaining promises become more deserving of belief. This is one step in the ladder of his ambition, and mark how artfully the poet has laid it in his way: no time is lost; the wonderful machinery is not suffered to stand still, for behold a verification of the second prediction, and a courtier thus addresses him from the king And, for an earnest of a greater honour, He bade me from him call thee Thane of Cawdor. The magic now works to his heart, and he cannot wait the departure of the royal messenger before his admiration vents itself aside— Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor! A second time he turns aside, and, unable to Two truths are told A soliloquy then ensues, in which the poet judi- an attack upon our pity as well as upon our hor- | the guilty impulse of ambition at bay, affords ror, when he puts the following question to his conscience Why do I yield to that suggestion, the noblest theme for the drama, and puts the creative fancy of our poet upon a resource, in which he has been rivalled only by the great father of tragedy, Eschylus, in the prophetic effusions of Cassandra, the incantations of the Persian Magi for raising the ghost of Darius, and the imaginary terrific forms of his furies; with all which our countryman probably had no acquaintance, or at most a very obscure one. When I see the names of these two great lu Now let us turn to Richard, in whose cruel heart no such remorse finds place: he needs no tempter: There is here no dignus vindice nodus, nor indeed any knot at all, for he is already prac-minaries of the dramatic sphere, so distant in tised in murder: ambition is his ruling passion, and a crown is in view, and he tells you at his very first entrance on the scene I am determined to be a villain. We are now presented with a character fall formed and complete for all the savage purposes of the drama. Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer. The barriers of conscience are broken down, and Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, time but so nearly allied in genius, casually brought in contact by the nature of my subject, I cannot help pausing for a while in this place to indulge so interesting a contemplation, in which I find my mind balanced between two objects, that seem to have equal claims upon me for my admiration. Eschylus is justly styled the father of tragedy, but this is not to be interpreted as if he was the inventor of it: Shakspeare with equal justice claims the same title, and his originality is qualified with the same exception. The Greek tragedy was not more rude and undigested when Eschylus brought it into shape, than the English tragedy was when Shakspeare began to write: if therefore it be granted that he had no aids from the Greek theatre (and I think this is not likely to be disputed,) so far these great masters are upon equal ground. Eschylus was a warrior of high repute, of a lofty generous spirit, and deep as it should seem in the erudition of his times. In all these particulars he has great advantage over our countryman, who was humbly born, of the most menial occupation, and, as it is generally thought, unlearned. Eschylus had the whole epic of Homer in his hands, the Iliad, Odyssey, and that prolific source of dramatic fable, the Ilias Minor; he had also a great fabulous creation to resort to amongst his own divinities, characters ready defined, and an audience, whose superstition was prepared for every thing he could offer; he had therefore a firmer and broader stage (if I may be allowed the expression) under his feet, than Shakspeare had. His fables The wretch who knows his own vile deeds, and yet in general are Homeric, and yet it does not fol He observes no gradations in guilt, expresses no Οστὶς γὰρ αὐτὸς αὐτὸν οὐκ αἰσχύνεται fears not himself, how should he fear another, who knows them not. It is manifest therefore that there is an essential difference in the developement of these characters, and that in favour of Macbeth: in his soul cruelty seems to dawn; it breaks out with faint glimmerings, like a winter morning, and gathers strength by slow degrees: in Richard it flames forth at once, mounting like the sun between the tropics, and enters boldly on its career without a herald. As the character of Macbeth has a moral advantage in this distinction, so has the drama of that name a much more interesting and affecting cast: the struggles of a soul, naturally virtuous, whilst it holds low that we can pronounce for Shakspeare that he is more original in his plots, for I understand that late researches have traced him in all or nearly all: both poets added so much machinery and invention of their own in the conduct of their fables, that whatever might have been the source, still their streams had little or no taste of the spring they flowed from. In point of character we have better grounds to decide, and yet it is but justice to observe, that it is not fair to bring a mangled poet in comparison with one who is entire. In his divine personages, Æschylus has the field of heaven, and indeed of hell also, to himself; in his heroic and military characters he has never been excelled; he had Come, all you spirits, That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, too good a model within his own bosom to fail | plice and wife: she thus developes her own of making those delineations natural: in his characterimaginary being also he will be found a respectable, though not an equal rival of our poet; but in the variety of character, in all the nicer touches of nature, in all the extravagances of caprice and humour, from the boldest feature down to the minutest foible, Shakspeare stands alone such persons as he delineates never came into the contemplation of Æschylus as a poet; his tragedy has no dealing with them; the simplicity of the Greek fable, and the great portion of the drama filled up by the chorus, allow of little variety of character: and the most which can be said of Eschylus in this particular is, that he never offends against nature or propriety, whether his cast is in the terrible or pathetic, the elevated or the simple. His versification with the intermixture of lyric composition is more various than that of Shakspeare; both are lofty and sublime in the extreme, abundantly metaphorical, and sometimes extravagant :— Nubes et inania captat. This may be said of each poet in his turn; in each the critic, if he is in search for defects, will readily enough discover— In scenam missus magno cum pondere versus. Both were subject to be hurried on by an uncontrollable impulse, nor could nature alone suffice for either: Eschylus had an apt creation of imaginary beings at command He could call spirits from the vasty deep. You wait on nature's mischief: come, thick night, Terrible invocation! Tragedy can speak no stronger language, nor could any genius less than Shakspeare's support a character of so lofty a pitch, so sublimely terrible at the very opening. The part which lady Macbeth fills in the drama has a relative as well as positive importance, and serves to place the repugnance of Macbeth in the strongest point of view; she is in fact the auxiliary of the witches, and the natural influence, which so high and predominant a spirit asserts over the tamer qualities of her husband, makes those witches but secondary agents for bringing about the main action of the drama. This is well worth a remark; for if they, which are only artificial and fantastic instruments, had been made the sole or even principal movers of the great incident of the murder, nature would have been excluded from her share in the drama, and Macbeth would have become the mere machine of an uncontrollable necessity, and his character, being robbed of its free agency, would have left no moral behind: I must take leave and they would come-Shakspeare, having no therefore to anticipate a remark, which I shall such creation in resource, boldly made one of hereafter repeat, that when lady Macbeth is urghis own; if Æschylus therefore was invincible, ing her lord to the murder, not a word is drophe owed it to his armour, and that, like the ar-ped by either of the witches or their predictions. mour of Æneas, was the work of the gods: but It is in these instances of his conduct that the unassisted invention of Shakspeare seized Shakspeare is so wonderful a study for the draall and more than superstition supplied to Æs-matic poet. But I proceedchylus. NUMBER LXX. Ille profecto Reddere persona scit convenientia cuique. HORAT. He surely knows, with nice, well judging art, FRANCIS. Lady Macbeth in her first scene, from which I have already extracted a passage, prepares for an attempt upon the conscience of her husband, whose nature she thus describes Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. He arrives before she quits the scene, and she receives him with consummate address Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor! WE are now to attend Macbeth to the perpetra- Mach. Duncan comes here to-night. Lady. And when goes hence? Mach. To-morrow, as he purposes. Lady. Oh never Shall sun that morrow see! The rapidity of her passion hurries her into immediate explanation, and he, consistently with the character she had described, evades her precipitate solicitations with a short indecisive answer We will speak further His reflections upon this interview, and the dreadful subject of it, are soon after given in soliloquy, in which the poet has mixed the most touching strokes of compunction with his meditations: he reasons against the villany of the act, and honour jointly with nature assails him with an argument of double force He's here in double trust. First as I am his kinsman and his subject This appeal to nature, hospitality, and allegiance was not without its impression; he again meets his lady, and immediately declares We will proceed no further in this business. This draws a retort upon him, in which his tergiversation and cowardice are satirized with so keen an edge, and interrogatory reproaches are pressed so fast upon him that, catching hold in his retreat of one small but precious fragment in the wreck of innocence and honour, he demands a truce from her attack, and, with the spirit of a combatant who has not yet yielded up his weapons, cries out Pr'ythee, peace; the words are no expletives; they do not fill up a sentence, but they form one: they stand in a most important pass; they defend the breach her ambition has made in his heart; a breach in the very citadel of humanity; they mark the last dignified struggle of virtue, and, they have a double reflecting power, which in the first place shows that nothing but the voice of authority could stem the torrent of her invective, and in the next place announces that something worthy of the solemn audience he had demauled was on the point to follow-and worthy it is to be a standard sentiment of moral truth expressed with proverbial simplicity, sinking into every heart that hears it 1 dare do all that may become a man ; "A man is not a coward because he fears to be unjust," is the sentiment of an old dramatic poet. Macbeth's principle is honour; cruelty i natural to his wife; ambition is common to both; one passion favourable to her purpose has taken place in his heart; another still hangs about it, which, being adverse to her plot, is first to be expelled, before she can instil her cruelty into his nature. The sentiment above quoted had been firmly delivered, and was ushered in with an apostrophe suitable to its importance; she feels its weight; she perceives it is not to be turned aside with contempt, or laughed down by ridicule, as she had already done where weaker scruples had stood in the way: but, taking sophistry in aid, by a ready turn of argument she gives him credit for his sentiment, erects a more glittering though fallacious logic upon it, and by admitting his objec tion cunningly confutes it What beast was't then That made you break this enterprise to me; Having thus parried his objection by a sophistry calculated to blind his reason and inflame his ambition, she breaks forth into such a vaunting display of hardened intrepidity as presents one of the most terrific pictures that was ever inagined I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me : This is a note of horror, screwed to a pitch that bursts the very sinews of nature; she no longer combats with a human weapon, but, seizing the flash of the lightning, extinguishes her opponent with the stroke: here the controversy must end, for he must either adopt her spirit, or take her life; he sinks under the attack, and offering nothing in delay of execution but a feeble hesitation, founded on fear"If we should fail"-he concludes with an assumed ferocity, caught from her and not springing from himself I am settled, and bend up Each corporal agent to this terrible feat. The strong and sublime strokes of a master impressed upon this scene make it a model of dramatic composition, and I must in this place remind the reader of the observation I have before hinted at, that no reference whatever is had to the auguries of the witches: it would be inΟὐκ ἔστιν οὐδεὶς δειλὸς, ὁ δεδοικὼς νόμον. PHILONIDE . justice to suppose that this was other than a How must every feeling spectator lament that a man should fall from virtue with such an appeal upon his lips! X |