speare had. His fables in general are Homeric, and yet it does not follow 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 too good a model within his own bosom to fail of making those delineations natural: in his imaginary 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 Æschylus 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: Æschylus had an apt creation of imaginary beings at command

He could call spirits from the vasty deep,

and they would come-Shakspeare, having no such creation in resource, boldly made one of his own; if Æschylus therefore was invincible, he owed it to his armour, and that, like the armour of Æneas, was the work of the gods: but the unassisted invention of Shakspeare seized all and more than su perstition supplied to Æschylus.

No. LXX.

Ille profecto

Reddere personæ scit convenientia cuique.

HORAT.

We are now to attend Macbeth to the perpetration of the murder, which puts him in possession of the crown of Scotland; and this introduces a new personage on the scene, his accomplice and wife: she thus developes her own character

Come, all you spirits,

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful

Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The' effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief: come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!

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 therefore to anticipate a remark, which I shall hereafter repeat, that when lady Macbeth is urging her lord to the murder, not a word is dropped by either of the witches or their predictions. It is in these instances of his conduct that Shakspeare is so wonderful a study for the dramatic poet. But I proceed

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!

Greater than both by the All-hail hereafter!

These are the very gratulations of the witches; she welcomes him with confirmed predictions, with the tempting salutations of ambition, not with the softening caresses of a wife

Mach. Duncan comes here to-night.
Lady. And when goes hence ?
Macb. 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,
Strong both against the deed; then as his host,
Who should against the murtherer shut the door,
Not bear the knife himself.

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 demanded 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

I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.

How must every feeling spectator lament that a man should fall from virtue with such an appeal upon his lips!

Οὐκ ἔσιν ἐδεὶς δειλός, ὁ δεδοικὼς νόμον. PHILONIDES.