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

Οὐκ ἐστιν οὐδεις, ὁ δεδοικώς νομον.

PHILONIDES.

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 is 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 objection, cunningly confutes it

What beast was't then,

That made you break this enterprize to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man,
And to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more than man.

Having thus parried his objection by a sophistry

calculated to blind his reason, and enflame his ambition, she breaks forth into such a vaunting display of hardened intrepidity, as presents one of the most terrific pictures that was ever imagined—

-I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, whilst it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from its boneless gums,
And dash'd its brains out, had I but so sworn
As you have done to this.

This is a note of horror, screwed to a pitch that bursts the very sinews of nature. She no longer combats with 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 in 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 injustice to sup

pose that this was other than a purposed omission by the poet; a weaker genius would have resorted back to these instruments. Shakspeare had used and laid them aside for a time; he had a stronger engine at work, and he could proudly exclaim

We defy auguries.

Nature was sufficient for that work; and to show the mastery he had over nature, he took his human agent from the weaker sex.

This having passed in the first act, the murder is perpetrated in the succeeding one. The introductory soliloquy of Macbeth, the chimæra of the dagger, and the signal on the bell, are awful preludes to the deed. In this dreadful interim Lady Macbeth, the great superintending spirit, enters to support the dreadful work. It is done; and he returns appalled with sounds. He surveys his bloody hands with horror; he starts from her proposal of going back to besmear the guards of Duncan's chamber; and she snatches the reeking daggers from his trembling hands to finish the imperfect

work

-Infirm of purpose,

Give me the daggers!

She returns on the scene; the deed which he revolted from is performed; and with the same unshaken ferocity she vauntingly displays her bloody trophies, and exclaims

My hands are of your colour, but I shame

To wear a heart so white.

Fancied noises, the throbbings of his own quailing heart, had shaken the constancy of Macbeth. Real sounds, the certain signals of approaching visiters, to whom the situation of Duncan must be revealed, do not intimidate her; she is prepared for all trials, and coolly tells him—

-I hear a knocking

At the south entry: Retire we to our chamber;
A little water clears us of this deed.

How easy is it then!

The several incidents thrown together' in this scene of the murder of Duncan, are of so striking a sort as to need no elucidation; they are better felt than described, and my attempts point at passages of more obscurity, where the touches are thrown into shade, and the art of the author lies more out of sight.

Lady Macbeth being now retired from the scene, we may, in this interval, permit the genius of Eschylus to introduce a rival murderess on the stage.

Clytemnestra has received her husband Agamemnon, on his return from the capture of Troy, with studied rather than cordial congratulations. He opposes the pompous ceremonies she had devised for the display of his entry, with a magnanimous contempt of such adulation

-Sooth me not with strains

Of adulation, as a girl; nor raise

As to some proud barbaric king, that loves

Loud acclamations echoed from the mouths
Of prostrate worshippers, a clamorous welcome :
Spread not the streets with tapestry; 'tis invidious;
These are the honours we should pay the gods;
For mortal men to tread on ornaments

Of rich embroidery-no; I dare not do it:
Respect me as a man, not as a god.

POTTER'S ESCHYLUS.

These are heroic sentiments; but in conclusion the persuasions of the wife overcome the modest scruples of the hero, and he enters his palace in the pomp of triumph; when soon his dying groans are echoed from the interior scene, and the adultress comes forth, besprinkled with the blood of her husband, to avow the murder

-I struck him twice, and twice

He groaned; then died. A third time as he lay
I gor'd him with a wound; a grateful present
To the stern god, that in the realms below
Reigns o'er the dead. There let him take his seat.
He lay; and spouting from his wounds a stream
Of blood bedew'd me with these crimson drops.

I glory in them, like the genial earth,

When the warm showers of heav'n descend and wake
The flowrets to unfold their vermeil leaves.
Come then, ye reverend senators of Argos,
Joy with me, if your hearts be turn'd to joy,
And such I wish them.

POTTER.
CUMBERLAND.

The Observer, No. 56. The character of Clytemnestra," observes a periodical critic, "may be weighed without disparagement against that of Lady Macbeth; but all the other delineations are superior in our Shakspeare: his characters are