on to commit, and of remorse after its perpetration. Richard has no mixture of common humanity in his composition, no regard to kindred or posterity, he owns no fellowship with others, but is "himself alone." Macbeth is not without feelings of sympathy, is accessible to pity, is even in some measure the dupe of his uxoriousness, ranks the loss of friends, of the love of his followers, and of his good name, among the causes which have made him weary of life, and regrets that he has ever seized the crown by unjust means, since he cannot transmit it to his posterity

"For Banquo's issue have I 'fil'd my mindFor them the gracious Duncan have I murther'd, To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings."

In the agitation of his thoughts, he envies those whom he has sent to peace. "Duncan is in his grave; after life's fitful fever he sleeps well." It is true, he becomes more callous as he plunges deeper in guilt, "direness is thus made familiar to his slaughterous thoughts," and he in the end anticipates his wife in the boldness and bloodiness of his enterprises, while she, for want of the same stimulus of action, is "troubled with thickcoming fancies," walks in her sleep, goes mad and dies.. Macbeth endeavors to escape from reflection on his crimes by repelling their consequences, and banishes remorse for the past by the meditation of future mischief. This is not the principle of Richard's cruelty, which resembles the cold malignity, the wanton malice, of a fiend rather than the frailty of human nature. Macbeth is goaded on to acts of violence and retaliation by necessity; to Richard, blood is a pastime. There are other essential differences. Richard is a man of the world, a vulgar, plotting, hardened villain, wholly regardless of everything but his own ends, and the means to accomplish them. Not so Macbeth. The superstitions of the age, the rude state of society, the local scenery and customs, all give a wildness and imaginary grandeur to his character. From the strangeness of the events that surround him, he is full of amazement and fear; and • stands in doubt between the world of reality and the world of

fancy. He sees sights not shown to mortal eye, and hears unearthly music. All is tumult and disorder within and without his mind; his purposes recoil upon himself, are broken and disjointed; he is the double thrall of his passions and his evil destiny. He treads upon the brink of fate and grows dizzy with his situation. Richard is not a character either of imagination or pathos, but of pure will. There is no conflict of opposite feelings in his breast. The apparitions which he sees only haunt him in his sleep; nor does he live like Macbeth in a waking dream. There is nothing tight or compact in Macbeth, no tenseness of fibre, nor pointed decision of manner. He has indeed considerable energy and manliness of soul; but then he is "subject to all the skyey influences." He is sure of nothing. All is left at issue. He runs a tilt with fortune, and is baffled with preternatural riddles. The agitation of his mind resembles the rolling of the sea in a storm, or he is like a lion in the toils fierce, impetuous, and ungovernable. Richard, in the busy turbulence of his projects, never loses his self-possession, and makes use of every circumstance that occurs as an instrument of his long-reaching designs. In his last extremity we can only regard him as a captured wild beast, but we never entirely lose our concern for Macbeth, and he calls back all our sympathy by that fine close of thoughtful melancholy—

66

My way of life is fallen into the sear,

The yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age,
As honor, troops of friends, I must not look to have;
But in their stead, curses not loud but deep,

Mouth-honor, breath, which the poor heart

Would fain deny, and dare not."

We can conceive a common actor to play Richard tolerably well; we can conceive no one to play Macbeth properly, or to look like a man who had encountered the Weird Sisters. All the actors that we have seen, appear as if they had encountered them on the boards of Covent Garden or Drury Lane, but not on the heath at Foris, and as if they did not believe what they had seen. The Witches of MACBETH, indeed, are ridiculous on the modern stage, and we doubt if the Furies of Eschylus would

be more respected. The progress of manners and knowledge has an influence on the stage, and will in time perhaps destroy both tragedy and comedy. Filch's picking pockets in the Beggar's Opera is not so good a jest as it used to be; by the force of the police and of philosophy, Lillo's murders and the ghosts in Shakspeare will become obsolete. At last, there will be nothing left, good nor bad, to be desired or dreaded, on the theatre or in real life. The question which has been started with respect to the originality of Shakspeare's Witches, has been well answered. by Mr. Lamb in his notes to the "Specimens of Early Dramatic Poetry."

"Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms in Macbeth, and the incantations in this play (the Witch of Middleton), which is supposed to have preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much from the originality of Shakspeare. His Witches are distinguished from the Witches of Middleton by essential differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman plotting some dire mischief might resort for occasional consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to men. From the moment that their eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he is spell-bound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the fascination. These Witches can hurt the body; those have power over the soul. Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low buffoon; the hags of Shakspeare have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ending. As they are without human passions, so they seem to be without human relations. They come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of them. Except Hecate, they have no names, which heightens their mysteriousness. The names, and some of the properties which Middleton has given to his hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But, in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scarf o'er life."

JULIUS CESAR.

JULIUS CESAR was one of three principal plays by different authors, pitched upon by the celebrated Earl of Halifax to be brought out, in a splendid manner, by subscription, in the year 1707. The other two were the King and no King of Fletcher, and Dryden's Maiden Queen. There perhaps might be political reasons for this selection, as far as regards our author. Otherwise Shakspeare's JULIUS CESAR is not equal, as a whole, to either of his other plays, taken from the Roman history. It is inferior in interest to Coriolanus, and, both in interest and power, to Antony and Cleopatra. It, however, abounds in admirable and affecting passages, and is remarkable for the profound knowledge of character, in which Shakspeare could scarcely fail. If there is any exception to this remark, it is in the hero of the piece himself. We do not much admire the representation here given of Julius Cæsar, nor do we think it answers to the portrait given of him in his Commentaries. He makes several vaporing and rather pedantic speeches, and does nothing. Indeed, he has nothing to do. So far the fault of the character might be the fault of the plot.

The spirit with which the poet has entered at once into the manners of the common people, and the jealousies and heartburnings of the different factions, is shown in the first scene, when Flavius and Marullus, tribunes of the people, and some citizens of Rome, appear upon the stage.

"FLAVIUS. Thou art a cobler, art thou?

COBLER. Truly, Sir, all that I live by, is the awl; I meddle with no trade-man's matters, nor woman's matters, but with-al, I am indeed; Sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in great danger, I recover them.

FLAVIUS. But wherefore art not in thy shop to-day?

Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?

COBLER. Truly, Sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into more work. But indeed, Sir, we make holiday to see Cæsar, and rejoice in his triumph."

To this specimen of quaint low humor immediately follows that unexpected and animated burst of indignant eloquence, put into the mouth of one of the angry tribunes.

"MARULLUS. Wherefore rejoice?What conquest brings he home?
What tributaries follow him to Rome,

To grace in captive-bonds his chariot-wheels?
Oh you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome!
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The live-long day with patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That Tyber trembled underneath his banks,
To hear the replication of your sounds,
Made in his concave shores?

And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out an holiday?
And do you now strew flowers in his way
That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?
Begone-

Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
Pray to the Gods to intermit the plague,

That needs must light on this ingratitude."

The well-known dialogue between Brutus and Cassius, in which the latter breaks the design of the conspiracy to the former, and partly gains him over to it, is a noble piece of highminded declamation. Cassius's insisting on the pretended effeminacy of Cæsar's character, and his description of their swimming across the Tiber together, "once upon a raw and gusty day," are among the finest strokes in it. But, perhaps the whole is not equal to the short scene which follows when Cæsar enters with his train.