The effect at first produced by the apparition is ever afterwards wonderfully sustained. I do not merely allude to the touches of realization which, in the poetry of the scenes, pass away from no memory, such as, "The Star," "Where now it burns," "The sepulchre," "The complete steel," -"The glimpses of the moon,”-“ Making night hideous,""Look how pale he glares," and other wild expressions, which are like fastenings by which the mind clings to its terror. I rather allude to the whole conduct of the Ghost. We ever behold in it a troubled spirit leaving its place of suffering to revisit the life it had left, to direct and command a retribution that must be accomplished. He speaks of the pain to which he is gone, but that fades away in the purpose of his mission. "Pity me not." He bids Hamlet revenge, though there is not the passion of revenge in his discourse. The penal fires have purified the grosser man. The spectre utters but a moral declaration of guilt, and swears its living son to the fulfilment of a righteous vengeance.

T. C.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol ii. p 504, et seq.

No. XII.

A DELINEATION OF SHAKSPEARE'S CHARAC OF MACBETH AND RICHARD.

THERE are two very striking characters de ated by our great dramatic poet, which I am sirous of bringing together under one rev and these are Macbeth and Richard the Third.

The parts which these two persons susta their respective dramas, have a remarkable cidence both are actuated by the same g ambition in the opening of the story; both m their lawful sovereign in the course of it ; both are defeated and slain in battle at the clusion of it: yet these two characters, circumstances so similar, are as strongly d guished in every passage of their dramatic li the art of the poet, as any two men ever we the hand of nature.

Let us contemplate them in the three foll periods, viz. the premeditation of their c the perpetration of it; and the catastrop their death.

Duncan, the reigning king of Scotland, ha sons: Edward the Fourth of England has als sons; but these kings and their respective do not affect the usurpers Macbeth and Ri

1

in the same degree, for the latter is 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 succession

And to be king

Stands not within the prospect of belief.

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 witches, who salute Macbeth with their divinations, 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 ;
But how of Cawdor?

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 CAWD

The magic now works to his heart, and he ca wait the departure of the royal messenger b

his admiration vents itself aside

Glamis, and thane of Cawdor!

The greatest is behind.

A second time he turns aside, and unable t press the emotions which this second confirm of the predictions has excited, repeats the secret observation

Two truths are told

As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.

A soliloquy then ensues, in which the poet ciously opens enough of his character to sho spectator that these preternatural agents ar superfluously set to work upon a disposition to evil, but one that will have to combat compunctious struggles before it can be br to yield even to oracular influence. This would demonstrate (if we needed demonstr that Shakspeare, without resorting to the anc had the judgment of ages as it were instinct From this instant we are apprised that Ma meditates an attack upon our pity as well as our horror, when he puts the following quest his conscience

Why do I yield to that suggestion,
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature?

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 practised 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 full formed and complete for all the savage purposes of the drama :

Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer.

The barriers of conscience are broken down, and the soul, hardened against shame, avows its own depravity :

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other.

He observes no gradations in guilt, expresses no hesitation, practises no refinements, but plunges into blood with the familiarity of long custom, and gives orders to his assassins to dispatch his brother Clarence with all the unfeeling tranquillity of a Nero or Caligula. Richard, having no longer any scruples to manage with his own conscience, is