Mrs. Siddons:-"It was my custom to study my characters at night, when all the domestic cares and business of the day were over. On the night preceding that on which I was to appear in this part for the first time, I shut myself up, as usual, when all the family were retired, and commenced my study of Lady Macbeth. As the character is very short, I thought I should soon accomplish it. Being then only twenty years of age, I believed, as many others do believe, that little more was necessary than to get the words into my head; for the necessity of discrimination, and the development of character, at that time of my life, had scarcely entered into my imagination. But, to proceed. I went on with tolerable composure, in the silence of the night, (a night I can never forget,) till I came to the assassination scene, when the horrors of the scene rose to a degree that made it impossible for me to get farther. I snatched up my candle, and hurried out of the room in a paroxysm of terror. My dress was of silk, and the rustling of it, as I ascended the stairs to go to bed, seemed to my panic-struck fancy like the movement of a spectre pursuing me. At last I reached my chamber, where I found my husband fast asleep. I clapped my candlestick down upon the table, without the power of putting it out; and I threw myself on my bed, without daring to stay even to take off my clothes."* If the drama of Macbeth' were to produce the same effect upon the mind of an imaginative reader as that described by Mrs. Siddons, it would not be the great work of art which it really is. If our poet had resolved, using the words of his own Othello,' to

"abandon all remorse,

On horror's head horrors accumulate,"

the midnight terrors, such as Mrs. Siddons has described, would have indeed been a tribute to power, but not to the power which has produced 'Macbeth.' The paroxysm of fear, the panic-struck fancy, the prostrated senses, so beautifully described by this impassioned actress, were the result of the intensity with which she had fixed her mind upon that part of the play which she was herself to act. In the endeavour to get the words into her head, her own fine genius was naturally kindled to behold a complete vision of the wonderful scene. Again, and again, were the words repeated, on that night which she could never forget,-in the silence of that night, when all about her were sleeping. And then she heard the owl shriek,

Memoranda by Mrs. Siddons, inserted in her 'Life' by Mr. Campbell.

amidst the hurried steps in the fatal chamber,—and she saw the bloody hands of the assassin,—and, personifying the mur deress, she rushed to dip her own hands in the gore of Duncan. It is perfectly evident that this intensity of conception has carried the horrors far beyond the limits of pleasurable emo tion, and has produced all the terrors of a real murder. No reader of the play, and no spectator, can regard this play 2 Mrs. Siddons regarded it. On that night she, probably for the first time, had a strong though imperfect vision of the character of Lady Macbeth, such as she afterwards delineated it: and in that case, what to all of us must, under any circumstances, be a work of art, however glorious, was to her almes a reality. It was the isolation of the scene, demanded by he own attempt to conceive the character of Lady Macbeth, which made it so terrible to Mrs. Siddons. The reader has to regar it as a part of a great whole, which combines and harmonise with all around it; for which he is adequately prepared by what has gone before; and which,-even if we look at it as picture which represents only that one portion of the actio has still its own repose, its own harmony of colouring, its o chiaroscuro,—is to be seen under a natural light. There was preternatural light upon it when Mrs. Siddons saw it as st has described.

The leading characteristic of this glorious tragedy is, with out doubt, that which constitutes the essential difference be tween a work of the highest genius and a work of mediocri Without power-by which we here especially mean the ability to produce strong excitement by the display of scenes of hor -no poet of the highest order was ever made; but this alc does not make such a poet. If he is called upon to prese such scenes, they must, even in their most striking forms, associated with the beautiful. The pre-eminence of his art this particular can alone prevent them affecting the imagin tion beyond the limits of pleasurable emotion. To keep wit these limits, and yet to preserve all the energy which resu from the power of dealing with the terrible apart from beautiful, belongs to few that the world has seen : to Shakspe it belongs surpassingly.

That Shakspere found sufficient materials for this ge drama in Holinshed's 'History of Scotland' is a fact that ders it quite unnecessary for us to enter into any discussion a to the truth of this portion of the history. or to point out authorities upon which the narrative of Holinshed was found Better authorities than Holinshed had access to have sh that the contest for the crown of Scotland between Dunc and Macbeth was a contest of factions, and that Macbeth

raised to the throne by his Norwegian allies after a battle in which Duncan fell in the same way, after a long rule, was he vanquished and killed by the son of Duncan, supported by his English allies. But with the differences between the real nd apocryphal history it is manifest that we can here have no concern. There is another story told also in the same narraive, which Shakspere with consummate skill has blended with he story of Macbeth. It is that of the murder of King Duff y Donwald and his wife in Donwald's castle of Forres:

"The king got him into his privy chamber, only with two of is chamberlains, who, having brought him to bed, came forth gain, and then fell to banqueting with Donwald and his wife, ho had prepared divers delicate dishes and sundry sorts of rinks for their rear-supper or collation, whereat they sat up long, till they had charged their stomachs with such full orges, that their heads were no sooner got to the pillow but sleep they were so fast that a man might have removed the hamber over them sooner than to have awakened them out of meir drunken sleep.

* * * *

"Then Donwald, though he abhorred the act greatly in eart, yet through instigation of his wife he called four of his ervants unto him (whom he had made privy to his wicked tent before, and framed to his purpose with large gifts), and ow declaring unto them after what sort they should work the at, they gladly obeyed his instructions, and speedily going out the murder, they enter the chamber (in which the king y) a little before cock's crow, where they secretly cut his roat as he lay sleeping, without any bustling at all; and imediately by a postern gate they carried forth the dead body to the fields. * Donwald, about the time at the murder was in doing, got him amongst them that kept e watch, and so continued in company with them all the sidue of the night. But in the morning, when the noise was ised in the king's chamber how the king was slain, his body nveyed away, and the bed all beraid with blood, he with the tch ran thither, as though he had known nothing of the atter, and breaking into the chamber, and finding cakes of ood in the bed and on the floor about the sides of it, he thwith slew the chamberlains as guilty of that heinous irder. ** For the space of six months gether, after this heinous murder thus committed, there peared no sun by day, nor moon by night, in any part of è realm, but still was the sky covered with continual clouds, d sometimes such outrageous winds arose, with lightnings

* * * *

* See Skene's' Highlanders of Scotland,' vol. i. p. 116.

and tempests, that the people were in great fear of present destruction."

THE ROMAN PLAYS.

CORIOLANUS.

"THE lives of the noble Grecians and Romans, compared together by Plutarch, done into English by Thomas North,' is a book on many accounts to be venerated. It is still the best translation of Plutarch we have,-full of fine robust English, -a book worthy of Shakspere to read and sometimes to imitate. Here he found the story of Coriolanus told in the most graphic manner; and he followed it pretty literally. Niebuhr places this story amongst the fabulous legends of Rome. Plutarch, and especially Shakspere, have made it almost impossible to believe that such Romans did not really live, and think, and talk, and act, as we see them in these wonderful pictures of humanity.

are uni

The leading idea of Shakspere's 'Coriolanus'-the pivot upon which all the action turns-the key to the bitterness of factious hatred which runs through the whole drama—is the contest for power between the patricians and plebeians. This is a broad principle, assuming various modifications in various states of society, but very slightly varied in its foundations and its results. He that truly works out the exhibition of this principle must paint men, let the scene be the Rome of the first Tribunes, or the Venice of the last Doges. With the very slightest changes of accessaries, the principle stands for the contests between aristocracy and democracy, in any country or in any age. The historical truth, and the philosophical principle, which Shakspere has embodied in 'Coriolanus' versal. But suppose he had possessed the means of treating the subject with what some would call historical accuracy; had learnt that Plutarch, in the story of Coriolanus, was probably dealing only with a legend; that, if the story is to be received as true, it belongs to a later period; that in this later period there were very nice shades of difference between the classes composing the population of Rome; that the balance of power was a much more complex thing than he found in the narrative of Plutarch: further, suppose that, proud of this learning, he had made the universal principle of the plebeian and patrician hostility subsidiary to an exact display of it, according to the conjectures which modern industry and acuteness have brought to bear on the subject. It is evident, we

think, that he would have been betrayed into a false principle of art; and would necessarily have drawn Roman shadows instead of vital and enduring men. As it is, he has drawn men so vividly-under such permanent relations to each other-with such universal manifestations of character, that some persons of strong political feelings have been ready to complain, according to their several creeds, either that his plebeians are too brutal, or his patricians too haughty. The tribute to Shakspere's political impartiality is complete.

JULIUS CAESAR.

YEARS, perhaps centuries, have rolled on since the era of Coriolanus.' Rome had seen a constitution which had reconciled the differences of the patricians and the plebeians. The two orders had built a temple to Concord. Her power had increased; her territory had extended. In compounding their differences the patricians and the plebeians had appropriated to themselves all the wealth and honours of the state. There was a neglected class that the social system appeared to reject, as well as to despise. The aristocratic party was again brought into a more terrible conflict with the impoverished and the destitute. Civil war was the natural result. Sulla established a short-lived constitution. The dissolution of the Republic was at hand: the struggle was henceforth to be, not between classes, but individuals. The death of Julius Cæsar was soon followed by the final termination of the contest between the republican and the monarchical principle. Shakspere saw the grandeur of the crisis; and he seized upon it for one of his lofty expositions of political philosophy. He has treated it as no other poet would have treated it, because he saw the exact relations of the contending principle to the future great history of mankind. The death of Cæsar was not his catastrophe: it was the death of the Roman Republic at Philippi.

Of all Shakspere's characters, none require to be studied with more patient attention than those of Brutus and Cassius, that we may understand the resemblances and the differences of each. The leading distinctions between these two remarkable men, as drawn by Shakspere, appear to us to be these: Brutus acts wholly upon principle; Cassius partly upon impulse. Brutus acts only when he has reconciled the contemplation of action with his speculative opinions; Cassius allows the necessity of some action to run before and govern his opinions. Brutus is a philosopher; Cassius is a partisan. Brutus there