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All that follows is folemn, fad, and deeply affecting.

Whatever in Hamlet belongs to the præternatural, is perfectly fine; the rest of the play does not come within the subject of this chapter.

The ingenious criticism on the play of the Tempest, published in the Adventurer, has made it unneceffary to enlarge on that admirable piece, which alone would prove our Author to have had a fertile, a fublime, and original genius.

THE

THE

TRAGEDY

OF

MACBETH.

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THE

TRAGEDY

F

MAC BE T H.

HIS piece is perhaps one of the greatest exertions of the tragic and poetic powers, that any age, or any country has produced. Here are opened new fources of terror, new creations of fancy. The agency of Witches and Spirits excites a species of terror, that cannot be effected by the operation of human agency, or by any form or difpofition of human things. For the known limits of their powers and сараcities fet certain bounds to our apprehenfions; mysterious horrors, undefined terrors, are raised by the intervention of beings, whose

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nature

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