forced to pay external homage, is finely expreffed in the following words:

MACBETH.

I have liv'd long enough: my way of life Is fall'n into the fear, the yellow leaf: And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but in their ftead, Curfes not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. Toward the conclufion of the piece, his mind feems to fink under its load of guilt! Despair and melancholy hang on his words! By his address to the phyfician, we perceive he has griefs that prefs harder on him than his enemies:

MACBETH.

Canft thou not minister to a mind difeas'd;

Pluck from the memory a rooted forrow;

Raze out the written troubles of the brain;

And, with fome fweet oblivious antidote,

Cleanse the stuff'd bofom of that perilous ftuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

The alacrity with which he attacks young
Siward, and his reluctance to engage with

Macduff

Macduff, of whose blood he says he has already had too much, compleat a character uniformly preferved from the opening of the fable, to its conclufion.-We find him ever answering to the firft idea, we were made to conceive of him.

The man of honour pierces through the Traitor and the Affaffin. His mind lofes its Tranquillity by guilt, but never its Fortitude in danger. His Crimes prefented to him, even in the unreal mockery of a vision, or the harmless form of fleeping innocence, terrify him more than all his foes in arms.

-It has been very juftly observed by a late commentator, that this piece does not abound with thofe nice difcriminations of character, ufual in the plays of our Author, the events being too great to admit the influence of particular difpofitions. It appears to me, that the character of Macbeth is also represented lefs particular and fpecial, that his example may be of more univerfal utility. He has therefore placed him on that line, on which the major part

of mankind may be ranked, just between the extremes of good and bad; a station asfailable by various temptations, and ftanding in need of the guard of cautionary admonition. The fupernatural agents, in fome measure, take off our attention from the other characters, especially as they are, throughout the piece, what they have a right to be, predominant in the events. They should not interfere, but to weave the fatal web, or to unravel it; they ought ever to be the regents of the Fable and artificers of the Catastrophe, as the Witches are in this piece. To preferve in Macbeth a just confiftency of character; to make that character naturally fufceptible of thofe defires, that were to be communicated to it; to render it interesting to the fpectator, by fome amiable qualities; to make it exemplify the dangers of ambition, and the terrors of remorse; was all that could be required of the Tragedian and the Moralift. With all the powers of Poetry he elevates a legendary tale, without carrying it beyond the limits of vulgar faith and tradition. The folemn character

character of the infernal rights would be very ftriking, if the scene was not made ludicrous by a mob of old women, which the Players have added to the three weird Sifters.The Incantation is fo confonant with the doctrine of enchantments, and receives fuch power by the help of those potent ministers of direful Superstition, the Terrible and the Mysterious, that it has not the air of poetical fiction so much as of a difcovery of magical fecrets; and thus it feizes the heart of the ignorant, and communicates an irresistible horror to the imagination even of the more informed spectator.

Shakespear was too well read in human nature, not to know, that, though Reason may expel the fuperftitions of the nursery, the Imagination does not so entirely free itfelf from their dominion, as not to re-admit them, if occafion presents them, in the very fhape in which they were once revered. The first scene in which the Witches appear, is not fo happily executed as the others. He has too exactly followed the vulgar reports

N 3

ports of the Lapland witches, of whom our failors used to imagine they could purchase a fair wind,

The choice of a story that at once gave countenance to King James's doctrine of dæmonology, and fhewed the ancient deftination of his family to the throne of Great Britain, was no lefs flattering to that Monarch than Virgil's to Auguftus and the Roman people, in making Anchifes fhew to Æneas the reprefentations of unborn heroes, that were to adorn his line, and augment the glory of their common-wealth. It is reported, that a great French Wit often laughs at the tragedy of Macbeth, for having a

One would ima

legion of Ghosts in it. gine he either had not learnt English, or had forgotten his Latin; for the Spirits of Banquo's line are no more Ghofts, than the representations of the Julian race in the Eneid; and there is no Ghoft but Banquo's in the whole play. Euripides, in the most philofophic and polite age of the Athenians, brings the fhade of Polydorus,

Priam's