THE TRAGEDY. OF MACBETH. T 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; myfterious horrors, undefined terrors, are raised by the intervention of beings whose nature nature we do not understand, whofe actions we cannot control, and whose influence we know not how to escape. Here we feel through all the faculties of the foul, and to the utmost extent of her capacity. The apprehenfion of the interpofition of fuch agents is the most falutary of all fears. It keeps up in our minds a sense of our connection with awful and invisible spirits, to whom our moft fecret actions are apparent, and from whose chastisement innocence alone can defend us. From many dangers power will protect; many crimes may be concealed by art and hypocrify; but when fupernatural beings arife, to reveal, and to avenge, guilt blushes through her mask, and trembles behind her bulwarks. Shakespear has been fufficiently juftified, by the best critics, for availing himself of the popular faith in witchcraft; and he is certainly as defenfible in this point, as Euripides, and other Greek tragedians, for introducing Jupiter, Diana, Minerva, &c. whofe perfonal intervention, in the events exhi |