it. Great caution and dexterity are required in the dramatic Poet, to give an air of reality to fictitious existence. In the bold attempt to give to airy nothing a local habitation and a perfon, regard must be had to fix it in such scenes, and to display it in fuch actions, as are agreeable to the popular opinion.-Witches holding their fabbath, and faluting paffengers on the blafted heath; ghosts, at the midnight hour, vifiting the glimpses of the moon, and whispering a bloody fecret, from propriety of place and action, derive a credibility very propitious to the scheme of the Poet. Reddere perfona-convenientia cuique, cannot be less his duty in regard to these superior and metaphyfical, than to human characters. Indeed, from the invariableness of their natures, a greater confiftency and uniformity is neceffary; but most of all, as the belief of their intervention depends entirely on their manners and fentiments fuiting with the conceived opinion of them. pre The magician Prospero raising a storm; witches performing infernal rites; or any other exertion of the fuppofed powers and qualities of the agent, were eafily credited by the vulgar. The genius of Shakespear informed him that poetic fable must rise above the simple tale of the nurse; therefore he adorns the Beldame, Tradition, with flowers gathered on claffic ground, but ftill wifely fuffering those fimples of her native foil, to which the established superstition of her country has attributed a magic fpell, to be predominant. Can any thing be more poetical than Profpero's address to his attendant spirits before he difmiffes them? PROSPERO. Ye elves of hills, brooks, ftanding lakes, and groves, Whereof Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whofe paftime Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice To hear the folemn curfew; by whofe aid Here the popular ftories concerning the power of magicians are agreeably collected. The incantations of the witches in Macbeth are more folemn and terrible than thofe of the Erichtho of Lucan, or of the Canidia of Horace. It may be faid, indeed, that Shakespear had an advantage derived from the more direful character of his national fuperftitions. A cele A celebrated writer, in his ingenious letters on Chivalry, has obferved, that the Gothic manners, and Gothic fuperftitions, are more adapted to the ufes of poetry, than the Grecian. The devotion of those times was gloomy and fearful, not being purged of the terrors of the Celtic fables. The Priest often availed himself of the dire inventions of his predeceffor, the Druid. The church of Rome adopted many of the Celtic fuperftitions; others, which were not established by it, as points of faith, still maintained a traditional authority among the vulgar. Climate, temper, modes of life, and inftitutions of government, seem all to have confpired to make the superstitions of the Celtic nations melancholy and terrible. Philofophy had not mitigated the aufterity of ignorant devotion, or tamed the fierce spirit of enthusiasm. As the Bards, who were our philofophers and poets, pretended to be poffeffed of the dark fecrets of magic and divination, they certainly encouraged the ignorant credulity, and anxious fears, to which fuch impoftures tures owe their fuccefs and credit. The retired and gloomy fcenes appointed for the most folemn rites of devotion; the aufterity and rigour of druidical difcipline and jurifdiction; the fafts, the penances, the fad excommunications from the comforts and privileges of civil life; the dreadful anathema, whofe vengeance purfued the wretched beyond the grave, which bounds all human power and mortal jurisdiction, muft deeply imprint on the mind every form of fuperftition, which such an Hierarchy prefented. The Bard who was fubfervient to the Druid, had mixed them in his heroic fong; in his historical annals; in his medical practice: genii affifted his heroes; dæmons decided the fate of the battle; and charms cured the fick, or the wounded. Nay after the confecrated groves were cut down, and the temples demolished, the tales that sprung from them were still preserved, with religious reverence, in the minds of the people. The Poet found himself happily fituated |