Macduff, of whose blood he says he has already had too much, compleat a character uniformly preserved 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, usual 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 special, 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 affailable by various temptations, and standing 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 fhould 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 spectator, by some amiable qualities; to make it exemplify the "dangers of ambition, and the terrors of remorfe; 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 Superftition, the Terrible and the Mysterious, that it has not the air of poetical fiction fo much as of a difcovery of magical fecrets; and thus it feizes the heart of the ignorant, and communicates an irrefiftible horror to the imagination even of the more informed fpectator.

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 fo 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 firft fcene in which the Witches appear, is not fo happily executed as the others. He has too exactly followed the vulgar reports

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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 destination of his family to the throne of Great Britain, was no less flattering to that Monarch than Virgil's to Auguftus and the Roman people, in making Anchises fhew to Æneas the representations of unborn heroes, that were to adorn his line, and augment the glory of their common-wealth. It is re

One would ima

ported, that a great French Wit often laughs at the tragedy of Macbeth, for having a 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 reprefentations 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 shade of Polydorus,

Priam's

Priam's fon, upon the stage, to tell a very long and lamentable tale. Here is therefore produced, by each tragedian, the departed Spirit walking this upper world for causes admitted by popular faith. Among the Ancients, the Unburied, and with us the Murdered, were fuppofed to do fo. The apparitions are therefore equally justifiable or blamable; fo the laurel must be adjudged to that Poet who throws most of the Sublime and the Marvellous into the supernatural agent; best preserves the credibility of its intervention, and renders it most useful in the drama. There furely can be no difpute of the fuperiority of our countryman in these articles. There are many bombast speeches in the tragedy of Macbeth; and these are the lawful prize of the Critic: but Envy, not content to nibble at faults, ftrikes at its true object, the prime excellencies and perfections of the thing, it would depreciate. Qne should not wonder if a school-boy critic, who neither knows what were the superstitions of former times, or the Poet's privileges in all times, should flourish away,