Imatges de pàgina
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And pr'ythee, lead me in;

There take an inventory of all I have,

To the laft penny, 'tis the king's. My robe,
And my intregity to heav'n, is all

I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell,
Had I but ferv'd my God with half the zeal

I ferv'd my king, he would not in mine age ‹Have left me naked to mine enemies.

I felected these two paffages as containing reflections of such a general kind, as might be with leaft impropriety transferred to the chorus, but if even these would lofe much of their force and pathos if not spoken by the fallen statesman, how much more would those do, which are the expreffions of fome inftantaneous emotion, occafioned by the peculiar fituation of the perfon by whom they are uttered! The felf-condemnation of a murderer makes a very deep preffion

upon us when we are told by Macbeth himfelf, that hearing, while he was killing Duncan, one of the grooms cry God bless us, and Amen the other, he durft not say Amen, Had a formal chorus obferved that a man in

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fuch a guilty moment durft not implore that, mercy of which he stood most in need, it would have had but a flight effect. All know the deteftation with which virtuous men behold a bad action. A much more falutary admonition is given when we are fhewn the terrors that are combined with guilt in the breast of the offender.

Our author has fo tempered the conftitutional character of Macbeth, by infufing into it the milk of human kindness, and a ftrong tincture of honour, as to make the most violent perturbation, and pungent remorse, naturally attend on those steps to which he is led by the force of temptation. Here we must commend the poet's judgment, and his invariable attention to confiftency of character; but more amazing is the art with which he exhibits the movement of the human mind, and renders audible the filent march of thought: traces its modes of operation in the course of deliberating, the paufes of hesitation, and the final act of decifion: fhews how reason

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checks, and how the paffions impel; and displays to us the trepidations that precede, and the horrors that pursue acts of blood. No fpecies of dialogue but that which a man holds with himself could effect this. The foliloquy. has been permitted to all dramatic writers; but its true ufe has been understood only by our author, who alone has attained to a juft imitation of nature in this kind of selfconference.

It is certain men do not tell themfelves who they are, and whence they came; they neither narrate nor declaim in the folitude of the closet, as Greek and French writers reprefent. Here then is added to the drama an imitation of the most difficult and delicate kind, that of representing the internal process of the mind in reafoning and reflecting; and it is not only a difficult, but a very useful art, as it best affifts the poet to expose the anguish of remorse, to repeat every whisper of the internal monitor, confcience, and, upon occafion, to lend her a voice to amaze the guilty and appal the free. As a man is averse

averse to expose his crimes, and discover the turpitude of his actions, even to the faithful friend, and trufty confident, it is more natural for him to breathe in foliloquy the dark and heavy fecrets of the foul, than to utter them to the moft intimate affociate. The conflicts in the bofom of Macbeth, before he committed the murder, could not, by any other means, have been fo well expofed. He entertains the prophecy of his future greatnefs with complacency, but the very idea of the means by which he is to attain it shocks him to the highest degree.

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Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill,
Why hath it giv'n me the earnest of fuccefs,
Commencing in a truth? I'm Thane of Cawdor.
If good, why do I yield to that fuggestion,
Whofe horrid image doth unfix my hair,

And make my feated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature?

There is an obscurity and stiffness in part of thefe foliloquies, which I wish I could charge entirely to the confufion of Macbeth's

mind from the horror he feels at the thought

of the murder; but our author is too much addicted to the obfcure bombaft, much affected by all forts of writers in that age. The abhorrence Macbeth feels at the fuggeftion of affaffinating his king brings him back to this determination,

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown

me,

Without my ftir.

After a pause, in which we may suppose the ambitious defire of a crown to return, fo far as to make him undetermined what he shall do, and leave the decifion to future time and unborn events, he concludes,

Come what come may,

Time and the hour runs thro' the roughest day. By which I confess I do not with his two last commentators imagine is meant either the tautology of time and the hour, or an allufion to time painted with an hour-glass, or an exhortation to time to haften forward, but rather to fay tempus & hora, time and occafion, will carry the thing through, and bring it to fome determined point and end,

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