which question he puts to her who had the moment before suggested the thought of

'His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt
Of our geat quell.'

And his asking it again, proceeds from that extravagance with which a delivery from apprehension and doubt is always accompanied. Then, summoning all his fortitude, he says, I am settled,' &c. and proceeds to the bloody business without any further recoil. But a certain degree of restlessness and anxiety still continues, such as is constantly felt by a man not naturally very bold, worked up to a momentous atchievement. His imagination dwells entirely on the circumstances of horrour which surround him; the vision of the dagger; the darkness and the stillness of the night, and the terrors and the prayers of the chamberlains. Lady Macbeth, who is cool and undismayed, attends to the business only; considers of the place where she had laid the daggers ready; the impossibility of his missing them; and is afraid of nothing but a disappointment. She is earnest and eager; he is uneasy and impatient; and therefore wishes it over :

Ig go, and it is done;' &c.

"But a resolution thus forced cannot hold longer than the immediate occasion for it: the moment after that is accomplished for which it was necessary, his thoughts take the contrary turn, and he cries out, in agony and despair,

Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou could'st.' "That courage which had supported him while he was settled and bent up, forsakes him so immediately after he has performed the terrible feat, for which it had been exerted, that he forgets the favourite circumstance of laying it on the officers of the bedchamber; and, when reminded of it, he refuses to return and complete his work, acknowledging

I am afraid to think what I have done; 'Look on't again I dare not.'

"His disordered senses deceive him; and his debilitated spirits fail him; he owns that every noise appals him :' he listens when nothing stirs; he mistakes the sounds he does hear; he is so confused as not to know whence the knocking proceeds. She, who is more calm, knows that it is from the south entry; she gives clear and direct answers to all the incoherent questions he asks her; but he returns none to that which she puts to him; and though after some time, and when necessity again urges him to recollect himself, he recovers so far as to conceal his distress, yet he still is not able to divert his thoughts from it all his answers to the trivial questions of Lenox and Macduff are evidently given by a man thinking of something else; and by taking a tincture from the subject of his attention, they become equivocal:

* Len. Goes the king hence to-day?

Macb. He did appoint so.

'Len. The night has been unruly; where we lay 'Our chimneys were blown down; &c.

Macb. 'Twas a rough night.'

"Not yet implies that he will by and by, and is a kind of guard against any suspicion of his knowing that the king would never stir more. He did appoint so, is the very counterpart of that which he had said to Lady Macbeth, when on his first meeting her she asked him

'Lady M. When goes he hence?

Macb. To-morrow, as he purposes.'

In both which answers he alludes to his disappointing the King's intention. And when forced to make some reply to the long description given by Lenox, he puts off the subject which the other was so much inclined to dwell on, by a slight acquiescence in what had been said of the roughness of the night; but not like a man who had been attentive to the account, or was willing to keep up the conversation." Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakspeare, [by Mr. Whateley,] 8vo. 1785.

To these ingenious observations I entirely subscribe, except that I think the wavering irresolution and agitation of Macbeth after the murder ought not to be ascribed solely to a remission of courage, since much of it may be imputed to the remorse which would arise in a man who was of a good natural disposition, and is described as originally full of the milk of human kindness; —not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it." MALONE.

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A most decisive refutation of Mr. Whateley's Essay, as far as the courage of Macbeth is concerned, which will serve equally well as an answer to Mr. Steevens's note in a former page, was published by Mr. Kemble in the year 1786. A new edition of this Essay, enlarged and improved, appeared in 1817. The knowledge which it displays of our great poet's meaning and spirit, would be sufficient to account for that distinguished performer's superiority over all his contemporaries in the exhibition of Shakspeare's characters. It is with good acting as with good writing: "Sapere est et principium et fons." BosWELL.

See Remarks on Mr. Whateley's Dissertation, p. 277, et seq. They first appeared in the European Magazine, for April, 1787. I cannot, however, dismiss this subject without taking some notice of an observation that rather diminishes than encreases the reputation of the foregoing tragedy.

It has been more than once observed by Mr. Boswell, and other collectors of Dr. Johnson's fugitive remarks, that he always described Macbeth as a drama that might be exhibited by pup

pets; and that it was rather injured than improved by scenical accompaniments, et quicquid telorum habent armamentaria theatri.

I must confess, I know not on what circumstances in this tragedy such a decision could have been founded; nor shall I feel myself disposed to admit the propriety of it, till the inimitable performances of Mr. Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard have faded from my remembrance. Be it observed, however, that my great coadjutor had not advanced this position among his original or subsequent comments on Macbeth. It rather seems to have been an effusion provoked from him in the warmth of controversy, and not of such a nature as he himself would have trusted to the press. In Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, 3d edit. p. 386, the Doctor makes the following frank confession : Nobody, at times, talks more laxly than I do." Yet they are mistaken who think he was sufficiently adventurous to print whatever his mind suggested. I know The Life of Milton to have been composed under the strongest restraint of public opinion.

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The reports of our metropolitan, as well as provincial theatres, will testify, that no dramatic piece is more lucrative in representation than Macbeth. It is equally a favourite with the highest and lowest ranks of society; those who delight in rational amusement, and those who seek their gratification in pageantry and show. Whence, then, such constant success and popularity as attends it, if stage exhibition, in this unfortunate instance, not only refuses to co-operate with the genius of Shakspeare, but obstinately proceeds to counteract the best and boldest of his designs?

Has the insufficiency of machinists hitherto disgraced the imagery of the poet? or is it in itself too sublime for scenical contrivances to keep pace with? or must we at last be compelled to own that our author's cave of incantation, &c. &c. are a mere abortive parade, that raises expectation only to disappoint it, and keeps, like his own Witches,

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the word of promise to our ear, "And breaks it to our hope?"

Let me subjoin, that I much question if Dr. Johnson ever saw the characters of Macbeth and his wife represented by those who have most excelled in them; or, if he did, that in this, or any other tragedy, the blended excellence of a Garrick and a Pritchard had sufficient power to fix his attention on the business of the stage. He most certainly had no partialities in its favour, and as small a turn for appropriate embellishments. Add to this, that his defective hearing, as well as eye-sight, must especially have disqualified him from being an adequate judge on the present occasion. When Mrs. Abington solicited his attendance at her benefit, he plainly told her, he "could not hear."-" Baretti," said he, (looking toward the bar at which the prisoner stood,) “cannot see my face, nor can I see his." Much less distinguishable to the

Doctor would have been the features of actors, because, in a playhouse, their situation must have been yet remoter from his own. Without the ability of seeing, therefore, he had no means of deciding on the merit of dramatick spectacles: and who will venture to assert that a legitimate impersonation of the guilty Thane does not more immediately depend on expression of countenance, than on the most vigorous exertions of gesticulation or voice?

Dr. Johnson's sentiments, on almost all subjects, may justly claim my undissembled homage; but I cannot acquiesce in the condemnation of such stage-exhibitions as his known prejudices, want of attention, eye-sight, and hearing, forbade him to enjoy. His decree, therefore, in the present instance, is, I hope, not irreversible :

Quid valet, ad surdas si cantet Phemius aures ?

Quid cœcum Thamyran picta tabella juvat. STEEvens. I am pretty well acquainted with the works to which Mr. Steevens has referred in the beginning of his note; but I cannot recollect, in any one of them, what that gentleman has professed to have found in them all. Had Johnson uttered such a remark, it would not have conveyed any slight opinion of Macbeth, but, rather, would have been an instance of his prejudice against actors, for which Mr. Steevens has well accounted. That this sublime drama stands in no need of scenic decoration will be readily allowed; but those who have had the good fortune to hear the scenes of witchcraft read by the greatest actress of this, or perhaps of any other age, will acknowledge that even "Shakspeare's magick" may derive additional solemnity from (what I could almost term) the unearthly recitation of Mrs. Siddons. BOSWELL.

WINTOWNIS CRONYKIL.

BOOK VI. CHAP. XVIII.

Qwhen Makbeth-Fynlay rase
And regnand in-til Scotland was.

IN pis tyme, as yhe herd me tell
Of Trewsone pat in Ingland fell,
In Scotland nere pe lyk cás
Be Makbeth-Fynlayk practykyd was,

Quhen he mwrthrysyde his awyne Eme,
Be hope, pat he had in a dreme,
Dat he sawe, quhen he wes yhyng
In Hows duelland wyth pe Kyng,
Dat fayrly trettyd hym and welle
In all, þat langyd hym ilkè dele:
For he wes hys Systyr Sone,
Hys yharnyng all he gert be done.

A' nycht he thowcht in hys dremyng,
Dat syttand he wes besyde pe Kyng
At a Sete in hwntyng; swa

In-til his Leisch had Grewhundys twá.
He thowcht, quhile he wes swá syttand,
He sawe thre Wamen by gangand;
And þái Wemen pan thowcht he
Thre Werd Systrys mást lyk to be.

De fyrst he hard say gangand by,

Lo, yhondyr pe Thayne of Crwmbawchty.'

De topir Woman sayd agayne,

'Of Morave yhondyre I se pe Thayne.'

.

De thryd pan sayd, I se pe Kyng.'

All pis he herd in hys dremyng.

Sone eftyre pat in hys yhowthad

Of thyr Thayndomys he Thayne wes made.

Syne neyst he thowcht to be Kyng,

Frá Dunkanys dayis had táne endyng.

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De fantasy pus of hys Dreme

Movyd hym mást to sla hys Eme;

As he dyd all furth in-dede,

As before yhe herd me rede,

And Dame Grwok, hys Emys Wyf,

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Tuk, and led wyth hyr hys lyf,

And held hyr båthe hys Wyf, and Qweyne,

As befor pan scho had beyne

Til hys Eme Qwene, lyvand

F 150 a For lytyl in honowre pan had he

De greys of Affynytè.

He succedyt in his stede:

Quhen he wes Kyng wyth Crowne rygnand:

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All pus quhen his Eme wes dede,

L. 26.] This is the original of the story of the Weird Sisters, whom Shakspeare has rendered so familiar to every reader: in its original state it is within the bounds of probability.

D. MACPHERSON.