figures the most dismal and terrific crowd around it in thick array. It can vary its scenes at its pleasure; the calm and the tempest, the sunbeam and the lightning, all wait on its command. Nay, such is its power that it defies the war of elements; and, shutting its eyes to the terrors that encompass it, can repose luxuriantly on a bed of flowers. In a desert it can behold a paradise, in a paradise see nothing but sterility and gloom. It rides swiftly on the revolving planets, tracks the courses of the eccentric comets, and travels further than the remotest star. It greatly magnifies the largest things, and discerns a smaller than the minutest object. Who shall tell me what it cannot dream of? who shall fix the limits of its empire? who shall obstruct it in its discursive paths? It is an adventurous and prolific faculty; it dives where plummet never sounded, and soars where never eagle soared; it "sucks where the bee sucks," and lies, like Ariel, in the cowslip's bell. Nothing can compete with the beauty of the scenery through which it sometimes leads us all is joy, pleasure, harmony, wherever it progresses with fantastic step.

The imagination has distributed its treasures very partially; meagerly to some, overflowingly to others; and we may account for the different way in which the poets are appreciated by different persons, by the relative degrees of the ideality of their readers. What seems a palpable extravagance to some men, is by others considered as the highest beauty. The greatest triumphs of the imagination have been achieved by Shakspere, compared with whom the majority of the poets

66 are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine."

At his touch the inaminate world breathes like the animate; at his command all nature speaks with voice most eloquent; zephyrs sing music and the winds declaim; the beautiful appears where we saw it not before, and its fair spirit is seen to hover where we should least have expected it to have gladdened our sight. All things discourse impassionedly and to the purpose, and a momentous lesson is clearly written on the small blossom of a humble flower. "The world of spirits and nature," says Schlegel, "have laid all their treasures at his feet. In strength a demigod, in profundity of view. a prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a protecting spirit of a higher order, he lowers himself to mortals, as if unconscious of his superiority; and is as open and unassuming as a child." And when we discern much meaning in what he utters, we cannot persuade ourselves that we know the whole, and feel, in the full consciousness of our vast inferiority, that much as we admire his wonderful creations, the author, and he alone, could have appreciated to the utmost all those

excellences which defy description, or have dived to the bottom of those deep waters, which are unfathomable by the great mass of persons, who simply content themselves with skimming their surface. Let not little minds conceit themselves with the idea that they can comprehend such plays as Lear, or that an examination of the philosophy of the Prince of Denmark leaves them nought to dream of; nor let them, when they see Othello acted, think that they have witnessed all its passion delineated; and that there is nothing left to complete the picture of the gentle Desdemona and the frantic Moor. No representation can do Shakspere justice, and no critic can delineate his every merit. Johnson has grandly and mellifluously taken his defects to task; but the defects were those of his own creation, and resulted from his having a less fervent imagination than that of the poet, whom he frequently failed to understand and appreciate. He is an instance of the lesser condemning the greater, and would he were the only one that could be found. Others also who have written on him have written to show that they knew him not; that his glory was too dazzling for their eyes to dwell upon. No better proof can be given of a fine imagination, than a correct appreciation of the works of Shakspere; and none can estimate that faculty in others unless they possess a share of it themselves.

Hail to thee, charming Imagination! queen of the lovely! interpreter of the sublime! thou art arrayed in splendid apparel, majesty is in thy mien, and thy countenance is full of brightness! thou holdest in thy hand a wand which is more powerful than the sceptre of princes, whose riches are not comparable to the treasures of thy kingdom! how often hast thou lifted us from the actual world, where passions the meanest and the basest strive with selfish and ungovernable contention for the mastery, and carried us to the places where thy spirit dwells! Thou hast been the physician who hast healed our wounds--the good Samaritan that infused the balm! How often, flying on thy silver wings, have we beheld sights seen by no other eyes, and heard sounds of divinest music—such as were never echoed in the ears of those who have not the privilege to share thy bounties! The happiness which thou yieldest is the only happiness which is unalloyed; the smile that thou wearest is the only one which is never succeeded by a frown; and if we would pluck the unfading roses which deck beauty's checks, and gather the "forget-me-not" which ever flourishes in friendship's keeping, we must come to thy garden, for each other is liable to the blast that withers, and the winter that mantles all things with desolation. W. F. B.

it

DIFFICULT POINTS AND PASSAGES OF
SHAKSPERE'S PLAYS.

No. IV.-MACBETH.

THE difficult passages in this play are comparatively but few in number. Our author in this sublime tragedy appears to be more than usually clear. It contains, however, a few passages on which may be as well to remark, more especially as Dr. Johnson has, by his notes on this play, made many passages obscure which before were plain, and in endeavouring to unravel the knot, has only succeeded in drawing it tighter.

In Act I. Sc. 2, the following passage occurs :

"If I say sooth, I must report they were

As cannons overcharged with double cracks;
So they

Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe."

As Dr. Johnson justly observes, "cracks" is used here for "thunders," as in Act IV. Sc. 1, we find "the crack of doom," meaning the thunder of the last day. The passage signifies that Macbeth and Banquo fought so fiercely, that they appeared like cannons doubly charged; and the tautological expression "doubly redoubled," is used, by a Latin idiom, to express great force. So in Richard the Second, Act. I. Sc. 3, we find,

"Be swift like lightning in the execution,
And at thy blows, doubly redoubled," &c.

On this passage—

-"Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving on't. He died
As one that had been studied in his death
To throw away the dearest thing he owed,
As 'twere a careless trifle," -

"As the

Dr. Johnson has the following extraordinary note. word 'owed' affords here no sense but such as is forced and unnatural, it cannot be doubted that it was originally written, 'the dearest thing he owned;' a reading which required neither defence nor explanation." Really I think if the Doctor had ever read

Shakspere through, he must have met with this word in this sense an hundred times. For a few examples, see this play, Act III. Sc. 4:

"You make me strange

E'en to the disposition that I owe.”

Also the Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2:—

"This is no mortal business, nor no sound

That the world owes.'

Also the Comedy of Errors, Act III. Sc. 1

"What art thou that keep'st me out from the house I owe?"

Also Sonnet 18:

"Nor lose possession of that fair thou oWEST ;"

and a thousand examples, which would cost the reader more trouble to refer to than me to find.

In Act I. Sc. 5, we meet with that remarkable expression which has been received as unintelligible by some, and absurd by others; among which latter class we again encounter the erudite Doctor.

"That my keen knife see not the wound it makes;
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, 'Hold! hold!'"

Upon this passage, Dr. Johnson, in the Rambler, No. 168, remarks thus:" Lady Macbeth proceeds to wish, in the madness of guilt, that the inspection of Heaven may be intercepted, and that she may, in the involutions of infernal darkness, escape the eye of Providence. This is the utmost extravagance of determined wickedness; yet this is so debased by two unfortunate words, that, while I endeavour to impress on my reader the energy of the sentiment, I can scarce check my risibility, when the expression forces itself on my mind; for who, without some relaxation of his gravity, can hear of the avengers of guilt peeping through a blanket?” And Mr. Beckett, in his "Shakspere's Himself Again," says, "To make Heaven peep through a blanket, is, to say as little as possible in its disfavour, highly ridiculous." However, let us see what the result of a patient investigation of the passage will be. When Shakspere speaks of "the blanket of the dark," he evidently alludes to the curtain of a theatre, which was for the purpose of concealing the performers from the audience before and after the performance of the play. And as Lady Macbeth is about to do that which she would not have to be seen, she invokes the Night

to spread a blanket, or curtain, between her and heaven. There is in the latter part of this passage, an allusion, as Mr. Tollett informs us, to an old military custom, which inflicted death on any man, "whosoever shall strike stroke at his adversary, either in the heat, or otherwise, if a third do cry 'Hold!' to the intent to part them, except that they did fight in a combat in a place enclosed; and then no man shall be so hardy as to bid hold but the general." The soliloquy, Act I. Sc. 7, requires a little explanation.

"If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well.

It were done quickly, if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success-that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here-
But here upon this bank and shoal of time
We'd jump the life to come."

That is, "If it" (viz. the gaining of the crown) "were done," (completed) "when 'tis done," (when the murder is performed) "then 'twere well." "It were done quickly if the assassination could at once catch success upon Duncan's surcease-so that this single blow might be all that could happen here so that I should have nothing to do but to stab him and be king.-As to a future,-I would put that out of the question."

Dr. Johnson has a very ridiculous note on "Tarquin's ravishing strides." He seems to think that a "ravishing stride" expresses great violence. Macbeth, however, compares the "stealthy pace" with which Murder creeps towards his design, with the strides taken by Tarquin on his way to the chamber of Lucrece. How Tarquin crept we find from our author himself:

“Away he steals with open, listening ear,

Full of foul hope, and full of fond mistrust."

Rape of Lucrece. (Stanza 41.)

Johnson also believes the conclusion of this soliloquy to be, if not wholly unintelligible, at least obscure. I confess I do not perceive anything unintelligible in the passage.

"Thou sure and firmset earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk; for fear

Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,

And take the present horror from the time,

That now suits with it."

The meaning is this. He cries out to the earth not to hear him,