Fourscore and upward; and, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you, and know this man; To be my child, Cordelia.” That despotic parental fondness which was only tributary to his pride and selfishness is purified, and now Lear looks upon his daughter with a true affection—that happy consciousness so feelingly expressed by the great poet of our times the consciousness that "There are spun Around the heart such tender ties That our own children to our eyes The happy hours of this recognition are only short moments in the tragedy. The gloom quickly gathers over it. The destiny of the drama demands its tragic ending; something different from a continuance of life with all the ills it is exposed to. There must be no tampering with “Fourscore and upward" the solemnities of its close. why should Lear linger any longer on the earth? Who "Would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer?" And Cordelia-the earth was too stormy and too wicked a place for one so pure and gentle to dwell upon. Besides, the law of a tragedy so lofty as this-so sublime * Wordsworth's Ruth. Works, p. 139. and solemn in its morality-required that she should be not only ministrant to her erring father, but a propitiatory sacrifice. Her last duty was to him; and the pity of it is, that the poor heart-broken old man could not have been spared that last agony of carrying in his arms his dead daughter. But compare Lear at the beginning of the drama-selfish, irritable, foolish, petulant, despotic, and unnaturalwith Lear at the close of it. The chastened spirit-the gentleness of his heart-breaking as he drooped to death over the dead body of his darling Cordelia, and surely we are taught that—"There is in mournful thoughts a power to virtue friendly." LECTURE II.* Macbeth. WHEN I last had the pleasure of meeting you, we were engaged in the consideration of a tragedy in which the chief agency employed was the emotion of pity. It was surely most piteous to contemplate, first, the perversion of Lear's moral nature, and then the accumulation of his agonies; and most piteous of all was it to contemplate the sad sacrifice of the innocent Cordelia. Yet, all this was accompanied with a reconciling principle, found in the reflection that the painful series of afflictions was a process of moral purification. Lear's heart was restored, and Cordelia's filial piety became more beautiful with the glory of martyrdom. The tragedy of Macbeth is, in these respects, very different. The chastening of the passions, which tragedy is designed to accomplish, is now to be effected by the instrumentality, not of pity, but of terror-terror in the imaginative presence of wicked temptations and of a fearful career of guilt. In the last lecture, I sought to show you how Shakspeare carried Lear along his stormy pil *December 13th, 1842. grimage onward to a better nature; but now we are to trace the downward course of a human soul that has given itself over to the guidance of the spirits of darkness. It is a dramatic story of a temptation followed by guilt, and guilt followed by moral ruin. Nor is it only by showing the awful hauntings of a blood-stained conscience that the emotion of terror is to be awakened. In Lear the tragedy was moved by natural, human influences -the passions of mortal beings only; but in Macbeth other agencies are invoked--the power of witchcraft and all the visionary things that superstition deals with. There is a world of nature and a world above and beyond it; and now both are to be brought together, which can be well accomplished only by a mighty effort of imagination. The natural and the supernatural are to be blended -familiar beings and mysterious are to be associated, as it were, in one living company-things sensible and things fantastic. Without any feeling of incongruity, we are to be made to witness the firm tread of the armed soldier, and the noiseless gliding of ghosts, and the wild motions of witches, flitting and hovering through the air. To have a just knowledge of the tragedy of Macbeth, we must form a distinct conception of the supernatural atmosphere which envelops the action. The air is lurid and thick with strange and awful creations. Distinct as are all its human interests, the tragedy is set in a shadowy, spectral region of witches-the mysteries of Hecate -ominous dreams and gloomy presentiments-of visions to the open eye of the wakeful guilty, and to the sealed eye of the sleeping-of invisible and mysterious powers in the elements, and of the prophetic sight of distant dynasties of kings-of incantations and of voiceless ghosts rising from fresh graves-blood-boltered visitants from charnel-houses. Those who have studied the genius of Shakspeare as an artist, are familiar with the significancy of the opening scenes in his dramas—I mean as indicating the general character of the whole play. This is peculiarly manifest in the tragedy of Macbeth. It is scarcely possible to conceive a shorter scene than the first. It contains no more than twelve lines-short and broken--and yet it discloses the supernatural character of the drama, and mysteriously indicates upon whom the powers of darkness are about to employ themselves. This brief scene, which stamps the nature of the play, so far transcends the power of scenic exhibition, that it must be removed from all injurious and low attempts to present it on the stage. It is addressed to the imagination and not to the senses. It cannot be looked at and listened to by the eye and the ear. The scene is a wild and instant appeal to one faculty of the mind, especially by the absence of all description. It is no more than an "open place"-the persons, three witches. No one is looking on to describe them to us, or to express the emotions their presence might create. They are alone, and the only circumstances are "thunder and lightning." No human sight is upon them in their solitude-no human sound is mingling with their speech. It is the dark communion of witches-one speaking to the other, and the only sound that is echoing to their intonations is the thunder, bursting close around them and then passing away in distant reverberations. The only light that falls upon their wild and unearthly forms is the lightning as it flashes from the clouds they are wrapt in. The turmoil and carnage of war are near at hand, and the |