soul, deep as her guilt, fatal as her resolve, and terrible as her crime. If it should be objected to this view of Lady Macbeth's character, that it engages our sympathies in behalf of a perverted being, and that to leave her so strong a power upon our feelings in the midst of such supreme wickedness involves a moral wrong, I can only reply in the words of Dr. Channing, that "in this and the like cases our interest fastens on what is not evil in the character-that there is something kindling and ennobling in the consciousness, however awakened, of the energy which resides in mind: and many a virtuous man has borrowed new strength from the force, constancy, aud dauntless courage of evil agents." This is true; and might he not have added that many a powerful and gifted spirit has learned humility and self-government from beholding how far the energy which resides in mind may be degraded and perverted? [From Fletcher's "Studies of Shakespeare."*] Macbeth seems inspired by the very genius of the tempest. This drama shows us the gathering, the discharge, and the dispelling of a domestic and political storm, which takes its peculiar hue from the individual character of the hero. It is not in the spirit of mischief that animates the "weird sisters," nor in the passionate and strong-willed ambition of Lady Macbeth, that we find the mainspring of this tragedy, but in the disproportioned though poetically tempered soul of Macbeth himself. A character like this, of extreme selfishness, with a most irritable fancy, must produce, even in ordinary circumstances, an excess of morbid apprehensiveness; which, however, as we see in him, is not inconsistent with the greatest physical courage, but generates of necessity. the most entire moral cowardice. When, therefore, a man * Studies of Shakespeare, etc., by George Fletcher (London, 1847), p. 109 fol. like this, ill enough qualified even for the honest and straightforward transactions of life, has brought himself to snatch at an ambitious object by the commission of one great sanguinary crime, the new and false position in which he finds himself by his very success will but startle and exasperate him to escape, as Macbeth says, from "horrible imaginings" by the perpetration of greater and greater actual horrors, till inevitable destruction comes upon us amidst universal execration. Such, briefly, are the story and the moral of Macbeth. The passionate ambition and indomitable will of his lady, though agents indispensable to urge such a man to the one decisive act which is to compromise him in his own opinion and that of the world, are by no means primary springs of the dramatic action. Nor do the "weird sisters" themselves do more than aid collaterally in impelling a man, the inherent evil of whose nature and purpose has predisposed him to take their equivocal suggestions in the most mischievous sense. And, finally, the very thunder-cloud which, from the beginning almost to the ending, wraps this fearful tragedy in physical darkness and lurid glare, does but reflect and harmonize with the moral blackness of the piece.... The very starting-point for an inquiry into the real, inherent, and habitual nature of Macbeth, independent of those particular circumstances which form the action of the play, lies manifestly, though the critics have commonly overlooked it, in the question, With whom does the scheme of usurping the Scottish crown by the murder of Duncan actually originate? We sometimes find Lady Macbeth talked of as if she were the first contriver of the plot, and suggester of the assassination; but this notion is refuted, not only by implication, in the whole tenor of the piece, but most explicitly in i. 7. 48–52. Most commonly, however, the witches (as we find the "weird sisters" pertinaciously miscalled by all sorts of players and of critics) have borne the imputation of being the first to put this piece of mischief in the hero's mind. Yet the prophetic words in which the attainment of royalty is promised him contain not the remotest hint as to the means by which he is to arrive at it. They are simply "All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter”—an announcement which, it is plain, should have rather inclined a man who was not already harbouring a scheme of guilty ambition to wait quietly the course of events. According to Macbeth's own admission, the words of the weird sisters on this occasion convey any thing rather than an incitement to murder to the mind of a man who is not meditating it already. This supernatural soliciting is only made such to the mind of Macbeth by the fact that he is already occupied with a purpose of assassination. This is the true answer to the question which he puts to himself in i. 3. 132–142. . . . The first thing that strikes us in such a character is the intense selfishness-the total absence both of sympathetic feeling and moral principle—and the consequent incapability of remorse in the proper sense of the term. So far from finding any check to his design in the fact that the king bestows on him the forfeited title of the traitorous thane of Cawdor as an especial mark of confidence in his loyalty, this only serves to whet his own villainous purpose. The dramatist has brought this forcibly home to us in i. 4. 10-58. It is from no "compunctious visiting of nature," but from sheer moral cowardice-from fear of retribution in this life-that we find Macbeth shrinking, at the last moment, from the commission of his enormous crime. This will be seen the more attentively we consider i. 7. 1-25, and 31-35. In all this we trace a most clear consciousness of the impossibility that he should find of masking his guilt from the public eye -the odium which must consequently fall upon him in the opinions of men- and the retribution it would probably bring upon him. But here is no evidence of true moral repugnance, and as little of any religious scruple - "We'd jump the life to come." The dramatist, by this brief but significant parenthesis, has taken care to leave us in no doubt on a point so momentous towards forming a due estimate of the conduct of his hero. However, he feels, as we see, the dissuading motives of worldly prudence in all their force. But one devouring passion urges him on-the master-passion of his life—the lust of power, i. 7. 26. it should seem that the considerations of policy and safety regarding this life might even have withheld him from the actual commission of the murder, had not the spirit of his wife come in to fortify his failing purpose. At all events, in Still, the action of the drama it is her intervention, most decidedly, that terminates his irresolution, and urges him to the final perpetration of the crime which he himself had been the first to meditate. It is most important that we should not mistake the nature of Macbeth's nervous perturbation while in the very act of consummating his first great crime. The more closely we examine it, the more we shall find it to be devoid of all genuine compunction. This character is one of intense selfishness, and is therefore incapable of any true moral repugnance to inflicting injury upon others; it shrinks only from encountering public odium, and the retribution which that may produce. Once persuaded that these will be avoided, Macbeth falters not in proceeding to apply the dagger to the throat of his sleeping guest. But here comes the display of the other part of his character-that extreme nervous irritability which, combined with an active intellect, produces in him so much highly poetical rumination—and at the same time, being unaccompanied with the slightest portion of self-command, subjects him to such signal moral cowardice. We feel bound the more earnestly to solicit the reader's attention to this distinction, since, though so clearly evident when once pointed out, it has escaped the penetration of some even of the most eminent critics. The poetry delivered by Macbeth, let us repeat, is not the poetry inspired by a glowing or even a feeling heart-it springs exclusively from a morbidly irritable fancy. We hesitate not to say that his wife mistakes, when she apprehends that the "milk of human kindness" will prevent him from "catching the nearest way." The fact is that, until after the banquet scene, she mistakes his character throughout. She judges of it too much from her own. Possessing generous feeling herself, she is susceptible of remorse. Full of self-control, and afflicted with no feverish imagination, she is dismayed by no vague apprehensions, no fantastic fears. Consequently, when her husband is withheld from his crime simply by that dread of contingent consequences which his fancy so infinitely exaggerates, she, little able to conceive of this, naturally ascribes some part of his repugnance to that “milk of human kindness," those "compunctious visitings of nature," of which she can conceive. . . . The perturbation which seizes Macbeth the instant he has struck the fatal blow, springs not, we repeat, from the slightest consideration for his victim. It is but the necessary recoil in the mind of every moral coward, upon the final performance of any decisive act from which accumulating selfish apprehensions have long withheld him heightened and exaggerated by that excessive morbid irritability which, after his extreme selfishness, forms the next great moral characteristic of Macbeth. It is the sense of all the possible consequences to himself, and that alone, which rushes instantly and overwhelmingly upon his excitable fancy, so as to thunder its denunciations in his very ears. -- The following scene shows us Macbeth, when his paroxysm ensuing upon the act of murder has quite spent itself, and he is become quite himself again—that is, the coldblooded, cowardly, and treacherous assassin. Let any one who may have been disposed, with most of the critics, to believe that Shakespeare has delineated Macbeth as a char |