say, of such a man, whose character rendered him peculiarly accessible to temptation, being placed in circumstances that tested his capacity of resisting the evil suggestions of the supernatural agents of darkness, and the criminal instigations of his wife, is at once suggestive of those struggles with a better nature, which, according to the authorities we have just cited, his soliloquy and his whole bearing previous to the assassination so strikingly display. In the inmost heart and mind of a man like this, we are prepared to witness that desperate contest which we appear, subsequently, to behold between his wish and his horror of the means by which alone it can be realized. His half-formed determination to murder Duncan, visible in the lines "Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see!" shaken so shortly afterwards, even at his first meeting with his lady,-(the scruples which he feels apparent, as it seems to us, in his simple answer to Lady Macbeth's question, "And when goes hence?" throughout the whole of that scene with his stern and resolute wife as well as in his subsequent soliloquy) is exactly what we look for, if we adopt, as the true one, the common representation of Macbeth's character. Taking this view of his moral nature, we regard his irresolution as the result of a noble shrinking of the inward Man from the execution of the horrible purpose he has conceived, rather than as the offspring of mere selfish apprehensiveness, in which light the reviewer considers it should be regarded. Thus, then, if we put the ordinary, and we might add the loftier construction upon his self-communings, it is clear that there is nothing unintelligible in such an interpretation of the character; so that this view of Macbeth's nature cannot, of course, be rejected on the ground of its being inconsistent with human nature. Further, if we are right in conceiving that of the two representations of Macbeth, which, with the arguments in their favour, we propose to consider in the following pages, the ordinary idea of his moral nature bespeaks the higher genius in its author, it would seem but just to infer that the present prevailing notion in regard to it must, also, have been Shakspeare's. It is not, however, worth while to enter upon the question as to which of these interpretations of the Dramatist's purpose would seem to convey the higher and more philosophical conception of the character, as there is, really, but one method of deciding the point at issue, viz. : by a reference to the words and spirit of the Poet's text. According to our interpretation of that text, according to the impression it conveys to us of the low and worldly, or of the unselfish nature of those feelings to which Macbeth gives utterance in his moments of irresolution, must we regard him as a man having the instincts of an originally nobler nature within him, or, as the remorseless villain, which the reviewer considers him to have been from the very outset. The necessity of thus conducting his inquiry into Macbeth's character was, we can hardly doubt, apparent to the reviewer. "Let us proceed to examine," he observes, "by the very sufficient light of Shakspeare's text, and by that alone, how far this view of Macbeth's character is just, on the one hand, towards the hero himself and to the other leading personages of the drama,-on the other, to the Poet's own fame, whether as a Dramatist or a moralist." * The reviewer then proceeds to state his own view of Macbeth's character, which, after the foregoing observation, one would, of course, expect that he would be prepared to justify by showing it to be in accordance with the text of Shakspeare. Whether, however, his impression of the character has been derived solely from Shakspeare's text, let the reader determine. The following are the reviewer's observations : "Macbeth is inspired by the very genius of the tempest. This drama hows 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, The reviewer is alluding to the following observations on Macbeth by Hazlitt : - "Macbeth is full of 'the milk of human kindness,' is frank, sociable, generous. He is tempted to the commission of guilt by golden opportunities, by the instigations of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. Fate and metaphysical aid conspire against his virtue and his loyalty.” but in the disproportioned though poetically-tempered soul of Macbeth himself. A character like his, of narrow 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 like this, ill enough qualified even for the honest and straightforward transactions of life, is tempted and induced 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 him, amidst universal execration. Such briefly are the story and the moral of Macbeth!" There can be no doubt that Macbeth is induced to perpetrate "greater and greater actual horrors" in consequence of "the new and false position in which he finds himself," after he has assassinated Duncan. But the point which we have now to consider is Macbeth's character before he has placed himself in that new and false position. Now, in the foregoing extract, at the very commencement of the reviewer's criticism, |