We still have judgement here, that we but teach The best comment on this paffage is to be read in the preface to Sir Walter Raleigh's Hiftory of the World, and more particularly in the following quotation from it: For thofe kings, which have fold the blood of others at a low rate, have but made a market for their own enemies to buy of theirs at the fame price." MACBETH. Befides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties fo meek, hath been The only fault, attributed by hiftorians to the unhappy Duncan, was excess of humanity and gentleness of difpofition. Vir fumma humanitate,' fays Buchanan, ac majore erga fuos indulgentia quam in rege par erat.' IDEM. And Pity, like a naked new-born babe The author, not fatisfied with prefenting us with that tender and beautiful image of pity, a new-born babe, rifes to the more fublime idea of an angel mounted on the wings of the wind, to communicate the disastrous news of a monarch's murder to the world. The thought feems to have been borrowed from the eighteenth pfalm : 'He rode upon the cherubim and did fly; he came flying upon the wings of the wind!' Fenton, in his tragedy of Mariamne, in the following lines of Sohemus to Salome, makes Pity young and fhort-lived: In diftant ages past, Pity dy'd young, of grief, they say, to fee LADY LADY MACBETH. Was the hope drunk Wherein you drefs'd yourself? с In other words, Were you fober when you first entertained the conception of killing the king?' The undaunted fpirit and determinedlywicked refolution of Macbeth's wife are no where to be matched, in any female cha→ racter of the ancient Greek drama, except in the Clytemnestra of Æfchylus.. Their situations are different, but their characters bear a great resemblance. Both are haughty and intrepid, artful and cruel, in the extreme: Clytemneftra plans the murder of Agamemnon, her husband, and is herself the affaffin; Lady Macbeth not only encourages her husband to kill the King, but enjoys the fact when it is done; the remorfe of the murderer fhe confiders as pufillanimity, and helps to remove the appearance of guilt from him by fmearing the faces of the fleeping grooms. VOL. II. I LADY LADY His Spongy officers ? MACBETH. What not put upon When Men drenched in liquor are with great propriety compared to sponges. Æfchines praised Philip King of Macedon for his abilities in drinking, Demofthenes that was a commendation fit told him, for a sponge.' Of the original actors in Macbeth we can form no judgement; for nothing is to be found relating to them in books, nor has tradition handed down any thing concerning them. We may indeed conjecture, that Burbage, who exhibited Richard III. was, by the author, felected to represent Macbeth. Not only because he was the first tragedian of the times, but, from his performing characters of a similar caft, we may suppose him to have been better adapted to it than Taylor, (another eminent actor in tragedy,) or any player of that age. The The Tatler has celebrated Betterton for his excellence in Macbeth as well as other principal tragic parts. Cibber has not particularly distinguished this great comedian for his performance of this character; that he acted it to the very verge of his life, I learned in a conversation with Mr. Ryan. Though Booth was one of the company of comedians who obtained a licence in the year 1711, foon after the death of Betterton, Wilks, with great partiality, gave Macbeth to Mr. John Mills, a player whom he patronifed. But Mills was deficient in genius to display the various paffions and turbulent fcenes of the character. Mills was, in perfon, inclined to the athletic fize; his features large, though not expreffive; his voice was manly and powerful, but not flexible; his action and deportment decent. In voice and perfon he was not very unlike Mr. Edward Berry, whom Colley Cibber used to term a second old Mills. I have feen him in Macbeth; but neither his manner of I 2 speaking, E.. |