"The nature, and with all the familiarity of an old recollection. whole coheres semblably together," in time, place, and circumstance. In reading this author, you do not merely learn what his characters say; you see their persons. By something expressed or understood, you are at no loss to decipher their peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the grouping, the by-play, as we might see it on the stage. A word, an epithet, paints a whole scene, or throws us back whole years in the history of the person represented. So (as it has been ingeniously remarked), when Prospero describes himself as being left alone in the boat with his daughter, the epithet which he applies to her, "Me and thy crying self," flings the imagination instantly back from the grown woman to the helpless condition of infancy, and places the first and most trying scene of his misfortune before us, with all that he must have suffered in the interval. How well the silent anguish of Macduff is conveyed to the reader, by the friendly expostulation of Malcolm,-"What! man, ne'er pull your hat upon your brows!" Again, Hamlet, in the scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, somewhat abruptly concludes his fine soliloquy on life by saying, "Man delights me not, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so:" which is explained by their answer- "My lord, we had no such stuff in our thoughts; but we smiled to think, if you delight not in man, what scanty entertainment the players shall receive from you, whom we met on the way ;"-as if, while Hamlet was making his speech, his two old school-fellows from Wittenberg had been really standing by, and he had seen them smiling by stealth, at the idea of the players crossing their minds. It is not "a combination and a form" of words, a set-speech or two, a preconcerted theory of a character, that will do this; but all the persons concerned must have been present in the poet's imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal; and whatever would have passed through their minds on the occasion, and have been observed by others, passed through his, and is made known to the reader. HAZLITT. WOLSEY AND CROMWELL. Wolsey.-Farewell, a long farewell, to | I humbly thank his grace; and from these all my greatness! This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost; And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a ripening-nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on blad- This many summers in a sea of glory; shoulders, These ruined pillars, out of pity, taken Wol.-I hope I have. I am able now, (Out of a fortitude of soul I feel), Crom. The heaviest, and the worst, Crom. The next is, that Sir Thomas At length broke under me, and now has Lord Chancellor in your place. left me, Weary, and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. Wol. That's somewhat sudden : Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate For truth's sake and his conscience; that ye; his bones, I feel my heart new opened: Oh, how When he has run his course, and sleeps in wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! blessings, May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on 'em! There is, betwixt that smile we would What more? aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have; Crom.-That Cranmer is returned with Installed Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Whom the king hath in secrecy long Never to hope again. married, This day was viewed in open, as his queen, Wol.-There was the weight that pulled The king has gone beyond me; all my glories In that one woman I have lost for ever. No sun shall ever usher forth my honours, I am a poor fallen man, unworthy now told him What and how true thou art: he will ad- A sure and safe one, though thy master Neglect him not; make use now, and pro- By that sin fell the angels; how can man, vide For thine own future safety. Crom. O, my lord, Must I then leave you? must I needs forego With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves his The king shall have my service; but my prayers For ever and for ever shall be yours. Wol.--Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear then, The image of his Maker, hope to win by't? hate thee; Corruption wins not more than honesty. Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, Thou fall'st a blessed martyr. Serve the In all my miseries; but thou hast forced And-Prithee, lead me in: me Out of thy honest truth to play the woman. And--when I am forgotten, as I shall be, Of me more must be heard of-say, I taught thee; Say, Wolsey-that once trod the ways of glory, And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour There take an inventory of all I have, And my integrity to Heaven, is all I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Had I but served my God with half the I served my king, he would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies. Crom.-Good sir, have patience. Found thee a way, out of his wrack, to The hopes of court! my hopes in heaven rise in; do dwell. SHAKSPEARE. SCENE FROM MACBETH. Enter MACBETH. Lady M. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. Macb. There's one did laugh in his sleep, and one cried, "Murther!" That they did wake each other; I stood and heard them: But they did say their prayers, and addressed them Again to sleep. Lady M. There are two lodged to gether. Macb. One cried, "God bless us!" and Amen," the other; As they had seen me, with these hangman's hands. Consider it not so deeply. Macb. But wherefore could I not pronounce, Amen?" 66 I had most need of blessing, and "Amen" Are but as pictures; 'tis the eye of childhood Stuck in my throat. Lady M. These deeds must not be thought After these ways; so, it will make us mad. Macb. Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murther sleep!"—the innocent sleep; Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second Chief nourisher in life's feast,- What do you mean? Macb. Still it cried, "Sleep no more!" to all the house : "Glamis hath murthered sleep: and there fore Cawdor Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep Lady M. Who was it that thus cried? That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, Macb. [Exit. Knocking within. Whence is that knocking? How is't with me, when every noise appals me? What hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes! Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No; this my hand The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Re-enter LADY MACBETH. Lady M. My hands are of your colour; but I shame To wear a heart so white. [Knock.] I hear a knocking At the south entry:-retire we to our chamber: A little water clears us of this deed: You do unbend your noble strength, to How easy is it then! Your constancy think So brain-sickly of things:-Go, get some water, And wash this filthy witness from your hand. Hath left you unattended.-[Knocking. Get on your night-gown, lest occasion call us, And show us to be watchers :-Be not lost Why did you bring these daggers from the So poorly in your thoughts. place? They must lie there: go, carry them; and smear The sleepy grooms with blood. Macb. To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself. [Knock. Wake Duncan with thy knocking!-I would thou couldst ! SHAKSPEARE. THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE, IN MACBETH. FROM my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I endeavoured with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see why it should produce such an effect. My understanding could furnish no reason why the knocking at the gate in Macbeth should produce any effect, direct or reflected. In fact, my understanding said positively that it could not produce any effect. But I knew better: I felt that it did; and I waited and clung to the problem until further knowledge should enable me to solve it. At length I solved it to my own satisfaction, and my solution is this: Murder in ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the murdered person, is an incident of coarse and vulgar horror; and for this reason, that it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life; an instinct which, as being indispensable to the primal law of self-preservation, is the same in kind (though different in degree) among all living creatures this instinct, therefore, because it annihilates all distinctions, and degrades the greatest of men to the level of "the poor beetle that we tread on," exhibits human nature in its most abject and humiliating attitude. Such an attitude would little suit the purposes of the poet. What, then, must he do? He must throw the interest on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with him (of course I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a sympathy by which we enter into his feelings and are made to understand them—not a sympathy of pity or approbation). In the murdered person all strife of thought, all flux and reflux of passion and of purpose, are crushed by one overwhelming panic: the fear of instant death smites him "with its petrific mace." But in the murderer (such a murderer as a poet will condescend to) there must be raging some great storm of passion-jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred—which will create a hell within him; and into this hell we are to look. In Macbeth, for the sake of gratifying his own enormous and teeming faculty of creation, Shakspeare has introduced two murderers; and, as usual in his hands, they are remarkably discriminated: but, though in Macbeth the strife of mind is greater than in his wife-the tiger spirit not so awake, and his feelings caught |