Macbeth-and Siddons-Macbeth-whom do you believe that you see and hear? I affirm that you at one and the same instant-(or at the most in two immediately successive instants-yet I believe in one and the same instant)-know that you see and hear Kemble-or if that accomplished gentleman and admirable actor-Macready be performing the part-then Macready;-and yet believe that you see and hear Lord Macbeth. I aver that you entertain a mixt-confused-self-contradictory state of mind--that two elements of thought which cannot co-subsist do co-subsist.

They co-subsist fighting, and yet harmonising-there is half-belief-semiillusion.

NORTH.

I claim the acknowledgment of such a state-which any one who chooses may better describe, but which shall come to that effect-for the lowest substratum of all science and criticism concerning POESY. Will anybody grant me this, then I will reason with him about Poesy, for we begin with something in common. Will anybody deny me this, then I will not argue with him about Poesy, for we set out with nothing in common.

BULLER.

We grant you all you ask-we are all agreed--"our unanimity is wonderful."

NORTH.

Leave out the great Brother and Sister, and take the Personated alone. I know that Othello and Desdemona never existed-that an Italian Novelist began, and an English Dramatist ended them—and there they are. But do I not believe in their existence, "their loves and woes ?" Yes I do believe in their existence, in their loves and woes-and I hate Iago accordingly with a vicious, unchristian, personal, active, malignant hatred."

TALBOYS.

Dr Johnson's celebrated expression, "all the belief that Poetry claims"

Celebrated! Where is it?

BULLER.

TALBOYS.

Preface to Shakspeare-is idle, and frivolous, and false?

NORTH.

It is. He belies his own experience. He cannot make up his mind to admit the irrational thought of belief which you at once reject and accept. But exactly the half acceptance, and the half rejection, separates poetry from -prose.

TALBOYS.

That is, sir, the poetical from the prosaic.

NORTH.

Just so. It is the life and soul of all poetry-the lusus--the make-believe -the glamour and the gramarye. I do not know-gentlemen-I wish to be told, whether I am now throwing away words upon the setting up of a pyramid which was built by Cheops, and is only here and there crumbling a little, or whether the world requires that the position shall be formally argued and acknowledged. Johnson, as you reminded me, Talboys, did not admit it.

TALBOYS.

That he tells us in so many words. Has any more versed and profound master in criticism, before or since, authentically and authoritatively, luminously, cogently, explicitly, psychologically, metaphysically, physiosologically, psychogogically, propounded, reasoned out, legislated, and enthroned the Dogma?

NORTH.

I know not, Talboys. Do you admit the Dogma ?

I do.

TALBOYS.

NORTH.

Impersonation-Apostrophe-of the absent; every poetical motion of the Soul; the whole pathetic beholding of Nature-involve the secret existence and necessity of this irrational psychical state for grounding the Logic of Poesy.

Go on, sir.

BULLER.

NORTH.

I will-but in a new direction. Before everything else, I desire, for the settlement of this particular question, a foundation for, and some progress in the science of MURDER TRAGEDIES.

I know properly two.

SEWARD.

BULLER.

Two only? Pray name.

SEWARD.

This of Macbeth and Richard III.

BULLER.

The Agamemnon-the Choephora-the Electra-the Medea

SEWARD.

In the Agamemnon, your regard is drawn to Agamemnon himself and to Cassandra. However, it is after a measure a prototype. Clytemnestra has in it a principality. Medea stands eminent-but then she is in the right.

In the right?

BULLER.

SEWARD.

Jason at least is altogether in the wrong. But we must-for obvious reasons-discuss the Greek drama by itself; therefore not a word more about it now.

NORTH.

Richard III., and Macbeth and his wife, are in their Plays the principal people. You must go along with them to a certain guarded extent else the Play is done for. To be kept abhorring and abhorring, for Five Acts together, you can't stand.

SEWARD.

Oh! that the difference between Poetry and Life were once for all set down --and not only once for all, but every time that it comes in question.

BULLER.

My dear sir, do gratify Seward's very reasonable desire, and once for all set down the difference.

SEWARD.

You bear suicides on the stage, and tyrannicides and other cides-all simple homicide-much murder. Even Romeo's killing Tybalt in the street, in reparation for Mercutio's death, you would take rather differently, if happening to-day in Pall Mall, or Moray Place.

NORTH.

We have assuredly for the Stage a qualified scheme of sentiment-grounded no doubt on our modern or every-day morality-but specifically modified by Imagination-by Poetry-for the use of the dramatist. Till we have set down what we do bear, and why, we are not prepared for distinguishing what we won't bear, and why.

And if so, sufficient for the nonce. Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, seems to me to be the most that can be borne of one purely abhorrible. He is made disgust

ing besides-drunken and foul. Able he is for he won the Queen by "witchcraft of his wit;" but he is made endurable by his diminisht proportion in the Play-many others overpowering and hiding him.

BULLER.

Pardon me, sir, but I have occasionally felt, in course of this conversation, that you were seeking-in opposition to Payne Knight-to reduce Macbeth to a species of Claudius. I agree with you in thinking that Shakspeare would not give a Claudius so large a proportion of his drama. The pain would be predominant and insupportable.

NORTH.

I would fain hope you have misunderstood me, Buller.

BULLER.

Sometimes, sir, it is not easy for a plain man to know what you would be at.

Richard III. is a hypocrite-a hard, cold murderer from of old-and yet you bear him. I suppose, friends, chiefly from his pre-eminent Intellectual Faculties, and his perfectly courageous and self-possessed Will. You do support your conscience-or traffic with it-by saying all along-we are only conducting him to the retribution of Bosworth Field. But, friends, if these motions in Macbeth, which look like revealings and breathings of some better elements, are sheer and vile hypocrisy-if it is merely his manhood that quails, which his wife has to virilify-a dastard and a hypocrite, and no more-Í cannot abide him-there is too much of a bad business, and then I must think Shakspeare has committed an egregious error in Poetry. Richard III. is a bold, heroic hypocrite. He knows he is one. He lies to Man-never to his own Conscience, or to Heaven.

What?

TALBOYS.

NORTH.

Never. There he is clear-sighted, and stands, like Satan, in open and impious rebellion.

BULLER.

But your Macbeth, sir, would be a shuffling Puritan-a mixture of Holy Willie and Greenacre. Forgive me

My dear Buller-you have misunderstood me-I assure you you have. Some of my expressions may have been too strong-not sufficiently qualified.

BULLER.

I accept the explanation. But be more guarded in future, my dear sir.

I will.

NORTH.

BULLER.

On that assurance I ask you, sir, how is the Tragedy of Macbeth morally saved? That is, how does the degree of complacency with which we consider the two murderers not morally taint ourselves-not leave us predisposed murderers?

NORTH.

That is a question of infinite compass and fathom-answered then only when the whole Theory of Poesy has been expounded.

VOL. LXVI.-NO. CCCCIX.

2 U

Whew!

BULLER.

NORTH.

The difference established between our contemplation of the Stage and of Life.

BULLER.

I hardly expect that to be done this Summer in this Tent.

NORTH.

Friends! Utilitarians and Religionists shudder and shun. They consider the Stage and Life as of one and the same kind—look on both through one glass.

Eh?

BULLER.

NORTH.

The Utilitarian will settle the whole question of Life upon half its datathe lowest half. He accepts Agriculture, which he understands logicallybut rejects Imagination, which he does not understand at all—because, if you sow it in the track of his plough, no wheat springs. Assuredly not; a different plough must furrow a different soil for that seed and that harvest.

BULLER.

Now, my dear sir, you speak like yourself. You always do so-the rashness was all on my side.

SEWARD.

Nobody cares-hold your tongue.

NORTH.

The Religionist errs from the opposite quarter. He brings measures from Heaven to measure things of the Earth. He weighs Clay in the balance of Spirit. I call him a Religionist who overruns with religious rules and conceptions things that do not come under them-completely distinct from the native simplicity and sovereignty of Religion in a piously religious heart. Both of them are confounders of the sciences which investigate the Facts and the Laws of Nature, visible and invisible-subduing inquiry under preconception.

By all means. And here they are for you to crack.

BULLER.

Now for some of your astounding Discoveries.

NORTH.

If you gather the Movement, scene by scene, of the Action of this Drama, you see a few weeks, or it may be months. There must be time to hear that

Malcolm and his brother have reached England and Ireland-time for the King of England to interest himself in behalf of Malcolm, and muster his array. More than this seems unrequired. But the zenith of tyranny to which Macbeth has arrived, and particularly the manner of describing the desolation of Scotland by the speakers in England, conveys to you the notion of a long, long dismal reign. Of old it always used to do so with me; so that when I came to visit the question of the Time, I felt myself as if baffled and puzzled, not finding the time I had looked for, demonstrable. Samuel Johnson has had the same impression, but has not scrutinised the data. He goes probably by the old Chronicler for the actual time, and this, one would think, must have floated before Shakspeare's own mind.

TALBOYS.

Nobody can read the Scenes in England without seeing long-protracted time.

"Malcolm. Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there Weep our sad bosoms empty.

Macduff.

Let us rather

Hold fast the mortal sword, and, like good men,

Bestride our down-fallen birthdom: Each new morn,

New widows howl; new orphans cry; new sorrows

Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds

As if it felt with Scotland, and yell'd out

Like syllable of dolour."

NORTH.

Ay, Talboys, that is true Shakspeare. No Poet-before or since-has in so few words presented such a picture. No poet, before or since, has used such words. He writes like a man inspired.

TALBOYS.

And in the same dialogue Malcolm says

"I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;

It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash
Is added to her wounds."

NORTH.

Go on, my dear Talboys. Your memory is a treasury of all the highest Poetry of Shakspeare. Go on.

TALBOYS.

And hear Rosse, on his joining Malcolm and Macduff in this scene, the latest arrival from Scotland:

"Macduff. Stands Scotland where it did?

Words known to all the world, yet coming on the ear of each individual listener with force unweaken'd by familiarity, power increased by repetition, as it will be over all Scottish breasts in secula seculorum.

TALBOYS.

By Heavens! he smiles! There is a sarcastic smile on that incomprehensible face of yours, sir-of which no man in this Tent, I am sure, may divine the reason.

NORTH.

I was not aware of it. Now, my dear Talboys, let us here endeavour to