though he is able, when occasion requires, to stifle and subdue it." On this narrow ground Mr Kemble enters the list with Mr Whately, and his second, Mr Steevens, and provided with a great number of quota tions from the tragedy, traces the character of its hero from its opening to its close, as one of determined courage and intrepidity,-a courage not excited by exertion to any particular purpose, but native to the person, and an inherent quality in his mind. I think Mr Kemble has made out the point for which he contends; but I feel in the two characters compared, a distinction more marked, in my opinion, and more important, than that on which Mr Kemble has written, considerable labour, no fewer 170 pages. That distinction seems to me to consist, not in any particular quality, such as that of personal courage, but in the original structure of mind of the two persons represented, distinguished by Shakspeare with his usual intimate knowledge of human nature. That knowledge, with which Shakspeare seems gifted in an almost miraculous degree, enables him, beyond any other dramatist, to individualize his characters. There is nothing general, nothing given in the abstract; every character is a portrait, with those marked and peculiar features by which we immediately recognize the individual. Macbeth and Richard are both ambitious; but their ambition is differently modified, by the different dispositions which the poet has shewn them originally to possess.-There is a process, a gradation, in the crimes and ambition of Macbeth; Richard is from the beginning a villain, -a hard remorseless villain,with no restraint but his own interest or safety, acting from the impulse of his own dark mind alone, admitting no adviser from without, no conscience from within. Macbeth requires a prompter for his ambition, a more than accomplice in his crimes. That prompter and that accomplice Shakspeare has given him in his wife; and with his wonted depth of discernment of the peculiar attributes of our nature, he has given her that rapid unhesitating resolution in wickedness, which, in female wickedness, is the effect of the weakness, and the quickly as well as strongly excited feelings of the sex. In love, in hatred, in ambition, the overbearing passion of the moment quite unsexes them; the most timid become bold, the most gentle fierce, the most irresolute resolved. In the attainment of whatever favourite object, women are much less restrained than men, by reflections on the past, or calculations on the future. Lady Macbeth has none of those doubts or fears which come across the mind of her lord; she looks straight forward to the crown, and sees no bar, from humanity or conscience, in the way. The developement of Macbeth's character is one of the finest things in that admirable drama. What has been criticised as a barbarous departure from dramatic rule in Shakspeare, in the construction of his plays, affords, in truth, the means of tracing the growth and progress of character, the current of the human mind, in which he excels all other dramatists, much more completely than an adherence to the unity of time could have allowed.The bursts of passion may be shown in a moment; a story may be com pressed, at least in its most interesting parts, into very small compass; but the growth, the gradual ripening of character, cannot be traced but in a considerable space of time. We must be led through many intermediate transactions, before such a character as that of Macbeth can be exhibited to us, changed, by steps so natural as to gain our fullest belief, from the brave and gallant soldier whom Duncan honours, into the bloody and relentless tyrant who wades through blood to the throne, and remains steeped in blood to maintain himself there, yet retains enough of its original tincture of virtue (or at least the sense of virtue) and humanity, as to interest us in his fall at the close of a life sullied by every crime, and which, but for the art of the poet, we should devote to pure unmitigated hatred. In truth, the same intimate knowledge of the human heart, that enabled him to unwind the maze of Macbeth's former conduct, guides the poet in that softening which he has given to his character in the closing scenes. During the bustle of the chase of ambition, such feelings have no room to unfold themselves; but if any pause occurs (such as here the death of the Queen) they re-assert the power which they originally possessed; and such is the case with this fiend of Scotland." His nature is not obdurate like that of RICHARD; he looks back on his past life, when he is softened by the sense of that forlorn and deserted situation in which he stands, compared with that of the murdered DUNCAN. "Duncan is in his grave, After life's fitful fever he sleeps well," &c. "My way of life Is fallen into the sear and yellow leaf," &c. Hence that scarce unwilling pity which we afford him, abated only, not extinguished, by the recollection of his past atrocities. 66 Personal regard for Mr Kemble makes me, I confess, unwilling to dwell upon a work which I think un worthy of him. I will only quote one or two passages which fall particularly within the scope of his own profession, as a specimen of the style of the book. A play is written (says Mr Kemble) on some event, for the purpose of being acted; and plays are so inseparable from the notion of action, that, in reading them, our reflection, necessarily bodying forth the carriage which it conceives the various characters would sustain on the stage, becomes its own theatre, and gratifies itself with an ideal representation of the piece. This operation of the mind demonstrates, that Mr Whately has in this place once more misconstrued Shakspeare; for there is no risk in saying, that the eye of a spectator would turn, offended, from the affront offered to credibility, by the impassive levity of manner set down for Banquo in the REMARKS." Page 53. This is perfectly just; but we apprehend that the imagination of the reader would go a step higher than that to which Mr K. here conducts it. It is no doubt natural for a person who has often witnessed scenes represented on the stage (it is more particularly natural for Mr Kemble) to refer them to that representation; but a person conversant with men and books, but who had never seen a play, would refer them to the events actually happening in real life, and the language and deportment of those concerned in them, to the language and deportment which, in such real circumstances, they would have held. The ductility of our imaginations, in supposing ourselves spectators of events at Rome or Athens placed be fore us in the stage, has been often remarked. This scenic deception is of a very peculiar kind; it puts the reality a little way off, but does not altogether hide it from our view. We see Mr Kemble and Mrs Siddons, we know them for Mr K. and Mrs S.; but we judge of and feel for them as Coriolanus and Volumnia. It is an improvement on dramatic representation (which in this place I may men tion to the honour of Mr Kemble) to bring the seene before us with all the mechanical adjuncts which may assist the deception. The dress of the performers, the streets and temples of the scene, the statues of the temples, and the furniture of apartments, should certainly be brought as near as possible to the costume and other circumstances belonging to the country and place of the representation; and this is what Mr Kemble, both as an actor and manager, has accomplished, to the great and everlasting improvement of the British stage. In another passage, Mr K. considers the moral effect of this drama, and contradicts the idea of Mr Steevens in the following passage. "Mr Steevens says-One of Skakspeare's favourite morals is, that criminality reduces the brave and pusillanimous to a level.'-(Mr Steevens probably meant to say, that criminality reduces the brave to a level with the pusillanimous.)- Every puny whipster gets my sword, exclaims Othello, for why should honour outlive honesty ?-Where I could not be honest, says Albany, I was never valiant. -Jachimo imputes his want of manhood to the heaviness and guilt within his bosom.-Hamlet asserts, that conscience does make cowards of us all; and Imogen tells Pisanio, he may be valiant in a better cause, but now he seems a coward.' Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 297. "Is there, among these instances, one that approaches to any thing like a parallel with Macbeth? The sophistry of such perverse trifling with a reader's time and patience, completely exposes itself in the example of Jachimo, who is indeed most unwarily introduced on this occasion. Mr Steevens, for some cause or other, seems determined to be blind on this side; otherwise, he must have seen, if consciousness of guilt be, as he says, the measure of pusillanimity, that, by his own rule, Jachimo should have been the victor in his combat with Posthumous; for he ought to have been braver than his adversary, in the same proportion as a vain mischievous liar is still less atrociously a wretch than an ungrateful murderer. Mr Steevens concludes: Who then can suppose that Shakspeare would have exhihited his Macbeth with increasing guilt, but undiminished bravery?' Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 297. "The only answer to this dogmatical question is-Every body;-that is, every body who can read the play, and understand what he reads. Mr Steevens knew that Shakspeare, skilfully preparing us for the mournful change we are about to witness in Macbeth, paints in deep colours the irregular fury of his actions, and the remorse that preys on his heart;-he knew, that the blood-stained monster Cannot buckle his distemper'd cause Within the belt of rule ;'". that he feels • His secret murders sticking on his hands;' and that the poet finishes this terrific picture of self-condemnation and abhorrence, by adding :- • His pester'd senses do recoil and start, When all that is within him doth condemn Itself for being there :' "But the learned Editor quite forgets that, in the same scene, good care is taken that the tyrant shall not so far forfeit all claim to our esteem, as to fall into contempt, and be entirely odious to our sight. His original valour remains undiminished, and buoys him up with wild vehemence in this total wreck of his affairs in spite of us, he commands our admiration, when we see e him-hated, abandoned, overwhelmed by calamity, public and domestic, still persist, unshrinking, to brave his ene mies, and manfully prepare against the siege with which their combined armies threaten him in his almost ungarrisoned fortress :- Cath. Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies; 'SAnd the English general presently after says to him: Siw. We learn no other, but the confident tyrant Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure *Macbeth, Act V. Scene II. "In the first speech which we hear from the mouth of Macbeth in his reverse of fortune, Shakspeare still continues to show an anxiety that, though we detest the tyrant for his cruelties, we should yet respect him for his courage: Shall e'er have power on thee.*—Then fly, false Thanes, And mingle with the English epicures: The mind I sway by, and the heart I bear, Shall never sagg with doubt, nor shake with fear!'"+ But the moral effect of this play seems very little connected with the courage or personal valour of Macbeth; it is produced by the delineation which the minal ambition; to warn us against poet has given of the progress of his crithe first deviation from rectitude,—the first yielding to temptations arising from our self-interest or desire of advancement, if our road to such objects lies through crime and inhumanity; to Mr Steevens' edition has, for an ob vious cause, been used in the quotations time, however, to protest, in the strongest from Shakspeare from this Essay: It is terms, against the unwarrantable liberties he continually takes with his author. If, Heminge and Condell were, in fairness, chargeable with all the faults which Mr Steevens, their unsparing censor, industriously lays to their account, still they have not done Shakspeare all the injury he would receive, if the of the edition of 1803 should ever be perinterpolations, omissions, and transpositions, mitted to form the text of his works. This gentleman certainly had many of the talents and acquirements expected in a good editor of our poet; but still he wanted more than one of the most requisite of them. Mr Steevens had no ear for the colloquial metrè of our old dramatists: it is not possible, on any other supposition, to account for his whimsical desire, and the pains he takes, to fetter the enchanting freedom of Shakspeare's numbers, and compel them into the heroic march and measured cadence of epic versification. The native wood notes wild, that could delight the cultivated ear of Milton, must not be modulated anew, to indulge the fastidiousness of those who read verses by their fingers.' + Macbeth, Act V. Scene III. ב show us how the soul can become hardened by degrees, till she loses all her original regard for virtue, all the former better feelings of her nature. I cannot help expressing my regret that Mr K. should have published this little volume, particularly as it may be supposed the precursor and specimen of a great work, which it has been said he meditates in the leisure which his retirement from the stage will now allow him to command. I have heard, that he means to devote that leisure to the illustration of his favourite Shakspeare, and the other less known drama tists of the olden time. I hope he will prosecute this design, which the bent of his studies, both as a scholar and an actor, gives him such favourable opportunities of successfully accomplishing. But let him not confine himself to verbal criticism or minute remark; and, above all, let him avoid any polemical writing on Shakspeare, of which we have already too much. Let him study and illustrate the authors to whom we allude in their greater attributes,-in their delinea tion of mind and of character, amidst the eventful scenes in which they IS 2 have placed the persons of their dramas,-in their power of placing those before us in their genuine colours, to instruct as well as to delight their readers to give moral to fiction, and force to truth. SENEX. CURSORY REMARKS ON MUSIC, ESPE- with it a train of overpowering recollections. When there is real beauty in a musical air, associations of this kind greatly enhance it. Every Englishman who has been fortunate enough to hear the melodies of Scotland sung in the land that gave them birth, with the touching simplicity and pathos infused into them by those who deeply feel the sympathies which they are fitted to excite, must be alive to a degree of pleasure from a Scottish air, which, without this association, it could never have communicated. It is moreover remarkable, that, in some cases, the ordinary effect of a melody may be entirely reversed, by a change of the circumstances in which it happens to be heard. Thus, we are somewhere told by Mr Boswell, in his Life of Dr Johnson, that the merry airs of the Beggar's Opera, when accidentally heard by him in Scotland, affected him with melancholy, by bringing to his mind various pleasures of the English metropolis, where he had first listened to them, and the friends then so widely separated from him, in whose society he had happened to be. It is on the same principle of association that we are to explain the effect of particular instruments of music, in exciting trains of feeling in some degree appropriate to them. The "spirit stirring drum" necessarily brings with it the idea of military parade and glory. And the organ, being usually the accompaniment of sacred music, naturally leads the mind to the subjects with which habit has connected it. On the same principle, we are to ex PLEASURE WHICH IT COMMUNI- plain the effect of particular tunes, CATES. (Concluded from page 347.) IN attempting to account for the plea sure derived from melody, I have purposely avoided alluding to that kind of gratification which arises from the excitement of obvious associations; because, though these often heighten greatly the enjoyment, yet they are by no means essential to it. In some instances, associations of this kind, so far from being productive of pleasurable feelings, become sources of the keenest mental anguish, as in the maladie du pays, so strongly excited in the Swiss by an air, which, to an English ear, certainly seems little calculated to excite emotion, but to a native of that happy country, brings which, having always been associated with certain emotions, have a neverfailing power of rekindling them, and have thus been rendered powerful auxiliaries in the excitement of patriotism or of loyalty. If we examine the history of musical taste in any individual, we shall find that a relish for simple melody has been the first step in its attainment; and that a perception of the pleasure of harmony has been generally a slow and gradual acquirement. In a few instances, however, where an extraordinary ear for music has been early manifested, the power of discriminating harmony has so rapidly followed a taste for melody, as almost to have appeared coeval with it. This was remarkably the case with a gentleman, experience. I know, indeed, no other principle on which we can explain the fact, that the pleasure of melody, even to a person of simple and natural taste, is greatly heightened by harmony, if not too intricate and multifarious. May not the pleasure which is thus occasioned, bear some analogy to that derived from symmetry and propor tion in visible objects, qualities, the absence of which is quickly discerned, even by a common eye, in objects that are familiar to it? at this day of great and deserved ce lebrity, whose early history, distinguished by a wonderful prematurity of musical taste and skill, has fortunately been preserved by Dr Burney.' At the age of only eighteen months, Master Crotch shewed a decided preference for the pleasures of music, by deserting his playthings, and even his food, to listen to it; and when only two years old, and unable to speak, in order to induce his father, whose skill in music seems to have been very limited, to play his favourite tunes, the child would touch the key-note on the organ, or, if that was not enough, would play two or three of the first notes of the air. At the age of two years and three weeks, he had taught himself to play the first part of God Save the King on the organ. In the course of a few days he made himself master of the treble of the second part; and the day after attempted the bass, which he performed correctly, with the exception of a single note. In about two months after this period, he was able to play several passages from voluntaries, which had only once been performed in his presence, by the organist of the cathedral at Norwich. About the same time, he was capable of making a bass to any melody which he had recently caught by his ear. At the age of only two years and a half, he was able to distinguish, at a distance, and out of sight of the instrument, any note that was struck upon it, within half a note, which, Dr Burney observes, is beyond the power of many old and skilful performers. Another wonderfully premature attain-sembling in form the object that was ment was, his being able to transpose, into the most extraneous and difficult keys, whatever he played, and to contrive an extemporary bass to easy melodies, when performed by another person on the same instrument. From that time to the present he has continued to advance in reputation; and is now, I believe, considered as the most scientific musician that Great Britain can boast. Examples of the same kind have occurred in Mozart, in the two Messrs Wesley, and in a few other persons; and they would almost warrant the conclusion, that the ear has an instinctive power of discriminating harmony, independently of education or * Philosophical Transactions, Ixix. In the usual acceptation of language, only an agreeable succession of sounds is called melody, and only the co-existence of agreeable sounds harmony. An ingenious speculation, however, has been proposed by Dr Franklin, in a letter to Lord Kames, by which he would resolve all melody into harmony. The hypothesis is founded on a quality ascertained to exist in our organs of sense, viz. that they have the power of retaining, for a time, any impression made by an external object; in consequence of which, in a series of sensations, any one impression becomes intermingled with that which immediately precedes, and with that which immediately follows it. This law of sensation, so far as it is applicable to the phenomena of vision, had not escaped the sagacity of Dr Franklin; but it has since been more fully developed, and ingeniously illustrated, by Dr Darwin, in his Essay on Ocular Spectra.* On looking long and attentively at a bright object, as the setting sun, and then shutting the eyes, or excluding the light, an image, re contemplated, continues some time to be visible. This appearance in the eye Dr Darwin calls the ocular spectrum of the object. That a similar power exists in the ear, is highly probable, since, as Dr Franklin observes, 66 we are capable of retaining, for some moments, a perfect idea of the pitch of a past sound, so as to compare it with the pitch of a succeeding sound. Thus, in tuning an instrument, a good ear can as easily determine that two strings are in unison, by sounding them separately, as by sounding them together. Their disagreement," he adds, "is also as easily, I believe I may say more easily, and better distinguished when *See Darwin's Zoonomia. |