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      Shakspeare Papers. Pictures Grave And Ga...

      To * return to' Lady Macbeth . There is no mention of murder in her husband ' s letter , yet she , too , has the conception in her mind ; but in this Maginn contends she only followed the thought of her hutband : — - "Have for , him is in fact her guiding passion ^ sees that he covets the throne , —that his happiness is wrapt up in the hope of being a king , —and her part is accordingly taken without hesitation . With the blindness of affection , she persuades herself that he is full of the milk of human kindness , and that he would reject false and unholy ways of attaining the

      object of his desire . She deems it , therefore , her duty to spirit him to the taslc . Fate and metaphysical aid , she argues , have destined him for the golden round of Scotland . Shall she not lend her assistance ? She does not ask the question twice . She will . Her sex , her woman ' s breasts , her very nature , oppose the task she has prescribed to herself ; but she prays to the ministers of murder , to the spirits that tend on mortal thoughts , to make thick her blood , and stop up the access and passage of remorse ; and she succeeds in mustering the desperate courage which bears her through . "

      Asto Macbeth , Maginn says # iat "He is not haunted by any feeling for the sin , any compassion for his victim ;—the dread of losing the golden opinions he has so lately -won , the consequences of failure , alone torment him . His wife has not to suggest murder , for that has been already resolved upon ; butito represent the weakness of drawing back , after a resolution has once been formed . Slie well knows that the momentary qualm will pass off , —that Duncan" is to be slain , perhaps when time and place will not so Well adhere . ' , ' she argues , —' now it can be done with safety . Macbeth is

      determined to wade through slaughter to a throne . If he passes this moment he loses the eagerly desired prize , and lives for ever after a coward in his own esteem ; or he may make the attempt iat a moment wjien detection is so near at hand , that the stroke which sends Duncan to his fate will be but the prelude of the destruction of my husband- ' She therefore rouses him to do at once that from which she knows nothing but fear of detection deters him ; and , feeling that there are ho conscientious scruples to overcome , applies herself to show that the present is the most favourable instant . It is for him she thinks—for him she is unsexed—for his ambir

      would have seen in the smile of her child a talisman of resistless protection . " The murder done , and her husband on the throne , she is no longer implicated in guilt . . She is unhappy in her elevation , and writhes under a troubled spirit in the midst of assumed gaiety . She reflects with a settled melancholy that

      ' 'Nought ' shad , all ' s spent , When our desire is got . ¦ without content , 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy . Than hy destruction dwell in doubtful joy . ' This to herself ; To cheer her lord , she speaks a different language in the very next line . " ' How now , my lord ! why do you keep alone , Of sorriest fancies your companions making- ; Using * those thoughts which should indeed have died With those they think on ?'

      Her own thoughts , we have j ust seen , were full as sorry as those of her husband : but she can wear a mask . Twice only does she appear after her accession to the throne ; once masked , once unmasked . Once seated at high festival , entertaining the nobles of her realm , full of grace and courtesy , performing her stately hospitalities with cheerful countenance , and devising with rare presence of mind excuses for the distracted conduct of her husband . Once again , when all guard is removed , groaning in despair .

      af ter Macduff ; but she ventures not to hint Sh ^ is no longer the stern-tongued lady urging on the work of death , and taunting her husband for his hesitation . She now addresses him in the humble tone of an inferior ; we now see fright and astonish inent seated on her face . He tells her that she marvels at his words , and she would fain persuade herself that they are but the feverish effusions of an over-wrought mind . Sadly she says ,

      "' You lack the season of all nature , —sleep . ' Those are the last words we hear from her waking lips ; and with a hope that repose may banish those murky thoughts from her husband ' s mind , she takes hand in hand with him , her tearful departure ' from the stage , and seeks her remorse-haunted chamber , there to indulge in useless reveries of deep-rooted sorrow , and to perish by her own hand amid the crashing ruin of her fortunes , and the fall of that throne which she had so fatally contributed to win"

      . This , it must be acknowledged , is first-rate criticism . Let it stand as a specimen-brick of the whole edifice . Every true admirer of Shakspeare will possess himself of the volume .

      " The few words she says to Macbeth after the guests have departed , almost driven out by herself , mark that her mind is completely subdued . She remonstrates with him at first for having broken up the feast ; but she cannot continue the tone of reproof , when she finds that his thoughts are bent on gloomier objects . Blood is for ever on his tongue . She had ventured to tell him that the visions which startle him were but the painting of his brain , and . that he was unmanned in folly . He takes no heed of what she says , and continues to speculate , at first in distraction , then in dread , and lastly in savage cruelty , upon blood . The apparition of Ban quo almost deprives him of bis senses . He marvels that such things could be , arid complains that a cruel exception to the ordinary laws of nature is permitted in his case . Blood , he says ,

      "' —has been shed ere now in the olden time , . Ere human . statute purged the gentle weal , 'and in more civilised times also ; but , when death came , no further consequences followed . Now not even twenty mortal murders [ he remembered the number of deadly gashes reported by the assassin ] will keep the victim in . his grave . As long as Banquo ' s ghost " remains before him , he speaks in the same distracted strain . When the object of bis special wonder , by its vanishing , gives him time to reflect , fear of detection , as usual , is his first feeling , u' It will have blood , they say ; blood will have blood I "

      The most improbable -witnesses have detected murder . Stones , trees , magotpies , choughs , have disclosed the secretest man of blood . Then come cruel resolves , to rid himself of his fears . Mercy or remorse is to be henceforward unknown ; the firstlings of his heart are to be the firstlings of his hand , —the bloody thought is- to be followed instantly by the bloody deed . The tiger is now fully aroused in his soul . " 'I am in blood Stept in bo far , that , Bhpuld I wado no more , Returning were as tedious aa go ' o ' er . '

      He sees an enemy in every castle ; everywhere he plants his spies ; from every hand he dreads , an attemp ' t upon his life , Nearly two centuries after the play was written , the world beheld one of its fairest portions delivered to a rule as bloody as that of the Scottish tyrant ; and so true to nature are the conceptions of Shakspeare , that the speeches of mixed terror and cruelty , which he has given to Macbeth , might have been uttered by Robespierre . The atrocities of the Jacobin , after he had stept so far in blood , were dictated by fear . « Robespierre , '

      says a quondam satellite , * « deyenait plus sombre ; son air renfrogno repoussait tout lo monde j il ne parlait que d ' assassinat , encore d ' aasasainat , toujours d ' assassinat . II a volt pour que son ombre no rasaaesinuV " Lady Macbeth seoa thia grisly resolution / and ceases to remonstrate or interfere . Her soul is bowed dpwn before his , and he communicates with her no longer . He tells her to be ignorant of what he plans , until , sho can applaud him for what he has done . When ho abruptly asks her ,

      ••• Wow aay ' flt thOM . —that Maoduffdenjoa his poraon At our groat bidding v she , well knowing that she haa not said anything about it , and that the question is suggested by his own fear and suspicion , timidly inquires , .. » " , Have you sent to him , air V The last word is an emphatic proof that she is wholly subjugated . Too well is she a warp of the cause , and the consequence , of Maobeth'a sending

      tion she works—for his safety she provides . " Lady Macbeth feels , in the manner of her lord , that he can be confounded not by the crime , but only by the frustrated attempt . M When it has been accomplished , he is for a while visitedLby brain-sick fancies ; and to her , who sees the necessity of prompt action , is left the care of providing the measures best calculated to avert the dreaded detection . She makes light of facing the dead , and assures her husband that " * A little water dears us of this deed . How easy is it then 1 '

      •• Does she indeed feel this ? Are these the real emotions of her mind ? Does she think that a little water will washout what has been done , and that it is as easy to make all trace of it vanish from the heart as from the hand ? She shall answer us from her sleep , in the loneliness of midnight , in the secrecy of her chamber . Bold was her bearing , reckless and defying her tongue , when her husband was to be served or saved ; but the sigh bursting from her heavily-charged breast , and her deep agony when she feqla that , so far from its being

      easy to get rid of the witness of murder , no washing can obliterate the damned spot , no perfume sweeten the hand once redolent of blood , prove that the recklessness and defiance were only assumed . "STq find at last what she had . sacrificed , how dreadful was the struggle she had to subdue . Her nerve , her courage , mental and physical , was unbroken during the night of murder ; but horror was already seated in her heart . Even then a touch of what waa going on in her bosom breaks forth . When urging Macbeth to act , she speaks as if she held the strongest ties of human nature in contempt .

      14 I have given suck , and know How tender 'tis to lovo tho babe that milks mo : I would , when It was smiling in my fnoo , Have plucked my nipple from his bonoloHB gums , And dashed tho brains out , had I but bo sworn As you have done to this . ' la she indeed so unnatural- —so destitute of maternal , of womanly feeling ? No . In the next scene we find her deterred from actual participation in killing Duncan , because ho resembled her father in his sleep . , This te not the lady to pluck the nipple from the ponelesB guma of her infant , and dash out its brains . Her language is exaggerated in mere bravado ,, to taunt Maobeth ' s infirmity of purpose by a fipmnarieon , with her own , boasted firmness : out if the qofl ^ hna . arisen , she who had recoiled from injuring one whoso llfe ' etodd In * the way of her husband ' s nones flcoin a fancied resemblance to her father ,

      1230; The Leader. [No. 502. Nov. 5, 185q

      1230 ; THE LEADER . [ No . 502 . Nov . 5 , 185 Q

      * Causa Eeorocea Do La Mvalutunt Ae 0 An...

      * Causa eeoroCea do la MvalutUnt ae 0 an 10 tlmmtoor i by YUnto , ex-jurti rtfvoluttonimire do rivria .

      Literary Keminiscencjfis And Memoius Of ...

      LITERARY KEMINISCENCJfiS and MEMOIUS of THOMAS CAMPBELL ,. By Cyrus Redding . 2 Vols . —Chas . J . Skeet . A more competent biographer than Mr . C . Redding could not be found for ' the author of " The Pleasures of Hope ; " and it is with more than ari ordinary welcome that we receive the present work . We are interested equally by the modesty and candour of the writer , who rather underrates than otherwise his qualifications for the task . The family of the poet belonged to tho clan of the Campbells , and Thomas Campbell , the subject of the present biography , was , like Thomson ,

      Scottish born . His birth took place at Glasgow , in a house no longer in existence , situated in the High . Street , on the 27 th July , 1777 . His father was then sixty-seven , and his mother about thirtyrseven years of age , and Thomas was their eighth son . He remembered little about his family , and seldom spoke of his early days , except the college ones , with complacency . In kis schooldays he disliked mechanical routine , and then and afterwards took his own 'way of acquiring learning . The tendencies of his mind were metaphysical during the student period of his life , though its occasional bias was poetical .

      His ignorance of general branches of knowledge was extensive , and led to errors in his natural descriptions , of frequent occurrence in Ins poetry . His habit , also , of abstraction or thoughtlessness was an early one . The first sketch of his great poem was made during his residence in the Isle of Mull , at Callioch , in 1795-6 . He was at the time tutor in a family there , distantly related to his mother ' s . Roger ' s " Pleasures of Memory " had preceded it by six years . At the University he had already obtained prizes in Greek , literature . With this work in manuscript , ami some Greek translationshe arrived hi Glasgow , the

      , future all dark and the present perplexed . He submitted to the drudgery of u law clerk us a copyist , but becoming acquainted with . Dr . Anderson , hs was introduced to Mundcll , the Edinburgh publisher , who employed him to abridge Bryan JEdword ' s" Went Indies , " giving him twenty guineas for the job . It was now that he composed '" The Wounded Hussar , " which was sung about the streets of Glasgow ns a bal aa . For the copyright of " Tho Pleasures of Hope ho which

      received two hundred printed copies , «« - duoed him about fifty-seven pounds ); but subsequently his publishers presented Uiin with twentyfive pounds for every edition of a thousand copies , and permitted him to publish u quarto edition on his own account , which yielded him about six hundred pounds . Campbell received altogether about nine hundred pounds for thut . uuo poem ; or on the whole about fifteen shillings a 1 >» G - . -H poem underwent various alterations during its progress ; the beginning was different ; much was

      abandoned , much was added . Tlio Hie was uscu immoderately , and tho utmost polish given to expression . This also was tho ouso with Ins lyrics . Dr . Anderson was the poet ' s luontor , hm guiae , philosopher and friend , and would not suitor a phrase to pass without proper revision . Wo regret to find Mr . Redding so severe on Lord Brougham , whose remarks on Camp bell uavo exoited more , yre think , than a , counterbalance cw indignation . We agree , however , with Ins biographer ' s estimate of the poet ' s " Gertrude 0 I

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 5, 1859, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_05111859/page/18/