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    vacancy , he gazes all around in agonized and fluctuating apprehension , as if the awful presence must still be somewhere at the banquet , until he gradually becomes reassured : * Why , so , being gone , I am a man again /

    Now this is the truth ; Shakspeare ' s truth ., that is . Kemble ' s version was a spice of modern philosophy . The tragedy is based upon the reality of the supernatural . We cannot subscribe to tne doctrine of certain of the best critics we know , that Macbeth is an illustration of superstition . The hero believes nothing for which the poet does not vouch . He is deceived by the ambiguous

    promise of the fiend , but it was a fiend that made the promise . The Weird Sisters are the Destinies of the play ; the Scottish Pates . His error ( according to Shakspeare ) was in trusting the demons , not in believing them to be demons . Even Lady Macbeth , an infidel of the age , though she laug hs at the ghost and the dagger , solemnly invocates those whose ' sightless substances

    wait on nature ' s mischief' by the accredited mode of adjuration . We may perhaps even regard her as nerved , by their possession , for her daring crimes . Such possession held its place in religion and history long after the days of Elizabeth . Having said thus much of Macbeth , we cannot dismiss the play without observing

    that we never saw a finer lyric poem than the countenance and action of Macread y during the combat with Macduff . There was not the Kemble trick of the tinkling of the trembling sword against the crossed sword of his antagonist , but there was that rapid succession of the intensest emotions , pervaded by a concentrating energy , which characterizes a noble Pindaric .

    But the finest of Macread y ' s performances , which includes its "bein g the finest thing that the British stage can at present exhibit , is King Lear . Mr . Campbell speaks of it as ' masterly / but complains that he missed John Kemble ' s eyes . That were bettor than to have missed Macready ' s brains and nerves . We

    have never seen a personation impl ying so much of the best intellectual and moral qualities comoined with such artistical perfection . Without adverting to any particular beauty , or any of the many touches which made throats swell or tears flow , we would observe of the actor ' s conception of the character , that , with a soul akin to that of the inspiring bard , he seized on the exac t

    point and condition , in the natural history of mind and body , at which , and at which alone , the aged king and father secures our respect , pity , and sympathy , in the highest degree . It was saw that Garrick would have turned in his grave with envy at the success of Mrs . Siddons ' s Lady Macbeth ; she would have wept and knelt to the power of Mac ready ' a King Lear .

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    550 CampbeWi Life of Mrs . Siddan * .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 550, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/20/