Page images
PDF
EPUB

We

chiefly by contagion from her-yet, as both were finally involved in the guilt of murder, the murderous mind of necessity is finally to be presumed in both. This was to be expressed; and on its own account, as well as to make it a more proportionable antagonist to the unoffending nature of their victim, "the gracious Duncan," and adequately to expound "the deep damnation of his taking off," this was to be expressed with peculiar energy. were to be made to feel that the human nature, that is, the divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from man, was gone, vanished, extinct; and that the fiendish nature had taken its place. And, as this effect is marvellously accomplished in the dialogues and soliloquies themselves, so it is finally consummated by the expedient under consideration; and it is to this that I now solicit the reader's attention.

If the reader has ever witnessed a wife, daughter, or sister in a fainting fit, he may chance to have observed that the most affecting moment in such a spectacle is that in which a sigh and a stirring announce the recommencement of suspended life. Or, if the reader has ever been present in a vast metropolis on the day when some great national idol was carried in funeral pomp to his grave, and chancing to walk near the course through which it passed, has felt powerfully, in the silence and desertion of the streets, and in the stagnation of ordinary business, the deep interest which at that moment was possessing the heart of man,— if all at once he should hear the death-like stillness broken up by the sound of wheels rattling away from the scene, and making known that the transitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was his sense of the complete suspension and pause in ordinary human concerns so full and affecting as at that moment when the suspension ceases and the goings-on of human life are suddenly resumed.

All action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made apprehensible by re-action. Now apply this to the case in Macbeth. Here, as I have said, the retiring of the human heart and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and

made sensible. Another world has stepped in, and the murderers are taken out of the region of human things, human purposes, human desires. They are transfigured: Lady Macbeth is "unsexed;" Macbeth has forgot that he was born of woman: both are conformed to the image of devils; and the world of devils is suddenly revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made

palpable?

In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers and the murder must be insulated -cut off by an immeasurable gulf from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs-locked up and sequestered in some deep recess; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested-laid asleep-tranced-racked into a dread armistice: time must be annihilated; relation to things without abolished; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is, that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard, and it makes known audibly that the re-action has commenced: the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again, and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them.

O mighty poet! thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature-like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, -which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert; but that, the further we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident.

DE QUINCEY.

[blocks in formation]

To sleep! perchance to dream;-ay, there's No traveller returns,-puzzles the will.

the rub!

For in that sleep of death what dreams

may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns
of time,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's With this regard, their currents turn awry, contumely, And lose the name of action.

SHAKSPEARE.

THE WIFE'S DUTY TO HER HUSBAND.

FIE, fie unknit that threatening, unkind | While thou liest warm at home, secure and brow;

safe;

And dart not scornful glances from those And craves no other tribute at thy hands,

eyes,

To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor: It blots thy beauty, as frost bites the meads;

But love, fair looks, and true obedience;-
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince.
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;

Confounds thy fame, as whirlwinds shake And when she's froward, peevish, sullen,

fair buds;

And in no sense is meet, or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And, while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy
keeper,

Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares
for thee,

sour,

And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel,
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for
peace;

Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love, and
obey.

And for thy maintenance commits his Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and body

To painful labour, both by sea and land; To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,

smooth,

Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts
SHAKSPEARE.

OTHELLO'S APOLOGY FOR HIS MARRIAGE.

MOST potent, grave, and reverend signiors; My very noble and approved good mastersThat I have ta'en away this old man's daughter,

It is most true; true, I have married her: The very head and front of my offending Hath this extent; no more. Rude am I in speech,

Of being taken by the insolent foe,
And sold to slavery; of my redemption
thence,

And portance in my travels' history.
This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline;
But still the house-affairs would draw her
thence:

And little bless'd with the set phrase of Which ever as she could with haste peace; despatch, For since these arms of mine had seven She'd come again, and with a greedy ear Devour up my discourse. Which I

years' pith,

Till now, some nine mcons wasted, they have used

Their dearest action in the tented field; And little of this great world can I speak More than pertains to feats of broils and battles:

And little, therefore, shall I grace my cause In speaking for myself. Yet, by your patience,

I will a round unvarnished tale deliver Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms,

What conjuration, and what mighty magic, (For such proceeding I am charged withal,) I won his daughter with..

Her father loved me; oft invited me; Still questioned me the story of my life From year to year-the battles, sieges, fortunes,

That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days, To the very moment that he bade me tell it. Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances;

Of moving accidents, by flood and field; Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach;

observing,

Took once a pliant hour, and found good

means

To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart,
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something
heard,

But not intentively. I did consent;
And often did beguile her of her tears,
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffered.-My story being
done,

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs: She said 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange; 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:

She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished

That Heaven had made her such a man: she thanked me;

And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,

I should but teach him how to tell my story, And that would woo her. Upon this hint

I spake:

She loved me for the dangers I had passed; And I loved her that she did pity them.This only is the witchcraft I have used. SHAKSPEARE.

So work the honey bees;

COMMONWEALTH OF BEES.

Creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom. They have a king and officers of sorts: Where some, like magistrates, correct at home:

Which pillage they with merry march bring
To the tent royal of their emperor: [home
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in

Others, like merchants, venture trade Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;

abroad:

Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;

The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone.

SHAKSPEARE.

[ocr errors]

STORY OF THE SIEGE OF CALAIS.

EDWARD III., after the battle of Cressy, laid siege to Calais. He had fortified his camp in so impregnable a manner that all the efforts of France proved ineffectual to raise the siege, or throw succours into the city. The citizens, under Count Vienne, their gallant governor, made an admirable defence. France had now put the sickle into her second harvest since Edward, with his victorious army, sat down before the town. The eyes of all Europe were intent on the issue. At length famine did more for Edward than arms. After suffering unheard-of calamities, they resolved to attempt the enemy's camp. They boldly sallied forth; the English joined battle; and, after a long and desperate engagement, Count Vienne was taken prisoner, and the citizens who survived the slaughter retired within their gates. The command devolving upon Eustace St. Pierre, a man of mean birth, but of exalted virtue, he offered to capitulate with Edward, provided he permitted them to depart with life and liberty. Edward, to avoid the imputation of cruelty, consented to spare the bulk of the plebeians, provided they delivered up to him six of their principal citizens, with halters about their necks, as victims of due atonement for that spirit of rebellion with which they had inflamed the vulgar. When his messenger, Sir Walter Mauny, delivered the terms, consternation and pale dismay were impressed on every countenance. To a long and dead silence deep sighs and groans succeeded, till Eustace St. Pierre, getting up to a little eminence, thus addressed the assembly:--

"My friends, we are brought to great straits this day. We must either yield to the terms of our cruel and ensnaring conqueror, or give up our tender infants, our wives, and our daughters, to the enemy. Is there any expedient left whereby we may avoid the guilt and infamy of delivering up those who have suffered every misery with you, on the one hand, or the desolation and horror of a sacked city, on the other? There is, my friends; there is one

« PreviousContinue »