d on the contrary
needs no prompter, but wades through a series of crimes to the height of
his ambition from the ungovernable violence of his temper and a reckless
love of mischief. He is never gay but in the prospect or in the success of
his villainies: Macbeth is full of horror at the thoughts of the murder of
Duncan, which he is with difficulty prevailed on to commit, and of remorse
after its perpetration. Richard has no mixture of common humanity in his
composition, no regard to kindred or posterity, he owns no fellowship with
others, he is "himself alone." Macbeth is not destitute of feelings of
sympathy, is accessible to pity, is even made in some measure the dupe of
his uxoriousness, ranks the loss of friends, of the cordial love of his
followers, and of his good name, among the causes which have made him
weary of life, and regrets that he has ever seized the crown by unjust
means, since he cannot transmit it to his posterity--

"For Banquo's issue have I fil'd my mind--
For them the gracious Duncan have I murther'd,
To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings."

In the agitation of his mind, he envies those whom he has sent to peace.
"Duncan is in his grave; after life's fitful fever he sleeps well."--It is
true, he becomes more callous as he plunges deeper in guilt, "direness is
thus rendered familiar to his slaughterous thoughts," and he in the end
anticipates his wife in the boldness and bloodiness of his enterprises,
while she for want of the same stimulus of action, "is troubled with
thick-coming fancies that rob her of her rest," goes mad and dies. Macbeth
endeavours to escape from reflection on his crimes by repelling their
consequences, and banishes remorse for the past by the meditation of
future mischief. This is not the principle of Richard's cruelty, which
displays the wanton malice of a fiend as much as the frailty of human
passion. Macbeth is goaded on to acts of violence and retaliation by
necessity; to Richard, blood is a pastime.--There are other decisive
differences inherent in the two characters. Richard may be regarded as a
man of the world, a plotting, hardened knave, wholly regardless of
everything but his own ends, and the means to secure them.--Not so
Macbeth. The superstitions of the age, the rude state of society, the
local scenery and customs, all give a wildness and imaginary grandeur to
his character. From the strangeness of the events that surround him, he is
full of amazeme