nt and fear; and stands in doubt between the world of
reality and the world of fancy. He sees sights not shewn to mortal eye,
and hears unearthly music. All is tumult and disorder within and without
his mind; his purposes recoil upon himself, are broken and disjointed; he
is the double thrall of his passions and his evil destiny. Richard is not
a character either of imagination or pathos, but of pure self-will. There
is no conflict of opposite feelings in his breast. The apparitions which
he sees only haunt him in his sleep; nor does he live like Macbeth in a
waking dream. Macbeth has considerable energy and manliness of character;
but then he is "subject to all the skyey influences." He is sure of
nothing but the present moment. Richard in the busy turbulence of his
projects never loses his self-possession, and makes use of every
circumstance that happens as an instrument of his long-reaching designs.
In his last extremity we can only regard him as a wild beast taken in the
toils: while we never entirely lose our concern for Macbeth; and he calls
back all our sympathy by that fine close of thoughtful melancholy,

"My way of life is fallen into the sear,
The yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age,
As honour, troops of friends, I must not look to have;
But in their stead, curses not loud but deep,
Mouth-honour, breath, which the poor heart
Would fain deny, and dare not."

We can conceive a common actor to play Richard tolerably well; we can
conceive no one to play Macbeth properly, or to look like a man that had
encountered the Weird Sisters. All the actors that we have ever seen,
appear as if they had encountered them on the hoards of Covent-garden or
Drury-lane, but not on the heath at Fores, and as if they did not believe
what they had seen. The Witches of MACBETH indeed are ridiculous on the
modern stage, and we doubt if the Furies of AEschylus would be more
respected. The progress of manners and knowledge has an influence on the
stage, and will in time perhaps destroy both tragedy and comedy. Filch's
picking pockets in the _Beggar's Opera_ is not so good a jest as it used
to be: by the force of the police and of philosophy, Lillo's murders and
the ghosts in Shakspeare will become obsolete. At last, there will be
nothing left, good nor bad, to be desired or dreaded, on the theatre or in
real life.--A question has been started with respect to the originality of
Shakspeare's witches, which