And we'll not fail. When Duncan is asleep,
(Whereto the rather shall his hard day's journey
Soundly invite him,) his two chamberlains
Will I with wine and wassel so convince,
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only. When in swinish sleep
Their drenched natures lie, as in a death,
What cannot you and I perform upon

The unguarded Duncan? What not put upon
His spungy officers; who shall bear the guilt
Of our great quell?

Precisely in this spirit does Jezebel address Ahab :-"Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? arise, and eat bread, and let thine heart be merry: I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite. So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders, and to the nobles that were in his city, dwelling with Naboth; and she wrote in the letters, saying, Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people: and set two men, sons of Belial, before him, and bear witness against him, saying, Thou didst blaspheme God and the king; and then carry him out, and stone him, that he may die." The two monarchs resemble each other in their closing scenes. As dangers increase,

and the hope of repulsing his enemies diminishes, Macbeth clings with desperate faith to the words of those who "paltered with him in a double sense;"—and Ahab, seduced by false prophets, goes up against RamothGilead, where destruction awaits him. The frenzy with which the former receives the messengers who bring tidings of the enemy's approach, corresponds with the hatred which the latter expresses for Micaiah, the true prophet, "who did not prophesy good concerning him, but evil." Ahab and Macbeth resemble each other also in the brave spirit which flashes forth just before the end of life; a last ray of kingliness in one, and a burst of old knightly feeling in the other.

Macbeth.

I'll not yield

To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited by the rabble's curse,
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last.

"And Ahab said to his chariot-man, Turn thine hand, that thou mayest carry me out of the host, for I am wounded. And the battle increased that day; howbeit the king of Israel stayed himself up in his chariot against the

Syrians until the even; and about the time of the sunsetting he died." Their queens also died in a resembling spirit; one, having "painted her face and tired her head," is killed with scoffing on her lips; the other expires without one "compunctious visiting," which might prove that remembrance at last awoke remorse.

Let me now direct your attention to an individual scene in the same tragedy, and a Scripture narrative, the announcement to Macduff, of the murder of his family; and to David, of the death of Absalom. The spirit and construction are essentially the same, and it is interesting to see how closely a firstrate production of art approximates to the simplicity of nature. The transcendent dramatist has only been natural; the simple narrator of events has been dramatic. represent a bereaved parent, and that parent's grief, in heart-broken, heart-breaking words. When the watchman reports the approach of Ahimaaz, and David replies, "He is a good man, and cometh with good tidings," we have one of the subtilest springs of human nature touched without design.

Both

Yet who does not know the operation of that principle which hopes or fears according to the medium by which intelligence is conveyed, and again reflects back upon that medium the precise feeling which the intelligence has excited? Shakspeare gives a fine illustration of this in another place, where he makes Constance say to the bearer of ill tidings

Thy news hath made thee a most ugly man."

Then follows another of those delicate touches which go home and instantly to the heart. Of each succeeding messenger David asks but one question, for his soul knows but one anxiety; it concerns not the battle, though upon that is his crown depending-but "Is the young man Absalom safe?" In the history and the tragedy, the messengers alike give evasive replies in the first instance, and the sufferers are represented as guessing the truth before they hear it. David more unkinged by grief than by his son's rebellion, rose from his place, and "went up to the chamber above the gate; " he asked no further question, desired no other intelligence, and craved

no royal privilege, save the privilege to weep alone. His people were gathering roundthose who had saved and those who had injured him ;-the din of battle and the shout of victory were in his ear;—he saw, and heard, but heeded not, for his soul was gone forth to Absalom, cut off in the full blossom of his iniquities-to Absalom, his beautiful and brave—" and the victory that day was turned into mourning." His recovered crown, his re-established throne, were vain comforters for his lost child-for him, of whom, as he went up to his chamber, he wept and said, "O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would to God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" In David we see the monarch forgotten in the father; in Macduff, after the first paroxysm of sorrow, the husband and father become merged in the warrior, who resolves to make him "medicines of his great revenge." This is characteristic, but had both been poetic imaginations, we cannot doubt which would have been considered of the highest order. other observation on this passage. In David

One

mourning over Absalom, one would think