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they originally possessed; and such is the case with this fiend of Scotland."

His nature is not obdurate like that of RICHARD; he looks back on his past life, when he is softened by the sense of that forlorn and deserted situation in which he stands, compared with that of the murdered DUNCAN.

"Duncan is in his grave, After life's fitful fever he sleeps well," &c. "My way of life

Is fallen into the sear and yellow leaf," &c. Hence that scarce unwilling pity which we afford him, abated only, not extinguished, by the recollection of his past atrocities.

Personal regard for Mr Kemble makes me, I confess, unwilling to dwell upon a work which I think unworthy of him. I will only quote one or two passages which fall particularly within the scope of his own profession, as a specimen of the style of the book. "A play is written (says Mr Kemble) on some event, for the purpose of being acted; and plays are so inseparable from the notion of action, that, in reading them, our reflection, necessarily bodying forth the carriage which it conceives the various characters would sustain on the stage, becomes its own theatre, and gratifies itself with an ideal representation of the piece. This operation of the mind demonstrates, that Mr Whately has in this place once more misconstrued Shakspeare; for there is no risk in saying, that the eye of a spectator would turn, offended, from the affront offered to credibility, by the impassive levity of manner set down for Banquo in the REMARKS." Page 53.

This is perfectly just; but we apprehend that the imagination of the reader would go a step higher than that to which Mr K. here conducts it. It is no doubt natural for a person who has often witnessed scenes represented on the stage (it is more particularly natural for Mr Kemble) to refer them to that representation; but a person conversant with men and books, but who had never seen a play, would refer them to the events actually happening in real life, and the language and deportment of those concerned in them, to the language and deportment which, in such real circumstances, they would have held. The ductility of our imaginations, in supposing ourselves spectators of events at Rome or Athens placed be

fore us in the stage, has been often remarked. This scenic deception is of a very peculiar kind; it puts the reality a little way off, but does not altogether hide it from our view. We see Mr Kemble and Mrs Siddons, we know them for Mr K. and Mrs S.; but we judge of and feel for them as Coriolanus and Volumnia. It is an improvement on dramatic representation (which in this place I may mention to the honour of Mr Kemble) to bring the scene before us with all the mechanical adjuncts which may assist the deception. The dress of the performers, the streets and temples of the scene, the statues of the temples, and the furniture of apartments, should certainly be brought as near as possible to the costume and other circumstances belonging to the country and place of the representation; and this is what Mr Kemble, both as an actor and manager, has accomplished, to the great and everlasting improvement of the British stage.

In another passage, Mr K. considers the moral effect of this drama, and contradicts the idea of Mr Steevens in the following passage.

"Mr Steevens says-One of Shakspeare's favourite morals is, that criminality reduces the brave and pusillanimous to a level.'-(Mr Steevens probably meant to say, that criminality reduces the braye to a level with the pusillanimous.)- Every puny whipster gets my sword, exclaims Othello, for why should honour outlive honesty ?-Where I could not be honest, says Albany, I was never valiant,

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-Jachimo imputes his want of manhood to the heaviness and guilt within his bosom.-Hamlet asserts, that conscience does make cowards of us all; and Imogen tells Pisanio, he may be valiant in a better cause, but now he seems a coward.' Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 297.

"Is there, among these instances, one that approaches to any thing like a parallel with Macbeth? The sophistry of such perverse trifling with a reader's time and patience, completely exposes itself in the example of Jachimo, who is indeed most unwarily introduced on this occasion. Mr Steevens, for some cause or other, seems determined to be blind on this side; otherwise, he must have seen, if consciousness of guilt be, as he says, the measure of pusillanimity, that, by his own rule,

Jachimo should have been the victor in his combat with Posthumous; for he ought to have been braver than his 'adversary, in the same proportion as a vain mischievous liar is still less atrociously a wretch than an ungrateful murderer. Mr Steevens concludes: 'Who then can suppose that Shakspeare would have exhibited his Macbeth with increasing guilt, but undiminished bravery?' Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 297.

"The only answer to this dogmatical question is,-Every body;--that is, every body who can read the play, and understand what he reads. Mr Steevens knew that Shakspeare, skilfully preparing us for the mournful change we are about to witness in Macbeth, paints in deep colours the irregular fury of his actions, and the remorse that preys on his heart;-he knew, that the blood-stained monster

— Cannot buckle his distemper'd cause Within the belt of rule ;'* that he feels

• His secret murders sticking on his hands;'t and that the poet finishes this terrific picture of self-condemnation and abhorrence, by adding :

"His pester'd senses do recoil and start, When all that is within him doth condemn Itself for being there :"+

"But the learned Editor quite forgets that, in the same scene, good care is taken that the tyrant shall not so far forfeit all claim to our esteem, as to fall into contempt, and be entirely odious to our sight. His original valour remains undiminished, and buoys him up with wild vehemence in this total wreck of his affairs in spite of us, he commands our admiration, when we see him—hated, abandoned, overwhelmed by calamity, public and domestic, still persist, unshrinking, to brave his enemies, and manfully prepare against the siege with which their combined armies threaten him in his almost ungarrisoned fortress :

Cath. Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies ;'§

And the English general presently after says to him :—

Siw. We learn no other, but the confident
tyrant

Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure
Our sitting down before it.'||

*Macbeth, Act V. Scene II.
+ Ibid.
Ibid. § Ibid.

Ibid. Act V. Scene IV.

"In the first speech which we hear from the mouth of Macbeth in his reverse of fortune, Shakspeare still continues to show an anxiety that, though we detest the tyrant for his cruelties, we should yet respect him for his courage:

Macb. Bring me no more reports; let
them fly all;

Till Birnam-wood remove to Dunsinane,
I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy

Malcolm ?

Was he not born of woman? The spirits
that know

All mortal consequents, pronounc'd me thus:
Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of

woman

Shall e'er have power on thee.*—Then fly,
false Thanes,

And mingle with the English epicures:
The mind I sway by, and the heart I bear,
Shall never sagg with doubt, nor shake with
fear!" "+

But the moral effect of this play seems very little connected with the courage or personal valour of Macbeth; it is produced by the delineation which the poet has given of the progress of his criminal ambition; to warn us against the first deviation from rectitude,—the first yielding to temptations arising

from our self-interest or desire of advancement, if our road to such objects lies through crime and inhumanity; to

* Mr Steevens' edition has, for an obvious cause, been used in the quotations from Shakspeare from this Essay: It is time, however, to protest, in the strongest terms, against the unwarrantable liberties he continually takes with his author. If Heminge and Condell were, in fairness, chargeable with all the faults which Mr Steevens, their unsparing censor, industriously lays to their account, still they have not done Shakspeare all the injury he would receive, if the interpolations, omissions, and transpositions, of the edition of 1803 should ever be permitted to form the text of his works. This gentleman certainly had many of the talents and acquirements expected in a good editor of our poet; but still he wanted more than one of the most requisite of them.

Mr

Steevens had no ear for the colloquial metre of our old dramatists: it is not possible, on any other supposition, to account for his whimsical desire, and the pains he takes, to fetter the enchanting freedom of Shakspeare's numbers, and compel them into the heroic march and measured cadence of epic versification. The native wood notes wild, that could delight the cultivated ear of Milton, must not be modulated anew, to indulge the fastidiousness of those who read verses by their fingers.'

+ Macbeth, Act V. Scene III.

show us how the soul can become hardened by degrees, till she loses all her original regard for virtue, all the former better feelings of her nature.

I cannot help expressing my regret that Mr K. should have published this little volume, particularly as it may be supposed the precursor and specimen of a great work, which it has been said he meditates in the leisure which his retirement from the stage will now allow him to command. I have heard, that he means to devote that leisure to the illustration of his favourite Shakspeare, and the other less known dramatists of the olden time. I hope he will prosecute this design, which the bent of his studies, both as a scholar and an actor, gives him such favourable opportunities of successfully accomplishing. But let him not confine himself to verbal criticism or minute remark; and, above all, let him avoid any polemical writing on Shakspeare, of which we have already too much. Let him study and illustrate the authors to whom we allude in their greater attributes, in their delineation of mind and of character, amidst the eventful scenes in which they have placed the persons of their dramas,-in their power of placing those before us in their genuine colours, to instruct as well as to delight their readers to give moral to fiction, and force to truth.

SENEX.

CURSORY REMARKS ON MUSIC, ESPE-
CIALLY ON THE SOURCES OF THE

with it a train of overpowering recollections. When there is real beauty in a musical air, associations of this kind greatly enhance it. Every Englishman who has been fortunate enough to hear the melodies of Scotland sung in the land that gave them birth, with the touching simplicity and pathos infused into them by those who deeply feel the sympathies which they are fitted to excite, must be alive to a degree of pleasure from a Scottish air, which, without this association, it could never have communicated.-It is moreover remarkable, that, in some cases, the ordinary effect of a melody may be entirely reversed, by a change of the circumstances in which it happens to be heard. Thus, we are somewhere told by Mr Boswell, in his Life of Dr Johnson, that the merry airs of the Beggar's Opera, when accidentally heard by him in Scotland, affected him with melancholy, by bringing to his mind various pleasures of the English metropolis, where he had first listened to them, and the friends then so widely separated from him, in whose society he had happened to be.

It is on the same principle of association that we are to explain the effect of particular instruments of music, in exciting trains of feeling in some degree appropriate to them. The "spirit stirring drum" necessarily brings with it the idea of military parade and glory. And the organ, being usually the accompaniment of sacred music, naturally leads the mind to the subjects Iwith which habit has connected it. On the same principle, we are to ex

PLEASURE WHICH IT COMMUNI- plain the effect of particular tunes,

CATES.

(Concluded from page 347.)

IN attempting to account for the pleasure derived from melody, I have purposely avoided alluding to that kind of gratification which arises from the excitement of obvious associations; because, though these often heighten greatly the enjoyment, yet they are by no means essential to it. In some instances, associations of this kind, so far from being productive of pleasurable feelings, become sources of the keenest mental anguish, as in the maladie du pays, so strongly excited in the Swiss by an air, which, to an English ear, certainly seems little calculated to excite emotion, but to a native of that happy country, brings

which, having always been associated with certain emotions, have a neverfailing power of rekindling them, and have thus been rendered powerful auxiliaries in the excitement of patriotism or of loyalty.

If we examine the history of musical taste in any individual, we shall find that a relish for simple melody has been the first step in its attainment; and that a perception of the pleasure of harmony has been generally a slow and gradual acquirement. In a few instances, however, where an extraordinary ear for music has been early manifested, the power of discriminating harmony has so rapidly followed a taste for melody, as almost to have appeared coeval with it. This was remarkably the case with a gentleman,

at this day of great and deserved celebrity, whose early history, distinguished by a wonderful prematurity of musical taste and skill, has fortunately been preserved by Dr Burney.* At the age of only eighteen months, Master Crotch shewed a decided preference for the pleasures of music, by deserting his playthings, and even his food, to listen to it; and when only two years old, and unable to speak, in order to induce his father, whose skill in music seems to have been very limited, to play his favourite tunes, the child would touch the key-note on the organ, or, if that was not enough, would play two or three of the first notes of the air. At the age of two years and three weeks, he had taught himself to play the first part of God Save the King on the organ. In the course of a few days he made himself master of the treble of the second part; and the day after attempted the bass, which he performed correctly, with the exception of a single note. In about two months after this period, he was able to play several passages from voluntaries, which had only once been performed in his presence, by the organist of the cathedral at Norwich. About the same time, he was capable of making a bass to any melody which he had recently caught by his ear. At the age of only two years and a half, he was able to distinguish, at a distance, and out of sight of the instrument, any note that was struck upon it, within half a note, which, Dr Burney observes, is beyond the power of many old and skilful performers. Another wonderfully premature attainment was, his being able to transpose, into the most extraneous and difficult keys, whatever he played, and to contrive an extemporary bass to easy melodies, when performed by another person on the same instrument. From that time to the present he has continued to advance in reputation; and is now, I believe, considered as the most scientific musician that Great

Britain can boast.

Examples of the same kind have occurred in Mozart, in the two Messrs Wesley, and in a few other persons; and they would almost warrant the conclusion, that the ear has an instinctive power of discriminating harmony, independently of education or

* Philosophical Transactions, lxix.

experience. I know, indeed, no other principle on which we can explain the fact, that the pleasure of melody, even to a person of simple and natural taste, is greatly heightened by harmony, if not too intricate and multifarious. May not the pleasure which is thus occasioned, bear some analogy to that derived from symmetry and proportion in visible objects, qualities, the absence of which is quickly discerned, even by a common eye, in objects that are familiar to it?

In the usual acceptation of language, only an agreeable succession of sounds is called melody, and only the co-existence of agreeable sounds harmony. An ingenious speculation, however, has been proposed by Dr Franklin, in a letter to Lord Kames, by which he would resolve all melody into harmony. The hypothesis is founded on a quality ascertained to exist in our organs of sense, viz. that they have the power of retaining, for a time, any impression made by an external object; in consequence of which, in a series of sensations, any one impression becomes intermingled with that which immediately precedes, and with that which immediately follows it. This law of sensation, so far as it is applicable to the phenomena of vision, had not escaped the sagacity of Dr Franklin; but it has since been more fully developed, and ingeniously illustrated, by Dr Darwin, in his Essay on Ocular Spectra.* On looking long and attentively at a bright object, as the setting sun, and then shutting the eyes, or excluding the light, an image, resembling in form the object that was contemplated, continues some time to be visible. This appearance in the eye Dr Darwin calls the ocular spectrum of the object. That a similar power exists in the ear, is highly probable, since, as Dr Franklin observes,

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we are capable of retaining, for some moments, a perfect idea of the pitch of a past sound, so as to compare it with the pitch of a succeeding sound. Thus, in tuning an instrument, a good ear can as easily determine that two strings are in unison, by sounding them separately, as by sounding them together. Their disagreement," he adds, "is also as easily, I believe I may say more easily, and better distinguished when

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sounded separately." This ability of comparing the pitch of a present to the pitch of a past tone, is, in common language, ascribed to the memory; but Dr Franklin distinctly expresses his belief, that it depends on a property of the ear, similar to that which exists in the eye; and on this principle he explains the sense of harmony between present and past sounds, in which, according to his theory, much of the pleasure of melody consists.

The gratification derived from the more complicated productions of harmony, it can scarcely be doubted, is to be explained on entirely different principles from that which arises either from the simple strains of melody, or from harmony, in which the expression of the melody predominates. Melody appears to be an universal language, addressing itself to the heart, and powerfully exciting its affections and sympathies. But to enjoy the more elaborate productions of harmony, a refinement of taste is necessary, attainable only by great cultivation, and enhanced by a knowledge of the principles of music as a science. The pleasure excited in a person thus accomplished, resembles that of a painter, who, in examining a picture, is capable of discovering both faults and beauties, in design and in colouring, that escape the eye of a spectator, who may yet be deeply affected by the general expression of the performance.

From this point begins the progress of luxurious refinement in music, by which, whatever it may have gained in the estimation of the adept, has been lost, and more than lost, by bereaving it of its natural charms. It has been found necessary to excite enjoyment by the expedient of perpetual novelty, and by substituting surprise, at the skill of the performer, for that simple pleasure which has its origin in the best affections of our nature. Hence the ear has been palled with harmony, and our public performances of music have often been rendered irksome and disgusting, to all persons of uncorrupted taste, by compositions destitute of expression and character, and incapable of exciting emotion. Another evil, arising from this sacrifice of meaning to the display of skill, is, that music is every day becoming an attainment of greater difficulty, and that from being the enjoyment of our social hours, in the bosoms of our VOL. I.

own families, it is in danger of falling, not perhaps as in ancient Rome, into the hands of slaves, but into those of professional performers only. It has become painful to the young and the diffident to incur the risk of disgusting that fastidiousness of taste, which cannot be gratified, unless difficulties of execution are overcome, that may display the skill of the performer, but can never touch the feelings of the heart. If any proof were wanting of the superior charms of simple music over harmony thus complicated, it might be furnished by what every person must have observed at public musical performances. At these, intricate pieces of music are often listened to with general langour and apathy, till the introduction of a popular melody, harmonized with taste and forbearance, awakens the dormant feelings of every hearer, and calls forth one universal expression of delight. This effect is sometimes produced by a melody new to the audience, and incapable, therefore, of exciting the feelings, through the medium of established associations.

There is one subject, connected with the theory of the effects of music, on which I should have hazarded a few remarks, if this paper had not already attained too great a length, I mean the moral influence of mu

sic. Whether music has, or has not, a tendency favourable to virtue, is an inquiry of considerable importance, and one, for the investigation of which we are not without some data. Examples have been collected by writers on this subject, in which there appears to have been a connexion between a national attachment to music, and purity of national character. Facts of this kind, however, scarcely justify, to the full extent, the inferences which have been drawn from them; not only because it may reasonably be doubted whether the taste for music has not been the consequence, rather than the cause of general refinement of manners and conduct, but because national character is founded on so many circumstances, that nothing is more difficult than to distinguish between what has been essential to its production, and what has been adventitious. Authority, therefore, which would at once decide the question in the affirmative, must be received in this case with 3 N

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