What horrid sights! how glare their bloody eyes! How twisting snakes curl round their venom'd heads! In can touch such incidents with happy dexterity, and paint such images of consternation, will infallibly work upon the minds of others. This is what Longinus commends in Euripides; and here it must be added," that no poet in this branch of writing can enter into a parallel with Shakespeare. When Macbeth is preparing for the murder of Duncan, his imagination is big with the attempt, and is quite upon the rack. Within, his soul is dismayed with the horror of so black an enterprize; and every thing, without, looks dismal and affrighting. His eyes rebel against his reason, and make him start at images that have no reality. Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle tow'rd my hand? come let me clutch thee! I have thee not-and yet I see thee still. He then endeavours to summon his reason to his aid, and convince himself that it is mere chimera; but in vain, the terror stamped on his imagination will not be shaken off. I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw Here he makes a new attempt to reason himself out: of the delusion, but it is quite too strong. -I see thee still, And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, The delusion is described in so skilful a manner, that the audience cannot but share the consternation, and start at the visionary dagger.! The In deadly wrath the hissing monsters rise, Forward they spring, dart out, and leap around me*. And again, Alas!-she'll kill me!-whither shall I flyt? The poet here actually saw the furies with the eyes of his imagination, and has com The genius of the poet will appear more surprising, if we consider how the horror is continually worked up, by the method in which the perpetration of the murder is represented. The contrast between Macbeth and his wife is justly characterised, by the hard-hearted villany of the one, and the qualms of remorse in the other. The least noise, the very sound of their own voices, is shocking and frightful to both: -Hark! peace! It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bell-man, Which gives the stern'st good-night-he is about it— And again, immediately after, -Alack! I am afraid they have awak'd, And 'tis not done: th' attempt, and not the deed, Confounds us-Hark!-I laid their daggers ready, He could not miss them The best way to commend it, as it deserves, would be to quote the whole scene. The fact is represented in the same affecting horror as would rise in the mind at sight of the actual commission. Every single image seems reality, and alarms the soul. They seize the whole attention, stiffen and benumb the sense, the very blood curdles and runs cold, through the strongest abhorrence and detestation of the crime.. * Euripid. Orest. ver. 255. + Euripid. Iphigen. Taur. ver. 408. pelled pelled his audience to see what he beheld himself. Euripides therefore has laboured very much in his tragedies to describe the two passions of madness and love, and has succeeded much better in these than (if I am not mistaken) in any other. Sometimes indeed he boldly aims at images of different kinds. For though his genius was not naturally great, yet in many instances he even forced it up to the true spirit of tragedy; and that he may always rise where his subject demands it (to borrow an allusion from the Poet)* Lash'd by his tail his heaving sides incite His courage, and provoke himself for fight. The foregoing assertion is evident from that passage, where Sol delivers the reins of his chariot to Phaeton. 2 Drive on, but cautious shun the Lybian air ; That hot unmoisten'd region of the sky Will drop thy chariot.- 一十 *Iliad. v. ver. 170. And * This passage, in all probability, is taken from a tragedy of Euripides, named Phaëthon, which is entirely lost. Ovid had certainly an eye to it in his Met. l. ii. when he puts these lines into the mouth of Phebus, resigning the chariot of the Sun to Phaëthon: Zonarumque trium contentus fine, polumque And a little after, Thence let the Pleiads point thy wary course. Thus spoke the god. Th' impatient youth with haste Hac sit iter: manifesta rotæ vestigia cernes. ADDISON. The Sublimity which Ovid here borrowed from Euripides, he has diminished, almost vitiated, by flourishes. A sublimer image can no where be found than in the song of Deborah, after Sisera's defeat (Judges, v. 28—), where the vain-glorious boasts of Sisera's mother, when expecting his return, and, as she was confident, his victorious return, are described: 1 The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and "cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long "in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariots? "Her wise ladies answered her; yea, she returned an"swer to herself: Have they not sped? have they not "divided the prey, to every man a damsel or two? to "Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers co"lours of needle-work, of divers colours of needle"work on both sides, meet for the necks of them that "take the spoil?-DR. PEARCE. ↑ Snatches r Snatches the reins, and vaults into the seat. Behind, the sire, Borne on his planetary steed, pursues With eye intent, and warns him with his voice, Drive there!-now here!-here! turn the chariot here! Who would not say, that the soul of the poet mounted the chariot along with the rider, that it shared as well in danger as in rapidity of flight with the horses? For, had he not been hurried on with equal ardour through all this ethereal course, he could never have conceived so grand an image of it. There are some parallel Images in his3 Cassandra. Ye martial Trojans, &c. Eschylus has made bold attempts in noble and truly heroic Images; as, in one of his tragedies, the seven the seven commanders against Thebes, without betraying the least sign of pity or regret, bind themselves by oath not to survive Eteocles: * The seven, a warlike leader each in chief, Stood round; and o'er the brazen shield they slew A sullen 3 The Cassandra of Euripides is now entirely lost. "The following Image in Milton is great and dreadful. The fallen angels, fired by the speech of their leader, are |