adopt it, he had no right to take liberties with it, he was bound to be faithful to it. Now what is to be said of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in this respect?

It would be easy to mention other points in which Shakespeare varied from his nominal authority; but this single one is enough for our purpose. For I think we may infer from a certain fact that it was this that caused Milton some discontent and annoyance. The fact is that which I have mentioned above, and which, as I remarked, has not before been quoted in this connection, and so surely not properly understood - viz., that Milton mentions also in his subject-list "Duff" and “Donwald." Evidently, then, in Milton's "Macbeth," had it ever been written, the story of King Duff would have been kept quite separate from the story of King Duncan; the two threads which Shakespeare has so boldly intertwined would have been carefully disentangled; the confusion of two distinct historical events would have been in no wise permitted.

At length, therefore, communicating his purposed intent [to usurp the kingdom by force] with his trusty friends, amongst whom Banquho was the chiefest, upon confidence of Briefly, Shakespeare did just what Mil- their promised aid, he slew the king at Enverton thought ought not to be done. What-ness [Inverness], or, as some say, at Botgosvane, in the vj year of his reign. ever may have been his practice with regard to later periods, which there is no time now to discuss, Shakespeare troubled himself little about the historical details in dealing with the more distant ones, e.g., in dealing with the periods of " Hamlet,' of "King Lear," of "Cymbeline," and of "Macbeth." He submitted to no such bondage as Milton willingly endured and even gladly welcomed. Not that he altogether ignored the circumstances of his plots, or wholly forgot with what age they were connected, or said to be connected; but he was contented with a mere general recognition of the circumstances and the age. His first and his last thought was to produce a picture of life; it was not his torical, or archæological, or ethical. Some local and some historical color might be introduced; but such considerations were entirely secondary and subordinate. He would omit, and he would add, even as it pleased him. He would not attempt to With the ultimate historical value of tread precisely in the footsteps of any Holinshed's chronicle we are not here chronicler, let him chronicle ever so wisely. concerned. Shakespeare's disrespectful It was the book of life he studied, and use of it did not spring, we may be sure, Hall and Holinshed were valuable, only as from any enlightened views as to its accuhelps to that supreme study. And so in racy or importance; even the wildest of his great tragedy of "Macbeth" he drew his idolaters will scarcely maintain that he many of the incidents from a quite differ- anticipated the results of modern historent story. Nearly all the details of the ical criticism and investigation, and so murder of Duncan are, it is well known, attached but slight weight to what is very derived from the story of King Duff's largely a tissue of legends. But I may murder by Donwald. In both narratives just quote one sentence from Mr. Roberta wife appears, who instigates her hus- son's "Scotland under her Early Kings." band to crime. But it is from the King" The double failure in Northumberland Duff narrative that the particulars of the enactment are taken.

The drugging of the chamberlains, the assassination of the too confiding guest as he slept, the pretended unconsciousness -the outraged innocence of the real criminal, and his slaughter of the royal attendants in a paroxysm of zeal, the wild, furious storm which broke over the guilty scene, as if nature must needs vent her horror at what was so accursedly done; "the heavens, as troubled with man's act," threatening "his bloody stage "— all these things appertain in the old chronicler whom Shakespeare followed to the murder of King Duff, and not to the death of King Duncan. All that Holinshed reports of this latter event is this short paragraph:

and Moray [Duncan had made unsuccessful expeditions into England and against Thorfin] hastening the catastrophe of the youthful king, he was assassinated in the smith's bothy' near Elgin, not far from the scene of his latest battle, the Mormaor Macbeth being the undoubted author of his death."

On historical grounds, then, Milton was dissatisfied with Shakespeare's "Macbeth." Let us now turn to another point

"With the exception of Duncan's murder [?], in which Macbeth was concerned either as principal or accessory, and the character of Lady Macbeth, there is hardly any point in which the drama coincides with the real history.... The single point upon which histo rians agree is that the reign of Macbeth was one of remarkable prosperity and vigorous government." So Messrs. Clark and Wright in the preface to the Claren

don Press edition of " Macbeth."

of view from which this play seemed to him no less, probably still more, unsatisfactory. Let us turn to the central action and thought of it, and reflect how Milton would regard Shakespeare's treatment of the great question presented.

And, first of all, let it be noticed that no other of Shakespeare's plays comes so near dealing with the very subject of "Paradise Lost," or we may say does in fact so fully deal with it, as "Macbeth." The subject of "Paradise Lost" is the ruin of man; and what else is the subject of "Macbeth"? Each work in its own manner treats of the origin of evil; each portrays a spiritual decline and fall. Adam represents the human race, but he is also as individual as Milton could make him; Macbeth is an individual, but also he is typical. Milton formally states the theme which he proposes to set forth. He bids the heavenly muse sing

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden.

Without any such formal enunciation, not
less fully, and with far greater power, does
Shakespeare paint one of man's later dis-
obediences, the disobedience of a remote
son of Adam, and how he too plucked for-
bidden fruit, and was expelled from his
Eden-expelled from the state of happi-
ness, honor, and peace. For indeed the
story of Adam is perpetually repeated; it
is a faithful image of what goes on every
day in the world. Every day in the world
paradises are lost, and looking back poor
exiles behold their so late

also the fall of Satan, and in his picture
he gives us a scene exactly parallel to that
in Macbeth," where the already demor-
alized nature of Macbeth receives a fresh,
strong impulse towards its fatal corruption
through the preferment of Malcolm to be
Prince of Cumberland.

The Prince of Cumberland! That is 2 step,
On which I must fall down, or else o'leap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your firest
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
The eye wink at the hand! yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

In "Paradise Lost" the appointment by God of his son to be his vicegerent awakens similarly the evil-how strange and unaccountable an inmate! - in the bosom of Satan; and shortly afterwards he thus addresses him whom we see in another book as his favorite devil:Sleep'st thou, companion dear? What sleep can close

Thy eyelids, and rememberest what decree
Of Heaven's Almighty?..
Of yesterday, so late hath passed the lips

New laws thou seest imposed; New laws from him who reigns new minds may raise

In us who serve-new counsels, to debate
What doubtful may ensue.

And so there is rebellion in Heaven, and in due time rebellion on earth, just as in Macbeth's "single state of man.'

But, leaving secondary resemblances alone, I wish to dwell on the fact that Shakespeare and Milton are in these great works, each in his own way, thinking of the same transcendent problem, viz., the freedom of man's will. As to Adam, and as to Macbeth, the old, old questions arise were they capable of resisting the them? Could they have delivered themterrible forces that were arrayed against selves from evil? How did they come to fall so miserably? Whence was engendered the weakness that undid them? How far were they responsible for such a disastrous debility? What is the real parentage of crime? Even such awful and insoluble problems are at once suggested by the careers of Adam and Macbeth. For in neither case do external causes explain the horrible mischief that is depicted. "A man's foes are those of his own household." It was the treachery of the defending garrison, not the overwhelming strength of the attack, that produced the overthrow. If Milton's serpent had had no encouragements or alliances Besides the fall of man Milton presents in the heart of his victims, he might have

Happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms; and, “with wandering steps and slow," they have to traverse the stony tracts that spread far away outside. Thus the fall of man never ceases being acted on the human stage. Happily, too, his restoration never ceases being acted; in some sort daily the lost paradises are regained. But this brighter side of the great human drama does not now claim our consideration. It is with a tragedy of tragedies that we have now to do one in which all that makes life worth living is wasted and lost, and he who, when we first see him, "sits high in all the peoples' hearts," is at last cast out into the outer darkness of men's hate and loathing.

charmed in vain. And it is not the witches
that work Macbeth's ruin; it is Macbeth's
own falseness that works it. When he first
appears on the stage, so honored and
trusted and loved, and seemingly so loyal
and true, he is already in correspondence
and treaty with the powers of darkness.
Already he

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.

O what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
Those wild figures he encounters on the
heath, near Forres, only in fact give voice
to the dire imaginings that already have a
home in his breast.

Evil into the mind of God or man
May come and go, so unapproved, and leave
No spot or blame behind.

But Macbeth has invited evil to stay and abide with him, and is already saying, "Evil, be thou my good."

But the manner in which Shakespeare deals with these dark, inscrutable problems is very different from that in which Milton

He had a profound sense of the pathos of things. "But yet the pity of it... the pity of it." He certainly does not spare the sinner. He certainly makes us hate his sin; but in him "the quality of mercy is not strained." As we watch Macbeth drifting towards the precipice, it is not contempt for his weakness that he excites overpoweringly within us; it is rather a profound compassion; it is not a sense of superiority and pride that we stand firm, but a sense of humility — a sense that we are of like passions with him, and might too easily be drifting in a like direction. Pity and terror purify our souls. We feel ourselves face to face with

those mysteries which Heaven

Will not have earth to know.
We are conscious of the amazing shallow-
ness of those who "take upon " them
"the mystery of things, as if " they
God's spies.' We perceive with a new
vividness that

"were

There are more things in heaven and earth
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy;
and that the truest reverence, and it may
be that the most exemplary "faith," are
exhibited in the submissive acceptance
of the limitedness of human discovery and
knowledge.

Το

deals with them; and what I have now to suggest is that this manner was far from satisfying Milton, and that Milton's dissatisfaction with it was one chief reason why he was guilty of the impertinence, as it will seem to many persons to be, of proposing to write another dramatic version In striking contrast is Milton's attitude. of the Macbeth story. Briefly, Shake- He has so clearly as he believes reasoned speare deals with these problems as one out the matter, that he feels more impawho feels their infinite mystery, and that tience than pity-more anger than sorthey are "beyond the reaches of our row as he narrates the fall of man. souls." Milton, to speak plainly, deals him the event appears not so much pawith them in the spirit of a dogmatist thetic as shameful. If I may put it so, he of one who has an exegetic scheme ready holds a brief for the Almighty as he condrawn up, which he perpetually enforces ceives him, and is perpetually defending and reinforces. In this respect Shake-him from the charge of undue severity. speare's humanity exhibits itself in all its breadth and depth; and it must be allowed, I think, that Milton, with all his culture and all his greatness, shows by the side of him as one of narrower vision, and a less wide range of sympathy.

The catholicity of Shakespeare's spirit -I use the word, I need scarcely say, in no limited ecclesiastical sense is nowhere more amply displayed than in " Macbeth," whatever faults in some respects might be found with this play. As Dryden finely remarks of him, "he was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul." We may well apply to him Virgil's untranslatable line:

He is always insisting that Adam was made perfectly well able to resist the tempter, had he been so minded. If he fell, he had only himself to blame; his maker had done everything for him that could be expected everything that was right. If he fell,

Qui s'excuse s'accuse. And Milton's God, scarcely perhaps a being to attract Sunt lacrymæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tan- men's devotion and love, "protests too

gunt.

much, methinks." To Milton's intellect,

indeed, there is no mystery in what seems to most men so profound a mystery. Everything is amenable to argument, and can be made entirely plain.

When first this Tempter crossed the gulf for
hell,

I told ye then he should prevail, and speed
On his bad errand. Man should be seduced
And flattered out of all, believing lies
Against his Maker; no decree of mine
Concurring to necessitate his fall,

Or touch with lightest moment of impulse
His free will, to his own inclining left
In even scale.

And so, with scarcely an exception, this merely hard-headed, and therefore obviously limited manner, prevails in Milton's treatment of this terrible tragedy. He writes for the most part like some inexorable logician, and not like a man conscious of the infirmities of his kind. Just the same spirit expresses itself in "Samson Agonistes," especially in the scene between Samson and Dalilah.

All wickedness is wickedness; that plea,

therefore,

With God or man will gain thee no remission.

Milton was himself of a singularly lofty and strong character, and lived throughout a life of noble and sustained purposes. "Credibile est" illum "pariter vitiisque locisque

ance

less

My recent visit to Corsica has increased my wonder that but few of the many thousand English who spend a large part of every winter on the Riviera relieve the monotony of their lives there by an excursion to the neighboring picturesque, romantic, and historically interesting island of Corsica. The means of access are very easy. Steamers run two or three times each week from Marseilles and Nice respectively to Ajaccio in about twelve hours, and from Leghorn to Bastia in five or six hours. There are several good hotels - fully equal to those in the provincial cities of France and Italy — at Ajaccio, while at the auberges at Corte and the other inland towns and villages the traveller finds clean beds, sufficient food, and overflowing civility. There are island, for the modern French are as good excellent carriage roads throughout the road-makers as were the ancient Romans; while a railway will soon be completed from Ajaccio, the political capital, in the south, to Bastia, the commercial capital in the north. This railway passes through much of the fine scenery of the centre of the island, with snow-clad peaks from six thousand to nine thousand feet in height, the slopes and valleys of which are clothed with forests of pine and chestnut. The scenery of the interior of Corsica much resembles that of the Alps of Dauphiné, as seen from the railway which now connects Aix in Provence with Grenoble, a route which is too little travelled by our countrymen on their way to and from the Riviera. I should add that full and accu

Altius humanis exseruisse caput." And so he found it hard to make allow hard to feel any pity-for the weaknesses of ordinary mortals. He had in a high degree the faults of his virtues. And, as suggested above, his genius, with all its rich natural endowments, and with all the talents that learning and culture had contributed to it, was yet narrower catholic than that of Shakespeare. I am not, of course, attempting in this rate information respecting Corsica will paper to discuss the profound and awful be found in "Murray's Handbook for the questions that are brought before us in Mediterranean," complied by Sir Lambert "Paradise Lost" and in " Macbeth." I Playfair, our consul-general at Algiers, in am only calling attention to the difference which there is a list of the principal books between the manner in which these works, lished in 1768), who wrote to Dr. Johnson, on the island, from that of Boswell (pubeach in its own way so great and so splen-I dare to call this a spirited tour! I did and priceless, present them to us. And I trust I have made it sufficiently clear how Milton would regard Shakespeare's presentment of them as inadequate would be persuaded that Shakespeare had not enough emphasized the wilfulness of Macbeth's ruin, and so to his thinking had not satisfactorily asserted

Eternal Providence,
And justified the ways of God to men.
JOHN W. HALES.

dare to challenge your approbation"-to the learned and exhaustive work of the German Gregorovius, and to "Colomba," the charming Corsican romance of Prosper Merimée.

It should be now added that Corsica has attractions for the sportsman as well as for the artist and for the lover of romantic scenery and historical associations. In winter there is good woodcock, snipe, and wildfowl shooting in various parts of