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 invent [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 Botgosever may have been his practice with vane, in the vj year of his reign. 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 historical, 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 Without any such formal enunciation, not less fully, and with far greater power, does Shakespeare paint one of man's later disobediences, the disobedience of a remote son of Adam, and how he too plucked forbidden fruit, and was expelled from his Eden-expelled from the state of happiness, 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 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. Besides the fall of man Milton presents also the fall of Satan, and in his picture he gives us a scene exactly parallel to that in " Macbeth," where the already demoralized 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 New laws thou seest imposed; 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 engen. dered 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 in the heart of his victims, he might have charmed in vain. And it is not the witches Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, O what a goodly outside falsehood hath! home in his breast. Evil into the mind of God or man But Macbeth has invited evil to stay and abide with him, and is already saying, "Evil, be thou my good." 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. There are more things in heaven and earth But the manner in which Shakespeare deals with these dark, inscrutable problems is very different from that in which Milton 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. To 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 He is always insisting that Adam was its breadth and depth; and it must be al-made perfectly well able to resist the lowed, 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: tempter, had he been so minded. If he Whose fault? who failed; Freely they stood who stood, and fell who 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, CORSICA. (6 are indeed, there is no mystery in what seems From The National Review. to most men so profound a mystery: Everything is amenable to argument, and can be made entirely plain. REVIEW." GENTLEMEN, When first this Tempter crossed the gulf for hell, My recent visit to Corsica has increased I told ye then he should prevail, and speed my wonder that but few of the many On his bad errand. Man should be seduced thousand English who spend a large part And flattered out of all, believing lies of every winter on the Riviera relieve the Against his Maker; no decree of mine monotony of their lives there by an excurConcurring to necessitate his fall, sion to the neighboring picturesque, roOr touch with lightest moment of impulse mantic, and historically interesting island His free will, to his own inclining left of Corsica. The means of access In even scale. very easy. Steamers run two or three And so, with scarcely an exception, this times each week from Marseilles and merely hard-headed, and therefore obvi- Nice respectively to Ajaccio in about ously limited manner, prevails in Milton's twelve hours, and from Leghorn to Bastia treatment of this terrible tragedy. He in five or six hours. There are several writes for the most part like some inexor- good hotels — fully equal to those in the able logician, and not like a man conscious provincial cities of France and Italy — at of the infirmities of his kind. Just the Ajaccio, while at the auberges at Corte same spirit expresses itself in “Samson and the other inland towns and villages Agonistes,” especially in the scene be the traveller finds clean beds, sufficient tween Samson and Dalilah. food, and overflowing civility. There are All wickedness is wickedness; that plea, island, for the modern French are as good excellent carriage roads throughout the therefore, With God or man will gain thee no remission. road-makers as were the ancient Romans ; while a railway will soon be completed Milton was himself of a singularly lofty from Ajaccio, the political capital, in the and strong character, and lived throughout south, to Bastia, the commercial capital in a life of noble and sustained purposes. the north. This railway passes through “Credibile est” illum“pariter vitiisque much of the fine scenery of the centre of locisque the island, with snow-clad peaks from six Altius humanis exseruisse caput." thousand to nine thousand feet in height, And so he found it hard to make allows the slopes and valleys of which are clothed ance – hard to feel any pity — for the with forests of pine and chestnut. The weaknesses of ordinary mortals. He had scenery of the interior of Corsica much in a high degree the faults of his virtues. resembles that of the Alps of Dauphiné, Aod, as suggested above, his genius, with as seen from the railway which now conall its rich natural endowments, and with nects Aix in Provence with Grenoble, -a all the talents that learning and culture had route which is too little travelled by our contributed to it, was yet narrower - less countrymen on their way to and from the catholic — than that of Shakespeare. Riviera. I should add that full and accuI 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, 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 lished in 1768), who wrote to Dr. Johnson, did and priceless, present them to us: dare to challenge your approbation” - to And I trust I have made it sufficiently lehe learned and exhaustive work of the clear how Milton would regard Shake. speare's presentment of them as inad- German Gregorovius, and to “ Colomba,” equate – would be persuaded that Shake the charming Corsican romance of Prosper speare had not enough emphasized the Merimée. wilfulness of Macbeth's ruin, and so to his It should be now added that Corsica thinking bad not satisfactorily asserted has attractions for the sportsman as well as for the artist and for the lover of ro. Eternal Providence, mantic scenery and historical associations. And justified the ways of God to men. In winter there is good woodcock, snipe, JOHN W. HALES. and wildfowl shooting in various parts of the island, while in the mountains of the decay of the power of Pisa, Corsica, about interior are found wild boar, deer, and the A.D. 1348, became subject to Genoa, and wild sheep, or moufflon, which is now ex- so remained, at least nominally, but with tinct everywhere in Europe except in Cor- almos: constant insurrections, until the sica and Sardinia. With regard to the Genoese, unable to resist the Corsicans shooting, as well as in other matters, the united under their native champion Paoli, English traveller may rely on full informa- ceded in 1768 their rights to France. tion and useful assistance from the active Paoli for some time continued his long and and accomplished English consul at Ajac- noble struggle for the independence of his cio, Captain Drummond, R.N., who has country; but, having been defeated by the established the most friendly relations French at the decisive battle of Ponte with the French local authorities. Nuovo, in 1769, he took refuge in EnThe history of Corsica is as striking as gland, where he was received with great its scenery. Seneca, the Roman philoso- distinction, was granted a pension by the pher, who was banished thither in A.D. 41, crown, and became a prominent member and remained for eight years in the island, of the brilliant society immortalized in remarks, in his book " De Consolatione,” | Boswell's life of Johnson. Through the that darkness covers the annals of the influence of Paoli, Corsica became a deoriginal inhabitants. They were probably pendency of England (as we shall see of the same race as the people of the hereafter) in 1794, and so remained until neighboring coast of Liguria; and among 1796; the British governor having been them the Phænicians, at an early period, Sir Gilbert Elliot, afterwards the first established trading stations, as in all other Earl of Minto and governor-general of parts of the Mediterranean. The first India. The English rule in Corsica was historic event is the arrival of a portion of doubtless firm and just, as it was afterthe Greek colony from Phocæa, who, towards in the lonian Isles; but in both escape the domination of the Persians in cases it failed to win the general sympathy Asia Minor, fled to Massilia (Marseilles) of the protected people, and was finally in the sixth century B.C., as referred to by abandoned. During the continuance of Horace (Ep. xvi. 17.) our protectorate, there was much sharp Phocæorum fighting with the French off the coast of Velut profugit execrata civitas. the island, and Nelson lost an eye in an attack on Calvi, a fortress held by a French Then began in Corsica, as in Sicily, the garrison. long struggle which Professor Freeman The conquered subjects of a distant has so ably described in his excellent bis republic have rarely been well treated by tory of the latter island — between the their masters; who, devoid of the quasi. East and the West, between Asia and paternal feelings of a royal dynasty, appear Europe, between the Semitic and the to have generally thought of nothing but Aryan races, and finally between Islam extortiog the largest possible profit from and Christendom. In Corsica, as in Sicily, their rule. The long domination of the the contending Greeks and Carthaginians Genoese over Corsica seems to have been (Phænicians) were both absorbed into more oppressive and hateful than the long what Grote (History of Greece, chap. 43) domination of the Venetians over the calls “the vast bosom of Rome.” But, Ionian Isles. Hence the bitter hatred of after the lapse of many centuries, the Sar- the islanders, which showed itself in never. acens – like the Carthaginians a Semitic ending and obstinate outbreaks, and in race - appeared on the scene in both frequent assassinations of Genoese offiislands, whence they were expelled — from cers - outbreaks which alone could have Sicily by the Normans, and from Corsica rendered possible the strange episode of by the Italians. In the lapse of ages both Theodore, Baron of Neuhoff, a German islands became thoroughly latinized, and adventurer who arrived in Corsica in 1736, Italian has for many generations been the and, falsely promising aid from foreign language of both populations. powers, got himself proclaimed king by a It were tedious to relate the efforts of Corsican assembly, and maintained himvarious Italian princes and States during self in authority for some years, until he the Middle Ages for the possession of was finally, in 1743, expelled by a French Corsica. In A.D. 1098, Pope Urban 11. force called in by the Genoese to their aid. assumed the right (afterwards exercised The name of Napoleon Buonaparte alone by the Papal See both in Europe and among those of the natives of Corsica is America) of disposing of its fate, and familiar to the world at large. But in the placed it under the rule of Pisa. On the island itself the name of Pascal Paoli is |
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