Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849

NORTH.

I would fain hope you have misunderstood me, Buller.

BULLER.

Sometimes, sir, it is not easy for a plain man to know what you would be at.

NORTH.

I?

BULLER.

Yea – you.

NORTH.

Richard III. is a hypocrite – a hard, cold murderer from of old – and yet you bear him. I suppose, friends, chiefly from his pre-eminent Intellectual Faculties, and his perfectly courageous and self-possessed Will. You do support your conscience – or traffic with it – by saying all along – we are only conducting him to the retribution of Bosworth Field. But, friends, if these motions in Macbeth, which look like revealings and breathings of some better elements, are sheer and vile hypocrisy – if it is merely his manhood that quails, which his wife has to virilify – a dastard and a hypocrite, and no more – I cannot abide him – there is too much of a bad business, and then I must think Shakspeare has committed an egregious error in Poetry. Richard III. is a bold, heroic hypocrite. He knows he is one. He lies to Man – never to his own Conscience, or to Heaven.

TALBOYS.

What?

NORTH.

Never. There he is clear-sighted, and stands, like Satan, in open and impious rebellion.

BULLER.

But your Macbeth, sir, would be a shuffling Puritan – a mixture of Holy Willie and Greenacre. Forgive me —

SEWARD.

Order – order – order.

TALBOYS.

Chair – chair – chair.

BULLER.

Swing – Swing – Swing.

NORTH.

My dear Buller – you have misunderstood me – I assure you you have. Some of my expressions may have been too strong – not sufficiently qualified.

BULLER.

I accept the explanation. But be more guarded in future, my dear sir.

NORTH.

I will.

BULLER.

On that assurance I ask you, sir, how is the Tragedy of Macbeth morally saved? That is, how does the degree of complacency with which we consider the two murderers not morally taint ourselves – not leave us predisposed murderers?

NORTH.

That is a question of infinite compass and fathom – answered then only when the whole Theory of Poesy has been expounded.

BULLER.

Whew!

NORTH.

The difference established between our contemplation of the Stage and of Life.

BULLER.

I hardly expect that to be done this Summer in this Tent.

NORTH.

Friends! Utilitarians and Religionists shudder and shun. They consider the Stage and Life as of one and the same kind – look on both through one glass.

BULLER.

Eh?

NORTH.

The Utilitarian will settle the whole question of Life upon half its data – the lowest half. He accepts Agriculture, which he understands logically – but rejects Imagination, which he does not understand at all – because, if you sow it in the track of his plough, no wheat springs. Assuredly not; a different plough must furrow a different soil for that seed and that harvest.

BULLER.

Now, my dear sir, you speak like yourself. You always do so – the rashness was all on my side.

SEWARD.

Nobody cares – hold your tongue.

NORTH.

The Religionist errs from the opposite quarter. He brings measures from Heaven to measure things of the Earth. He weighs Clay in the balance of Spirit. I call him a Religionist who overruns with religious rules and conceptions things that do not come under them – completely distinct from the native simplicity and sovereignty of Religion in a piously religious heart. Both of them are confounders of the sciences which investigate the Facts and the Laws of Nature, visible and invisible – subduing inquiry under preconception.