ABSTRACT
How much more properly might he have said with Edgar, in K.Lear, The Gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to scourge us. [5.3.170f.]
Which is a pious sentiment, and worthy of the stage. That a tendency to promote the cause of Virtue is essential to Epic
and Dramatic poetry will hardly be contested; and accordingly we find the great poets not content with barely holding up the mirror to Nature, and exercising the virtuous affections of mankind (which yet, it must be confess’d, are valuable ends of these species of writing) but that they have constantly endeavoured to inculcate some prudential maxim,
or moral precept. In this particular, our admirable Shakespeare seems to stand without an equal; in him we find the most instructive lessons inforced with all the art imaginable, and that not by a tedious and intricate deduction of consequences but barely by the necessary result of a well-wrought Fable. For instance, in King Lear, who does not at once see the fatal consequences of filial ingratitude, and that great error of parents who resign their power and trust to their children, for a support in the decline of life, upon so slender a foundation as flattering promises, and extravagant professions of affection and duty? —In Othello, the calamitous effects of Jealousy are represented; in Richard III, and several others, those of Ambition; in Richard II we view the instability of human Greatness; Measure for Measure contains an argument for the exercise of compassion towards offenders, the most powerful that can be thought of, The frailty of human nature: and this argument is exemplified in the character of the merciless Angelo in such a manner that we are at once convinced of its force, and excited to a just abhorrence of that cruelly inflexible disposition in magistrates, which is often mistaken for justice: but, above all, Macbeth teaches us a lesson the most important, namely, the fascinating power, and insensible progress of Vice. In the person of Macbeth we behold a man possess’d of many noble qualities, actuated by a most violent ambition, which, after a severe conflict, gets the better of his virtues in spite of the suggestions of a conscience naturally sensible and tender, and urges him on to the murder of his sovereign and benefactor. From this beginning of a vicious conduct we find all the sentiments of gratitude, love, friendship, humanity, &c. by insensible degrees, give place to his violent lust of power and the instigations of a wicked woman; ’till from a generous, noble, and (bating his ambition) a good man we find him transformed to perhaps as great a monster of wickedness as human nature ever produced. A precept more interesting, or of greater importance in the conduct of human life than what this story furnishes, surely never was inculcated by any moral or dramatic writer! What man, already engaged in a virtuous course of action, of a tender conscience, that startles at the thought of evil, and who perhaps is possess’d of many of those amiable qualities that adorn his nature; I say, what good man that surveys the fate of the unhappy Macbeth but must shudder to think on what a precarious tenure he holds the most valuable of all his possessions, and exert his utmost force to resist an enemy so wary in his conduct as scarce to be perceived ’till he has gain’d a complete victory?
