——a Dutchman's chawdron!
We were about that time engaged in a war with Holland.—Again, Macduff being about to journey across the heath—the "blasted heath"—answers his lady, who courteously demands of him, "Are you a-foot?"—
Knowing the way to be both short and easy,
And that the chariot did attend me here,
I have adventured——
From which we may infer, that the Thane of Fife lived as a nobleman ought to do, and—kept a carriage. Again, the same nobleman, on the morning after Duncan's murder, says:—"Rising this morning early, I went to look out of my window. I could scarce see further than my breath." And indeed the original author informs us, that it had been a "rough night;" so that the improver does not wander far from his text. The exquisite familiarity of this prose patch was doubtlessly intended by the improver to break the tiresome monotony of Shakspeare's blank verse. In conclusion, Lady Macbeth is brought in repentant, and counselling her husband to give up the crown for conscience sake!—Item, she sees a ghost, which is all the time invisible to him. Such was the Macbeth which Betterton acted, and a contemporary audience took on trust for Shakspeare's.
C. L.
[SATURDAY NIGHT]
(1829)
There is a Saturday Night—I speak not to the admirers of Burns—erotically or theologically considered; HIS of the "Cotter's" may be a very charming picture, granting it to be but half true. Nor speak I now of the Saturday Night at Sea, which Dibdin hath dressed up with a gusto more poignant to the mere nautical palate of un-Calvanized South Britons. Nor that it is marketing night with the pretty tripping Servant-maids all over London, who, with judicious and economic eye, select the white and well-blown fillet, that the blue-aproned contunder of the calf can safely recommend as "prime veal," and which they are to be sure not to over-brown on the morrow. Nor speak I of the hard-handed Artisan, who on this night receives the pittance which is to furnish the neat Sabbatical dinner—not always reserved with Judaical rigor for that laudable purpose, but broken in upon, perchance, by inviting pot of ale, satisfactory to the present orifice. These are alleviatory, care-consoling. But the Hebdomadal Finale which I contemplate hath neither comfort nor alleviation in it; I pronounce it, from memory, altogether punitive, and to be abhorred. It is—Saturday Night to the School-boy!
Cleanliness, saith some sage man, is next to Godliness. It may be; but how it came to sit so very near, is the marvel. Methinks some of the more human virtues might have put in for a place before it. Justice—Humanity—Temperance—are positive qualities; the courtesies and little civil offices of life, had I been Master of the Ceremonies to that Court, should have sate above the salt in preference to a mere negation. I confess there is something wonderfully refreshing, in warm countries, in the act of ablution. Those Mahometan washings—how cool to the imagination! but in all these superstitions, the action itself, if not the duty, is voluntary. But to be washed perforce; to have a detestable flannel rag soaked in hot water, and redolent of the very coarsest coarse soap, ingrained with hard beads for torment, thrust into your mouth, eyes, nostrils—positively Burking you, under pretence of cleansing—substituting soap for dirt, the worst dirt of the two—making your poor red eyes smart all night, that they might look out brighter on the Sabbath morn, for their clearness was the effect of pain more than cleanliness.—Could this be true religion?