TALBOYS.
"The most perfect instance of this kind is the Tragedy of Macbeth, in which the character of an ungrateful traitor, murderer, usurper, and tyrant, is made in the highest degree interesting by the sublime flashes of generosity, magnanimity, courage, and tenderness, which continually burst forth in the manly but ineffective struggle of every exalted quality that can dignify and adorn the human mind, first against the allurements of ambition, and afterwards against the pangs of remorse and horrors of despair. Though his wife has been the cause of all his crimes and sufferings, neither the agony of his distress, nor the fury of his rage, ever draw from him an angry word, or upbraiding expression towards her; but even when, at her instigation, he is about to add the murder of his friend and late colleague to that of his sovereign, kinsman, and benefactor, he is chiefly anxious that she should not share the guilt of his blood:—'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck! till thou applaud the deed.' How much more real grandeur and exaltation of character is displayed in one such simple expression from the heart, than in all the laboured pomp of rhetorical amplification."
NORTH.
What think you of that, Talboys?
TALBOYS.
Why, like much of the cant of criticism, it sounds at once queer and commonplace. I seem to have heard it before many thousand times, and yet never to have heard it at all till this moment.
NORTH.
Seward?
SEWARD.
Full of audacious assertions, that can be forgiven but in the belief that Payne Knight had never read the tragedy, even with the most ordinary attention.