1811.] Letters of a Wanderer through England and Wales. 213 
the owl scream, and the crickets cry.” 
This regulation is necessary to give full 
effect to the terrible graces of this tre- 
mendous scene, 
This avarice grows with more pernicious 
root, 
Than summereseeming lust. 
Act IV. Scene 3. 
Dr. Warburton reads summer-teeming ; 
and Sir William Blackstone recommends 
summer-seeding. These alterations would 
scarcely satisfy, were alteration neces- 
sary; but, if common reading is right, 
seeming is fair, specious, externally be- 
coming, As in the Merry Wives of 
Windsor, “the so seeming Mrs. Page, 
"And summer-seeming is that which befits 
or beseenis the season of summer. - Mac- 
duff, with sufficient complaisance, is wil- 
ling to excuse his prince’s unbounded 
passion for the fair, as comporting with, 
and even beseeming, what Shakespeare 
elsewhere styles, ‘‘ the May of youth and 
bloom of lustihood.” 
Maed. My wife killed too? 
Rosse. I have said. 
Male. Be comforted, 
Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge, 
To cure this deadly grief. 
Macd. He has no children! 
Act IV. Scene 4. 
Dr. Johnson cites with just approbation 
the observation of an anonymous critic, 
that this is not said of Macbeth, who had 
children, but of Malcolm, who, having 
none, supposes that a father can be so 
easily comfurted. 
The beauty and propriety of this ex- 
planation seem self-evident; and, if far- 
ther confirmation were wanting, it might 
be obtained by referring to the indignant 
exclamation of Constance, in reply to 
the consolations offered by the Cardinal 
Legate: 
He talks to me that never hada son! 
King Fobn. 
But Mr. Steevens tells us, ‘¢ the meaning 
‘of them may be either that Macduff could 
not by retaliation revenge the murder 
of his children, because Macbeth had 
none himself; or that, if he had had any, a 
father’s feelings for a father would have 
‘prevented him from the deed, And he 
‘knows not, as he adds, from what passage 
we are to infer that Macbeth had chil- 
dren alive. TheChronicle does not, asI 
remember, mention any. 
" Could it, however, be necessary to re- 
mind Mr, Steevens of the declaration of 
Lady Macbeth, in the scene previous to 
the murder of the king, 
T have given suck, and know 
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks 
me. 
Does the Chronicle mention the death of 
these babes? But Mr. Steevens might 
have recollected, what is still more to the 
purpose, that Macbeth, in the soliloquy 
which precedes his conference with the 
murderers of Banquo, complains that 
the sisters hailed Banquo father to a line 
of kings, and that upon his head they 
placed a fruitless crown. No son of his 
succeeding. ‘If it be so,” he proceeds 
to say, 
For Banquo’s issue have I fil’d my mind, 
For them the gracious Duncan have I mure 
der’d 5 
Put rancours in the vessel of my peace 
Only for them, and mine eternal jewel 
Given to the common enemy of man, 
To make them kings; the seed of Banquo 
kings! : 
Mather than so, come Fate into the list, 
And champion me to the utterance. 
It appears, therefore, that Macheth’s 
principal motive for the murder of Ban- 
quo, was his eager and anxiaus desire to 
secure the crown to his own posterity. 
—E 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
THE LETTERS OF A WANDERER. 
LETTER VI. 
T Padley-bridge, a small hamlet 
situated near the lower extremity 
of the lake of Ullswater, we breakfasted; 
and, having left our servants and horses 
to finish their refreshments, we strojled 
towards the banks of the Eamont, (the 
river that issues from the lake,) where the 
scenery is pretty, though not. distin- 
guished by any prominent feature of 
beauty, or any object deserving particular 
Notice, excepting the high conical hill 
called Dunmallet, which, rising abruptly 
from its base, towers to a considerable 
height above the river, thickly covered 
with wood, and on the summit bearing 
the remains of a Roman encampment, 
now scarce worth the fatigue of ascend- 
‘ing to examine, though doubtless once a 
station of considerable importance. 
There are formal straight walks cut to 
the summit of this hill, which in shape 
resembles a sugar loaf, with the top 
squared off; but we did not make an 
attempt to ascend the steep, merely con- 
tentug ourselves with tracing a part of a 
winding path in the wood, by which it 
may 
