(act iv. sc. 3,) and it is so applied in "Love's Labour Lost."

"A LIMBECK only"-alembic. Shakespeare understood the construction of a still, in this happy comparison of the brain to that part of a vessel through which a distilled liquor passes.

"Of our great QUELL."-To "quell" and to kill are in fact the same word in their origin, from the Saxon cvellan. Here "quell" is used substantively.

ACT II.-SCENE I.

"Court within the Castle. Enter BANQUO and FLEANCE," etc.

"A large court, surrounded all or in part by an open gallery; the gallery ascended into by stairs, open likewise; with addition of a college-like gateway, in which opens a porter's lodge-appears to have been the poet's idea of the place of this great action. The circumstances that mark it are scattered through three scenes: in the latter, the hall (which moderns make the scene of this action) is appointed a place of second assembly, in terms that show it plainly distinct from that assembled in then. Buildings of this description rose in ages of chivalry, when knights rode into their courts, and paid their devoirs to ladies, viewing of their tiltings and them from this open gallery. Fragments of some of them, over the mansions of noblemen, are still subsisting in London, changed to hotels or inns. Shakespeare might see them much more entire, and take his notion from them."-CAPELL.

"There's HUSBANDRY in heaven”—i. e. thrift, or frugality in heaven.

"Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature Gives way to in repose."

"It is apparent from what Banquo says afterwards, that he had been solicited in a dream to do something in consequence of the prophecy of the Witches, that his waking senses were shocked at; and Shakespeare has finely contrasted his character with that of Macbeth. Banquo is praying against being tempted to encourage thoughts of guilt even in his sleep; while Macbeth is hurrying into temptation, and revolving in his mind every scheme, however flagitious, that may assist him to complete his purpose. The one is unwilling to sleep lest the same phantoms should assail his resolution again; while the other is depriving himself of rest through impatience to commit the murder."-STEVENS.

"Sent forth great largess to your OFFICES."—It is not only needless, but improper, with Malone, to change "offices" of the old copies into officers. There were various "offices" in the residences of the nobility, and servants belonging to each: to send largess to the "offices" in Macbeth's castle, was to give it to the persons employed in them.

"When my drink is ready."—It was a common luxury of the middle ages, and the Poet's own time, to take some warm mixture of wine, ale, or other "brewage," before sleep; the various compositions of which, those who are curious in ancient luxury, may find detailed in some of the commentators. Shakespeare has here alluded to it in a manner that would have made Racine or Voltaire shudder, but evidently for the purpose of dramatic effect,-to bring out, by this allusion to an incident of domestic comfort, familiar to his hearers, the horror of Macbeth's real intention, the terror of his guilty meditations, and the visionary dagger, in deeper colours from the strong contrast.

"And on thy blade, and DUDGEON, GOUTS of blood."— The "dudgeon" is the handle or haft of a dagger: "gouts" of blood are drops of blood, from the Fr. goutte. The word was unusual in this sense.

"The curtain'd sleep: witchcraft celebrates."-So all

the old copies: editors since the time of Davenant (Mr. Knight is an exception) have inserted now before "witchcraft," but it is much more impressive in the original, and we have no right to attempt to improve Shakespeare's versification: if he thought fit to leave the line here with nine syllables, as in other instances, some may consider him wrong, but nobody ought to venture to correct him.-COLLIER.

"With Tarquin's ravishing STRIDES."-The folios have sides, out of which it is not easy to extract sense: the objections made to "strides" (which was Pope's word) have been two-fold; first, that it is not the reading of the old copies; and next, that "strides" does not indicate a "stealthy pace," or moving "like a ghost." We cannot see the force of this last objection, inasmuch as a person with such a purpose would take "strides," in order that as few foot-falls as possible might be heard; neither are "strides" inconsistent with secresy and silence.

SCENE II.

"That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold." These lines are printed here in the slightly irregular metrical arrangement of the folios. This lyrical freedom of verse, and the consequent hurried abruptness of pause, seem to me meant to express, as they do express, the deep excitement of the speaker, and thus "suit the present horror" of the scene. On the other hand, the attempt of the later editors to bring these lines into a regular ten-syllable metre, which is after all but imperfectly attained, gives the passage a tone of studied declamation,-grand and solemn, indeed, but more like Racine than Shakespeare. The dramatic effect is deadened, unless indeed the lines are spoken or read with just such breaks and pauses as will give to the ear the very same rhythm which they have to the eye in the original editions. The lines are arranged by Stevens, Malone, and others, as follows: the reader will judge for himself how far they are improved.

Lady M. That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold: What hath quench'd them hath given me fire.-Hark !-Peace! It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it. The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms Do mock their charge with snores! I have drugg'd their possets, That death and nature do contend about them, Whether they live, or die.

"I have drugged their possets."-It was a general custom to eat possets just before bed-time. Randle Holmes, in his "Academy of Armory," says, "Posset is hot milk poured on ale or sack, having sugar, grated biscuit, and eggs, with other ingredients, boiled in it, which goes all to a curd."

"had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I had done't."

Mrs. Jameson says "In the murdering-scene, the obdurate inflexibility of purpose with which she drives on Macbeth to the execution of their project, and her masculine indifference to blood and death, would inspire unmitigated disgust and horror, but for the involuntary consciousness that it is produced rather by the exertion of a strong power over herself, than by absolute depravity of disposition and ferocity of temper. This impression of her character is brought home at once to our very hearts with the most profound knowledge of the springs of nature within us, the most subtle mastery over their various operations, and a feeling of dramatic effect not less wonderful. The very passages in which Lady Macbeth displays the most savage and relentless determination, are so worded as to fill the mind with the idea of sex, and place the woman before us in all her dearest attributes, at once softening and refining the horror, and rendering it more intense. Thus, when she reproaches her husband for his weak

ness

Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, &c.

I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis
To love the babe that milks me, &c.

"And lastly, in the moment of extremest horror comes that unexpected touch of feeling, so startling, yet so wonderfully true to nature

'Had he not resembled my father as he slept,
I had done it!!"

"This 'one touch of nature,' (Warburton observes,) is very artful: for, as the poet has drawn the lady and her husband, it would be thought the act should have been done by her. It is likewise highly just: for though ambition had subdued in her all the sentiments of nature towards present objects, yet the likeness of one past, which she had always been accustomed to regard with reverence, made her unnatural passions for a moment give way to the sentiments of instinct and humanity."

"the ravell'd SLEAVE of care."-" Sleave" silk is coarse unwrought silk. This, and what follows, are Macbeth's reflections upon sleep, and ought not, therefore, to form part of what he is supposed to have overheard.

"Making the green-one red."

Editors differ upon the mode of reading this line. In the original it stands

'Making the green one, red.'

The ordinary reading,

'Making the green-one red,'

was first suggested by Murphy. We have a similar expression in Milton's "Comus"

'And makes one blot of all the air.'

Besides, the "multitudinous seas" being plural, agree in grammar and sense with green, but cannot well be termed "the green, one."

"To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself." While I have the thought or recollection of this deed, I were better lost to myself; had better not have the consciousness of who I am.

SCENE III.

"He should have OLD turning the key."-The word "old" was a very common augmentative in Shakespeare's time.

"The night has been unruly.”—In all the later editions, this passage is made to begin with a rhyming couplet, very much out of place

"The night has been unruly; where we lay,

Our chimneys were blown down, and as they say,'—

as it then passes into nearly regular blank verse. This regularity, such as it is, is obtained by putting together lines and parts of lines, in an order very different from that of the old copies. The latter is here followed exactly, without the awkward rhyme, and with its imperfect, broken verses, so common in the old dramatists,and here so well corresponding in feeling to the sense they express. The only change of the old text is the substitution of a comma for a period after "woful times," so as to connect the owl, "the obscure bird," with the prophecy of dire events. This is an idea familiar to the poet and his times. Thus, he says elsewhere, "The ominous and fearful owl of death;" and again, "Out, ye owls; nothing but songs of death."

"-here lay Duncan,

His silver skin laced o'er with his golden blood."

"It is not improbable that Shakespeare put these forced and unnatural metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth, as a mark of artifice and dissimulation, to show

the difference between the studied language of hypocrisy and the natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole speech, so considered, is a remarkable instance of judgment, as it consists entirely of antithesis and metaphor."-JOHNSON.

"Against the undivulg'd PRETENCE I fight."-Pretence" is intention, design; a sense in which it is often used by Shakespeare. Thus, Rosse asks, "What good could they pretend ?”

SCENE IV.

"the TRAVAILING lamp."-The original reading is travelling; but travel, in old orthography, either meant to journey or to labour. Hooker, and other authors of that age, use travel in this sense. I therefore adopt Mr. Collier's opinion that travelling, the ordinary reading, gives a peurile idea: whereas the poet, by "travailing," seems to have reference to the struggle between the sun and night, which induces Rosse to ask, 'Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame,' etc. "ROSSE. Where is Duncan's body?

MACD. Carried to Colme-kill;

The sacred store-house of his predecessors." This place (now called Icolm-kill) is the famous Iona, one of the Western Isles, so eloquently described by Dr. Johnson. Kill, in Erse, signifies a cell or chapel.

ACT III.-SCENE I.

"For Banquo's issue have I FIL'D my mind”—i. e. Defiled my mind. To "file" was often used for to defile, by elision of the preposition.

"the SEEDS of Banquo kings!"-So the old copies, which there is no sufficient reason for abandoning, especially as Macbeth is speaking of Banquo's issue throughout in the plural. Seeds is thus used for descendants in our English Bible.

"the valued FILE"-i. e. the "file" or list in which they are valued and described.

'

SCENE II.

Nought's had, all's spent,

Where our desire is had without content." "Under the impression of her present wretchedness, I, from this moment, (says Mrs. Siddons,) have always assumed the dejection of countenance and manners which I thought accordant to such a state of mind; and, though the author of this sublime composition has not, it must be acknowledged, given any direction whatever to authorize this assumption, yet I venture to hope that he would not have disapproved of it. It is evident, indeed, by her conduct in the scene which succeeds the mournful soliloquy, that she is no longer the presumptuous, the determined creature that she was before the assassination of the king: for instance, on the approach of her husband, we behold for the first time striking indications of sensibility, nay, tenderness and sympathy; and I think this conduct is nobly followed up by her during the whole of their subsequent eventful intercourse. It is evident, I think, that the sad and new experience of affliction has subdued the insolence of her pride and the violence of her will; for she comes now to seek him out, that she may at least participate his misery. She knows, by her own woful experience, the torment which he undergoes, and endeavours to alleviate his sufferings by inefficient reasonings.

"Far from her former habits of reproach and contemptuous taunting, you perceive that she now listens to his complaints with sympathizing feelings; and, so far from adding to the weight of his affliction the burden of her own, she endeavours to conceal it from him with the most delicate and unremitting attention. But it is in vain; as we may observe in this beautiful and mournful dialogue with the physician on the subject of

his cureless malady: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd?' &c. You now hear no more of her chidings and reproaches. No; all her thoughts are now directed to divert his from those sorriest fancies, by turning them to the approaching banquet, in exhorting him to conciliate the good-will and good thoughts of his guests, by receiving them with a disengaged air, and cordial, bright, and jovial demeanour. Smothering her sufferings in the deepest recesses of her own wretched bosom, we cannot but perceive that she devotes herself entirely to the effort of supporting him."

"We have scоTCH'D the snake"-i. e. wounded it. This word is best illustrated by a passage in CORIO

LANUS,

'He scotch'd him and notch'd him like a carbonado.'

"Whom we to gain our PEACE."-For this last word of the original, the editor of the second folio substituted place; and it has been adopted by succeeding editors. The repetition of the word peace seems much in Shakespeare's manner; and as every one who commits a crime such as that of Macbeth, proposes to himself, in the result, happiness, which is another word for peace, (as the very promptings to the crime disturb his peace,) there is something much higher in the sentiment conveyed by the original word than in that of place. In the very contemplation of the murder of Banquo, Macbeth is vainly seeking for peace. Banquo is the object that makes him eat his meal in fear, and sleep in terrible dreams. His death, therefore, is determined; and then comes the fearful lesson

'Better be with the dead,

Whom we to gain our peace have sent to peace.' There is no peace with the wicked.-KNIGHT.

"Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks." "An obvious and pervading source of interest arises from that bond of entire affection and confidence which, through the whole of this dreadful tissue of crime and its consequences, unites Macbeth and his wife; claiming from us an involuntary respect and sympathy, and shedding a softening influence over the whole tragedy. Macbeth leans upon her strength, trusts in her fidelity, and throws himself on her tenderness. She sustains him, calms him, soothes him

Come on:

Gentle, my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks;

Be bright and jovial 'mong your guests to-night.' "The endearing epithets, the terms of fondness in which he addresses her, and the tone of respect she invariably maintains towards him, even when most exasperated by his vacillation of mind and his brain-sick terrors, have, by the very force of contrast, a powerful effect on the fancy."-MRS. JAMESON.

"Oh! full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife.” This expression of tenderness and remorseful confidence is wonderfully touching, amid the darkness of Macbeth's recent murder and his meditation of new crime. It is one of the traits that mark the distinction between his reluctant and remorseful guilt and the buoyant atrocity of Richard. Coleridge has admirably remarked, that Macbeth has "no reasonings of equivocal morality, no sophistry of self-delusion. His language is the grave utterance of the very heart, conscience-sick to the last faintings of moral death."

"Nature's copy's not eterne."—"Copy" may be here taken in its usual sense; the copy of human nature in the individual is not eternal. Yet I think Ritson and Johnson are right in understanding it to allude to the tenantry by copyhold, which was then so common in England, as to make the image quite as familiar as the similar one still is, where Macbeth speaks of living out "the lease of nature." Here his wife says that their enemy's tenure, or copy, of life, is not perpetual.

"The SHARD-borne beetle."--"Shard" is synonymous

"FLEANCE and Servant escape."-"Fleance, after the assassination, fled to Wales, where, by the daughter of the prince of that country, he had a son named Walter, who became Lord-Steward of Scotland, and thence assumed the name of Walter Steward (or Stuart.) From him, in a direct line, descended James the First of England in compliment to whom, Shakespeare has chosen to describe Banquo, who was equally concerned with Macbeth in the murder of Duncan, as innocent of that crime."-MALONE.

Such was formerly the received history; but Lord Hales, in his acute investigation of early Scotch history, has made Banquo, Fleance, and the gold-bound brows of their progeny, depart indeed "like shadows;" for he has fairly erased them from the ancestry of the Stuarts, and left them but a shadowy existence in the annals of Scotland.

SCENE IV.

"Tis better thee without, than he within.” The proper reading may be "him within." That is, I am better pleased that Banquo's blood should be on thy face than in his body. Or we may follow the present reading, by supposing the latter part of the sentence to signify "than he in this room."

"the feast is sold

That is not often vouch'd.”

The meaning is,-that which is not given freely and cheerfully, cannot properly be called a gift. It is like something which we are expected to pay for.

"Impostors to true fear."-This phrase has embarrassed commentators. Lady Macbeth's meaning here is,-"True fear, the fear arising from real danger, is a rational thing; but your fears, originating solely in your own fancies, are mere impostors," and

would well become

A woman's story at a winter's fire,
Authoriz'd by her grandam.'

"Ere human statute purg'd the gentle weal."-When a gentle and peaceful state of society needed not the aid of human law.

"Re-enter Ghost."

It was the opinion of the late Mr. B. Strutt that the Ghost which entered at this point was that of Duncan, and not of Banquo. The folio, 1623, certainly, does not mention whose Ghost made its appearance, but the context, referring again to the absence of Banquo, seems to warrant the ordinary interpretation. Had it been the Ghost of Duncan, the old copies would hardly have failed to give us the information. They state, “Enter Ghost," having before stated, "Enter the Ghost of Banquo." Mr. H. C. Robinson supports Mr. B. Strutt's notion by several later portions of the scene, particularly by the passages, "Thy bones are marrowless," "Thou hast no speculation in those eyes," and "Take any shape but that ;" which are supposed to be applicable to Duncan, who had been long dead, and not to Banquo, who had been very recently murdered. This opinion seems rather one of those conjectures in which

original minds indulge, than founded upon a correct interpretation of the text. Macbeth would not address "And dare me to the desert with thy sword" to the shade of the venerable Duncan; and "Thou hast no speculation in those eyes," &c., is the appearance that eyes would assume just after death. Some have maintained, against the positive evidence of all the old copies, that the first Ghost was that of Duncan, and that Banquo afterwards appeared.-COLLIER.

"If trembling I INHABIT then."-This is the original reading of the folios. Pope, not understanding this, from want of familiarity with old English literature, changed inhabit to inhibit; and Stevens altered then into thee; which Malone approving, became the standard text. Horne Tooke, in his celebrated "Diversions of Purley," after denouncing the general "presumptuous license" of the commentators as "risking the loss of Shakespeare's genuine text," thus comments on these emendations:-"But for these commentators one can hardly suppose that any reader could have found a difficulty; the original text is so plain, easy, and clear, and so much in the author's accustomed manner. dare me to the desert with thy sword; if I inhabit then'-i. e. If then I do not meet thee there; if trembling I stay at home, or under any roof, or within any habitation: If, when you call me to the desert, I then house me, or through fear hide myself in any dwelling

If trembling I do house me then, protest me

The baby of a girl."

Clear as this is, inhibit has kept its place even in the latest editions, except in those of Singer, Knight, and Collier, who have ejected it from their texts.

"You make me strange Even to the disposition that I owe."

You prove to me that I am a stranger even to my own disposition, when I perceive that the very object which steals the colour from my cheek, permits it to remain in yours.

Augurs, and understood relations."-By the word "relations," says Johnson, "is understood the connection of effects with causes. To understand relations, as an augur, is to know how those things relate to each other which have no visible combination of dependence." The word "augurs" in the text, may (according to the suggestion of Mr. Singer) be understood in the sense of "auguries."-Illust. Shak.

"How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person,” etc.-i. e. What say you to the fact, that Macduff will not come at our command? This is M. Mason's interpretation, supported by the reply of Lady Macbeth, who had said nothing about the matter, and asks, in ignorance, whether Macduff had been sent to ? Macbeth then proceeds to inform her what he had heard "by the way."

"You lack the season of all natures, sleep." Johnson explains this, " You want sleep, which seasons or gives the relish to all natures." Indiget somni vitæ condimenti. So, in All's Well that Ends Well: ""Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in." It has, however, been suggested that the meaning is, "You stand in need of the time or season of sleep, which all natures require." I incline to the last interpretation.SINGER.

"During the supper-scene, in which Macbeth is haunted by the spectre of the murdered Banquo, and his reason appears unsettled by the extremity of his horror and dismay, her indignant rebuke, her low whispered remonstrance, the sarcastic emphasis with which she combats his sick fancies, and endeavours to recall him to himself, have an intenseness, a severity, a bitterness, which makes the blood creep. Yet, when the guests are dismissed, and they are left alone, she says no more, and not a syllable of reproach or scorn escapes

her; a few words in submissive reply to his questions, and an entreaty to seek repose, are all she permits herself to utter. There is a touch of pathos and of tenderness in this silence which has always affected me beyond expression; it is one of the most masterly and most beautiful traits of character in the whole play."-MRS. JAMESON.

SCENE V.

"Upon the corner of the moon

There hangs a vaporous drop profound."

This "vaporous drop" seems to be the virus lunare of the ancients, being a foam which the moon was supposed to shed on particular herbs or other objects, when strongly solicited by enchantments. "Profound," signifies having deep or secret qualities.-JOHNSON and STEVENS.

ACT IV.-SCENE I.

"Enter the three Witches."

Fuseli, in one of his fragments, remarks that "the minute catalogue of the ingredients of this cauldron destroys the terror attendant on mysterious darkness." This is the criticism of a man of genius, but erroneous in principle, as he might have learned from his own experience; for it was the cause of the failure of his own daring attempts in art to reach the sublime, that he relied upon the indefinite general effect, in utter contempt of the truth and effect of the details. The Poet's design is just the reverse. The ingredients of this charm, as told, all tend to rouse the attention by their almost grotesque strangeness, and their unfitness for any intelligible purpose, while their agreement with legendary belief gives to them somewhat of the effect of truth. They are, too, such as excite feelings of natural dislike or antipathy, yet are so managed as not to produce disgust. Some of these are of deep horror-as the grease from the murderer's gibbet; but the transient shadow of the ludicrous that passes across the mind as other images are presented, adds to the wild interest as well as to the conventional truth of witchcraft, in which the mind willingly acquiesces. Mere shadowy obscurity could produce no similar effect.

The conformity of the incantation to the old popular superstitions of Great Britain is shown in an excellent note of Johnson's, of which we subjoin an abridgment.

A cat was the usual interlocutor between witches and familiar spirits. A witch, who was tried about fifty years before the Poet's time, was said to have had a cat named Rutterkin; and when any mischief was to be done, she would bid Rutterkin "go and fly." The common afflictions attributed to the malice of witches, were melancholy, fits, and loss of flesh. They were supposed to be very malicious to swine; one of Shakespeare's hags says she has been killing swine; and Dr. Hars net observes that, in his time, "a sow could not be ill of the measles, nor a girl of the sullens, but some old woman was charged with witchcraft." Toads have long been reproached as the abettors of witchcraft. When Vanninus was seized at Toulouse, there was found in his lodgings "a great toad, shut in a phial;" upon which, those that persecuted him denounced him as a wizard.

The ingredients of Shakespeare's cauldron are selected according to the formularies prescribed in books of magic. Witches were supposed to take up bodies to use in enchantments. On this great occasion, the circumstances of horror are multiplied. The babe, whose finger is used, must be strangled in birth. The grease, not only human, but must have dropped from a gibbet,the gibbet of a murderer; even the sow, whose blood is used, must have offended nature by devouring her own farrow. A passage from Camden explains our author in other particulars:-"When any one gets a fall, he stands up, and turning three times to the right, digs a hole in the earth (for they imagine that there is

a spirit in the ground;) and if he falls sick in two or three days, they send one of their women that is skilled in that way, to the place, where she says, 'I call thee from the east, west, north, and south; from the groves, the woods, the rivers, and the fens; from the fairies, red, black, and white.""

The reader who is curious to go deeper into the learning of the higher demonology of James's reign, may find it in its most imposing form in Ben Jonson's "Mask of Queens." In this elaborate but splendid poem, written after Shakespeare's death, Jonson has not only imitated the Weird Sisters of his old friend, but has paraphrased his poetry as freely as he had formerly done that of Horace and Juvenal. Its finest passage is a diluted yet magnificent paraphrase of Macbeth's adjuration, "I conjure you," etc. Like Shakespeare, Jonson took care that his witches should be sustained by power and terror far above the level of those of popular superstition.

Charles Lamb, with his usual quaint originality, thus contrasts the hags of popular belief, which were also those of the inferior dramatists, Rowley and Decker, with the Weird Sisters. The former are "the plain, traditional, old women-witches of our ancestors,-poor, deformed, and ignorant, the terror of villages,-themselves amenable to a Justice. That should be a hardy sheriff, with the power of the county at his heels, that should lay hands on the Weird Sisters. They are of another jurisdiction."-LAMB's Dramatic Specimens. "Toad, that under THE cold stone."-The line in the original copies is, "Toad, that under cold stone:" and laying expressive emphasis upon "cold," it may be doubted whether the line be defective. Pope introduced "the" to complete the metre, and Mr. Amyot thinks that he was right. We yield to authority on this point. Stevens read coldest for "cold;" but there seems no reason for preferring the superlative degree, and it is more likely that the definite article dropped out in printing.-COLLIER.

"Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips."

These ingredients probably owed their introduction to the detestation in which the Saracens were held, excited by the Crusades.

"Black spirits and white," etc.

The right of these four metrical lines to a place in the text is certainly equivocal. Stevens introduced them from Middleton's "Witch," on the authority of the stage-direction in the first folio, which stands thus: "Music and a Song. Black spirits,' &c." Malone, however, strongly contends that "The Witch" was written subsequently to MACBETH. The lines themselves have been supposed, with great probability, to be merely of a traditional nature, the production of neither Middleton nor Shakespeare.-Illust. Shak.

In act iii. scene 5, we have the stage-direction-"Song. [Within.] Come away, Come away, &c." In the same manner we have in this scene "Music and a Song. 'Black spirits,' &c." In Middleton's "Witch," we find two songs, each of which begins according to the stagedirection. The first is,

'Come away, come away;
Hecate, Hecate, come away.
Hec. I come, I come, I come,
With all the speed I may,
With all the speed I may.'

} in the air.

choruses, music, &c., of the witches, which have long accompanied the stage representation of MACBETH, are not Shakespeare's, nor of his age. They were written by Davenant, for his operatic alteration of MACBETH in 1674; and the music is by Matthew Locke, an excellent old-fashioned English musician of that period.

"An apparition of an armed Head rises."

Upton suggests that the armed head represents, symbolically, Macbeth's head cut off, and brought to Malcolm by Macduff. The bloody child is Macduff, untimely ripped from his mother's womb. The child with a crown on his head, and a bough in his hand, is the royal Malcolm, who ordered his soldiers to hew down each a bough, and bear it before them to Dunsinane.

"And wears upon his baby brow the round

And top of sovereignty.”

The round is that part of the crown which encircles the head; the top is the ornament that rises above it.

"And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass, Which shows me many more; and some I see, That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry." Magicians professed to have the power of showing future events by means of a charmed glass, or mirror. In a section from the penal laws against witches, it is said, "They do answer either by voice, or else do set before their eyes, in crystal-stones, &c., the pictures or images of persons or things sought for." Spenser has given a circumstantial account of the glass which Merlin made for King Ryence. A mirror of the same kind was presented to Cambuscan, in "The Squire's Tale" of Chaucer; and in Alday's translation of Boisteau's "Theatrum Mundi," it is said, "A certain philosopher did the like to Pompey, the which showed him in a glass the order of the enemies' march." The allusion, in the above passage, to the "two-fold balls and treble sceptres" is a compliment to James the First, who first united the two islands and three kingdoms under one head.

"Nature's germins."-The old copies read "Nature's germaine," from which no editor has been able to educe any definite sense. German, means brother or near blood relation, and if there were any instance of the word germaine elsewhere, I should think it might mean the whole brotherhood of Nature's children. I am content to acquiesce in the emendation of germins, i. e. shoots, germinating seeds, all Nature's progeny; and it is more probable that this is the true reading, from its agreement with a parallel passage in LEAR

-thou all striking thunder,

Crack Nature's mould, all germins spill at once.' Garrick was famed for his solemnly harmonious and impressive delivery of these lines; and, by means of the rhetorical notation of the rising and falling inflections, &c., a general idea of his manner has been preserved by Walker. It may be found in many of the rhetorical grammars, and (with Walker's remarks) is worthy of the study of all who have any relish for that indescribable charm which excellent reading can add, even to the noblest poetry and eloquence.

"DEFTLY show"-i. e. dexterously, or fittingly, from the Sax. dæft.-COLLIER.

"-high Dunsinane hill."-Here "Dunsinane" is pronounced as it is in Scotland, with the accent on the second syllable. Afterwards it is used with the English accent on the last. The Poet appears to have been informed of the right pronunciation of both this name and Glamis, (in one syllable,) to have so used them, and then, in the ardour of composition, relapsed into the English pronunciation.

blood-bolter'd Banquo."-Bolter'd is a word of the English midland counties, meaning begrimed, besmeared.