That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles, 'gainst a head,
So old and white as this. Oh! oh! 'tis foul.
Let the great gods,

That keep this dreadful pudder o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes,
Unwhip'd of justice! Hide thee, thou bloody hand;
Thou perjure, and thou simular of virtue,
That ait incestuous! catiff, shake to pieces,
That, under cover of convivial seeming,
Has practis'd on man's life-Close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and ask
Those dreadful summoners grace!—I am a man,
More sinn'd against, than sinning.

SHAKESPEARE.

CHA P. XXII.

Macbeth's Soliloquy.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle tow'rd my hand? come,

let me clutch

thee.-
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still,
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.-

Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses,
Or else worth all the rest—I see thee still;
And on the blade o' th' dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such

thing

It is the bloody business which informs

Thus to mine eyes.- -Now, o'er one half the world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtain'd sleep; now Witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings: and wither'd Murther, (Alarm'd by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch) thus with his stealthy

Hear not my steps, which way they walk for fear
The very stones prate of my where-about:
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it.-
-Whilst I threat, he

1

lives

go, and 'tis done; the bell invites me, Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell

That summons thee to heav'n or to hell!

SHAKESPEARE.

CHA P. XXIII.

Macduff, Malcolm, and Rosse.

Macd.SEE,

EE, who comes here!

Mal. My countryman; but yet I know him not.
Macd My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither.
Mal. I know him now. Good God, betimes re-

move

The means that makes us strangers!

Rosse. Sir, Amen.

Macd. Stands Scotland where it did?
Rosse. Alas, poor country?

Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot

Be call'd our mother but our grave; where nothing, But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile; Where sighs and groans, and shrieks that rend the

air,

Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstacy; the dead man's knell
Is there scarce ask'd for whom: and good men's

lives

Expire before the flowers in their
Dying or e'er they sicken.
Macd. Oh, relation

Too nice, and yet too true!
Mal. What's the newest grief?
Rosse. That of an hour's age
speaker,

Each minute teems a new one.
Macd. How does my wife?

Rosse. Why, well—

Macd. And all my children?

Rosse. Well too.

caps;

doth hiss the

Macd. The tyrant has not batter'd at their peace? Rosse. No, they were at peace when I did leave

'em.

Macd. Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes it?

Rosse. When I came hither to transport the

tidings,

Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumour
Of many worthy fellows that were out,
Which was to my belief witness'd the rather,
For that I saw the tyrants power a-foot.
Now is the time of help: your eye in Scotland
Would create soldiers, and make women fight,
To doff their dire distresses.

Mal. Be't their comfort

We're goming thither: gracious England hath
Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men;
An older and better soldier, none

That Christendom gives out.

Rosse. Would I could answer

This comfort with the like; but I have words
That would be howl'd out in the desert air,
Where hearing should not catch them.
Macd. What, concern they

The gen'ral cause? or is it a free grief,
Due to some single breast?

Rosse. No mind that's honest,

But in it shares some woe; tho' the main part
Pertains to you alone.

Macd. If it be mine,

Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it.

Rosse. Let not your ears despise my tongue for

ever,

Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound, That ever yet they heard.

Macd. Hum! I guess at it.

Rosse. Your castle is surpris'd, your wife and babes

Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner,
Were on the quarry of these murther'd deer
To add the death of you.

Mal Merciful Heav'n!

What man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows, Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak, Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break. Macd. My children too!

Rosse. Wife, children, servants, all that could be found.

Macd. And I must be from thence! My wife kill'd too!

Rosse I've said.

Mal. Be comforted.

Let's make us med'cines of our great revenge,

To cure this deadly grief.

Macd. He has no children.

Did

ones!

All my pretty

you say all? What all? Oh, hell-kite! All? Mal. Endure it like a man.

Macd. I shall do so;

But I must also feel it as a man.

I cannot but remember such things were,

That were most precious to me. Ďid Heav'n look

on,

And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff, They were all struck for thee! naught that I am, Not for their own demerits, but for mine,

Fell Slaughter on their souls. Heav'n rest them

now

!

Mal. Be this the whetstone of your sword, let

grief

Convert to wrath; blunt not the heart, enrage it.
Macd. O,I could play the woman with mineeyes,
And braggart with my tongue. But gentle heav'n!
Cut short all intermission: front to front,
Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;
Within my sword's length set him, if he 'scape,
Then Heav'n forgive him too!

Mal. This tune goes manly.

Come, go we to the king, our power is ready;
Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth
Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above
Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you

may;

The night is long that never finds the day.

SHAKESPEARE.

CHA P. XXI V.

Antony's Soliloquy over Caesar's body,

O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth!

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers. Thou art the ruins of the noblest man

That ever lived in the tide of times.

Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,
(Which like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue)
A curse shall light upon the line of men;
Domestic fury, and fierce civil strife

Shall cumber all the parts of Italy:
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,

That mothers shall but smile, when they behold
Their infants quarter'd by the hands of war;
All pity chok'd with custom of fell deeds;
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side, come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines, with a monarch's voice,
Cry, Havock! and let slip the dogs of war.
SHAKESPEARE.