-my dull brain was wrought With things forgotten.

-]

My head was worked, agitated, put into commotion. JouN. "With things forgotten." I know not by what figure of speech, by what kind of argument, a man can be said to employ his thoughts on forgotten things: unless, indeed, by forgotten we are to understand old, pust, the things which every other person had banished from his memory. But this was not the case with Macbeth. On the contrary he was pondering on things present or to come. I would therefore read forlotten, i. e. miserable, calamitous. This agrees with his immediately preceding reflection: Present fears,

Are less than horrible imaginings, &c. B.

Mac. Think upon what hath chanc'd; and, at more time,

The interim having weigh'd it, let us speak
Our free hearts each to other.

This intervening portion of represented as a cool imparSTEEV,

Macbeth does not say,

The interim having weigh'd it.] time is almost personified: it is tial judge; as the pauser reason. Mr. Steevens is mistaken. that the interim is to weigh the matter, but that they are to weigh the business during the interim. The construction is-" We, in the interim, having pondered on what hath chanced." B.

Mac. Your highness' part

Is to receive our duties: and our duties

Are to your throne and state, children, and servants;

Which do but what they should, by doing every thing

Safe toward your love and honor.

Which do but what they should, by doing every thing

Safe toward your love and honor.]

Of the last line of this speech, which is certainly, as it is now read, unintelligible, an emendation has been attempted,

which Dr. Warburton and Mr. Theobald once admitted as

the true reading:

"our duties

"Are to your throne and state, children and servants,
"Which do but what they should, in doing every thing,
"Fiefs to your love and honor.

My esteem for these critics inclines me to believe that they cannot be much pleased with these expressions fiefs to love, or fiefs to honor, and that they have proposed this alteration rather because no other occurred to them, than because they approved of it. I shall therefore propose a bolder change, perhaps with no better success, but sua cuique placent. I

read thus:

"Are to your throne and state, children and servants, "Which do but what they should, in doing nothing, "Save toward your love and honor.

We do but perform our duty when we contract all our views to your service, when we act with no other principle than regard to your love and honor.

It is probable that this passage was first corrupted by wri ting safe for save, and the lines then stood thus:

66

-doing nothing

"Sate toward your love and honor,

which the next transcriber observing to be wrong, and yet not being able to discover the real fault, altered to the present reading.

Dr. Warburton has since changed fiefs to fief'd; and Hanmer has altered safe to shap'd. I am afraid none of us have hit the right word. JoHN.

Safe toward you love and honor.]

Safe (i. e. saved) toward you love and honor;

and then the sense will be- Our duties are your children, and servants or vassals to your throne and state; who do but what they should, by doing every thing with a saving of their love and honor toward you." The whole is an allusion to the forms of doing homage in the feudal times. The oath of allegiance, or lige homage, to the king was absolute and without any exception; but simple homage, when done to a subject for lands holden of him, was always with a saving of the allegiance (the love and honor) due to the sovereign. "Sauf la foy que jeo doy a nostre seignor le roy," as it is in Littleton. And though the expression be somewhat stiff and forced, it is not more so than many others in this play, and suits well with the situation of Macbeth, now beginning to waver in his allegiance. For, as our author elsewhere says,

"When love begins to sicken and decay,

"It useth an enforced ceremony."

BLACKST.

The following passage in Cupid's Revenge, a Comedy by Beaumont and Hetcher, adds some support to Sir William Blackstone's emendation :

"I'll speak it freely, always my obedience

"And love preserved unto the prince.".

So also do the following words spoken by Henry, Duke of Lancaster, to King Richard II. at their interview in the Castle of Flint (a passage that Shakspeare certainly had read, and probably remembered): "My sovereign lorde and kyng, the cause of my coming at this present is [your honor saved,] to have againe restitution of my person, my landes, and heritage, through your favourable licence." Holinshed's Chron.

vol. II. XX. Col. 1. a. MAL.

"Safe toward your love and honor." I am of opinion thatsale tow'rd," has been printed in mistake for safeguard. I read :

-our duties

"Are to your throne and state, children and servants, "Which do but what they should in doing every thing: "Your safeguards, love and honor."

i. e. (( our love and honor will ever be your protector or safeguard." B.

Lady Mac. They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge..

66

-by the perfectest report.] By the best intelligence. Dr. Warburton would read, perfected, and explains report by prediction. Little regard can be paid to an emendation that, instead of clearing the sense, makes it more difficult. JouN. By the perfectest report." Warburton's reading is most assuredly right. What intelligence could Macbeth gather concerning the witches, which might be said to amount to any thing touching their supernatural powers, or acquaintance with things to come: that is, as immediately respecting himself? By "perfected report," he means that he is now well assured of their having more than mortai knowledge, because what they had prophesied was come to pass: their report was perfected. He had been hailed by missives from the king Thane of Cawdor, as they (the witches) had foretold he should be. B.

Lady Mac. Come, you spirits

That tend on niortal thoughts, unsex me here;
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse;
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose; nor keep peace between
The effect, and it!

-nor keep peace between

The effect, and it !

The intent of Lady Macbeth evidently is to wish that no womanish tenderness, or conscientious remorse, may hinder her purpose from proceeding to effect; but neither this, nor indeed any other sense, is expressed by the present reading, and therefore it cannot be doubted that Shakspeare wrote differently, perhaps thus:

"That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep pace between "The effect and it.

To keep pace between, may signify to pass between, to intercene. Pace is on many occasions a favorite of Shakspeare's. This phrase is indeed not usual in this sense; but was it not its novelty that gave occasion to the present corruption?

JOHN.

The sense is, that no compunctious visitings of nature may prevail upon her, to give place in her mind to peaceful thoughts, or to rest one moment in quiet, from the hour of her purpose to its full completion in the effect. REVISAL.

This writer thought himself perhaps very sagacious that he found a meaning which nobody missed; the difficulty still remains how such a meaning is made by the words. Jonn. "Nor keep peace between

"The effect and it."

1 do not think that either Warburton or Johnson have given the sense of the passage. A slight alteration seenis necessary. Read:

"Nor keep peace between

"The effecting it,"

Lady Macbeth would say:

"Let me not be at peace,

while my design is unexecuted:" by which it is insinua

ted, that were her bosom once at rest, she might possibly abandon her purpose-she might forego her intentions were there even but a momentary calm. The expression peace between the effecting it," is certainly inaccurate, but easily understood. The construction, I say, is bad but we must not always look for the syntactical in Shakspeare. B.

Lady Mac. Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!
That my keen knife sce not the wound it makes ;
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
cry, Hold, hold!

To

Come thick night, &c.] A similar invocation is found in A Warning for faire Women, 1599, a tragedy which was certainly prior to Macbeth:

"Oh sable night, sit on the eye of heaven,

"That it discern not this black deed of darkness!
My guilty soul, burnt with lust's hateful fire,

MAL.

"Must wade through blood to obtain my vile desire: "Be then my coverture thick ugly night! "The light hates me, and I do hate the light." "Come, thick night," &c. This passage is unintelligible, partly owing to corruption, and partly to misplacement of the words. To make Heaven peep through a blanket, is, to say as little as possible in its disfavor, highly ridiculous; for as Dr. Warburton has observed, though the language of Shakspeare is frequently faulty, and without regard to grammar-rale, his expression is at no time nonsensical. The corruptions, I think, are these: peep" " in mistake for deep; and "blanket" for blench at. I correct the whole as follows:

"Come, thick night;

"And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell:

"That Heaven see not the wound my keen knife makes, "Deep through thy dark, nor blench at it to cry "Hold, hold!"

"Dark" is used for darkness. So that Heaven "see not"-" deep thro' thy dark," i. e. "See not the deep wound of my knife, favored by thy darkness." " Nor blench at it," i. e. "Nor even start, shrink, or be alarmed

;