Macb. Infected be the air whereon they ride,

And damn'd all those that trust them!

Yet he goes on trusting them, having lost all other reliance. Thus, finding his thanes all deserting him, says:

he

Bring me no more reports―let them fly all:

Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,

I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?
Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know
All mortal consequents, pronounc'd me thus :-
"Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman,
Shall e'er have power on thee." Then fly, false thanes,
And mingle with the English epicures:

The mind I sway by, and the heart I bear,

Shall never sagg with doubt, nor shake with fear! Nevertheless, doubt and fear beset him at the entrance of the very next messenger of ill news:—

The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon! &c. And when the approach of the English force is announced to him, forgetting his predicted safety, he This push

says-.

Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now ;

and proceeds with the well-known anticipatory rumination:

I have liv'd long enough: my way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dares not.

Mere poetical whining, again, over his own most merited situation. Yet Hazlitt, amongst others, talks of him as "calling back all our sympathy" by this reflection. Sympathy, indeed! for the exquisitely refined selfishness of this most odious personage! This passage is exactly of a piece with that preceding one already quoted, in which he envies the fate of his royal victim, and seems to think himself

hardly used, that Duncan, after all, should be better off than himself. Such exclamations, from such a character, are but an additional title to our detestation: the man who sets at nought all human ties, should at least be prepared to abide in quiet the inevitable consequences. But the moral cowardice of Macbeth, we see, is consummate. He cannot resign himself to his fate. The more seemingly desperate his situation becomes, the more he clings to his sole remaining source of encouragement, shadowy as it is

I will not be afraid of death and bane,
Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.

And when Birnam forest is actually come to Dunsinane, still he only "begins"

To doubt the equivocation of the fiend,

That lies like truth.

Still he finds one reliance left, in that straw which, to his selfish, cowardly fears, looks like a staff of security :

What's he

That was not born of woman?
Am I to fear, or none.

Such a one

Nothing, again, can be more characteristic than the exclamation when his castle is surrounded, and nothing is left him but his individual life :

Why should I play the
On mine own sword?
Do better upon them.

:

Roman fool, and die
Whiles I see lives, the gashes

No, indeed! Macbeth is no Brutus! For a man to encounter the sword of his enemy, requires only physical courage; but to die upon his own, demands high moral resolution. And when Macduff appears before him, it is not compunction that draws from him the confession

Of all men else I have avoided thee:

But get thee back-my soul is too much charg'd
With blood of thine already.

It is, that the words of the preternatural monitor are still ringing in his ear "Beware Macduff- beware the thane of Fife." Compelled to fight, he avails himself of the first pause, while he is yet unwounded, to persuade his antagonist of his invulnerability :Thou losest labour:

I bear a charmed life, which must not yield

To one of woman born.

When Macduff has acquainted him with the peculiarity of his own birth, there is no want of physical courage, we must observe, implied in Macbeth's declining the combat. He may well believe that now, more than ever, it is time to "beware Macduff.” He is at length convinced that "fate and metaphysical aid" are against him; and, consistent to the last in his hardened and whining selfishness, no thought of the intense blackness of his own perfidy interferes to prevent him from complaining of falsehood in those evil beings from whose very nature he should have expected nothing else:

:

And be these juggling fiends no more believ'd,
That palter with us in a double sense;

That keep the word of promise to our ear,

And break it to our hope!

There is no cowardice, we say, in his declining the combat under such a conviction. Neither is there any courage in his renewing it; for there is no room for courage in opposing evident fate. But the last word and action of Macbeth are an expression of the moral cowardice which we trace so conspicuously throughout his career; he surrenders his life that he may not "be baited with the rabble's curse." So dies Macbeth, shrinking from deserved opprobrium; but he dies, as he has lived, remorseless.

It is now time to follow out the developement of the very different character of his lady, as shown in the very different end to which she is brought by purely mental suffering.

155

4.-LADY MACBETH IN HER DESPAIR.

We

We have seen the passionate desire of Lady Macbeth
for her husband's exaltation overbearing, though not
stifling, her "compunctious visitings," until she finds
"the golden round" actually encircling the brow of
her equally ambitious but more selfish consort.
have seen the stings of conscience assailing her with
fresh violence so soon as that sustained effort ceased
which she had felt to be necessary for going "the
nearest way" to her lord's elevation and her own.
Again, however, we have seen them silenced for the
time in the new effort which she finds imposed upon
her, to soothe, as she supposes, those pangs of remorse
in her husband's breast which are not only tormenting
himself, but betraying his guilty consciousness to all
the world. But the close of the great banquet scene,
which we have already considered, presents a new
phasis of her feelings. She finds that her expostula-
tions, whether in the strain of tenderness or of reproof,
are alike powerless to restrain the workings of his
"heat-oppressed brain." From the moment that she
finds it necessary to say to their guests-

I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse;
Question enrages him; at once, good night:

Stand not upon the order of your going,

But go at once ;—

from that moment, we find her brief and quiet answers to his enquiries breathing nothing but the anxious desire to still his feverish agitation by what, she is now convinced, is the only available means- -the most compliant gentleness. Her observation,

You lack the season of all natures, sleep,

expresses her deep conviction that, if any treatment can cure or assuage his mental malady, it must be a

soothing one, and that alone. But his very reply to this gentle exhortation shews us that her power to allay his fears, and consequently to control his excesses, is utterly at an end

My strange and self-abuse,

Is the initiate fear, that wants hard use :
We are yet but young in deed.

Up to this point, be it observed, she seems ignorant of Banquo's assassination; neither has her husband acquainted her distinctly with his designs against Macduff; henceforth he has no confidants whatever but his preternatural counsellors, who spend no more advice upon him than is just sufficient to confirm him in his infatuated course. It seems to be only from common rumour that his lady learns the destruction of Macduff's family, and the career of reckless violence which it opens on her husband's part, to the utter contempt of all human opinion, and sundering of all human attachment to his person or his rule. Their first great criminal act, the murder of Duncan, she had fondly thought should,

to all our days and nights to come,

Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

Mistaking, as we have seen, her husband's character, she foresaw not at all that he would both hold and act upon the maxim that

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill,— that is, he would perversely make his very safety consist in getting deeper into danger. But now she finds that the very deed which was to establish him for ever, has precipitated him into inevitable destruction; she feels that but for the incitement administered by her own unbending will, that deed would not have been committed; that consequently, that very pertinacity of hers, which she expected was to make the lasting greatness of the man in whose glory all her wishes in this life were absorbed, had sealed his black, irrevocable doom. Nor is this all: the horrible unde