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But yet I call

you servile ministers,

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,

Unwhipp'd of Justice! Hide thee, thou bloody hand
Thou perjure, and thou simular of virtue,
That art incestuous! caitiff, shake to pieces,
That, under cover of convivial seeming,

Hast 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.

SHAKSPEARE.

CHAP. XVI.

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 I now 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 Murder,
(Alarmed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch,) thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, tow'rd his design
Moves like a ghost.-Thou sound and firm-set earth
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
The very stones prate of my whereabout;
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it.-While I threat, he lives-
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me,
Hear it not, Duncan! for it is a knell,
That summons thee to Heaven or to Hell!

SHAKSPEARE.

Macd.

CHAP. XVII.

MACDUFF, MALCOLM, AND ROSSE.

SEE who comes here?

Malc. My countryman; but yet I know him not.
Macd. My ever gentle cousin, welcome hither.
Malc.

I know him now. Good God! betimes remove

The means that makes us strangers!

Rosse.

Macd.

Sir, Amen.

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 caps;
Dying or e'er they sicken.

Macd. Oh, relation

Too nice, and yet too true!

Malc. What's the newest grief?

Rosse. That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker.

Each minute teems a new one.

Macd. How does my wife?

Rosse. Why, well.

Macd. And all my children?
Rosse. Well too.

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 tyrant's power afoot. Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland Would create soldiers, and make women fight, To doff their dire distresses.

Malc. Be't their comfort

We're coming thither; gracious England hath
Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men ;
An older, and a 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 wo; though 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 murder'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.

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

To cure this deadly grief.

Macd. He has no children.-All my pretty ones! Did you say all? what, all? oh, hell-kite! all?

Malc. 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.

Did 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!
Malc. 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 mine eyes,
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!

Malc. This tune goes manly.

Come, go we to the King, our pow'r is ready;
Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth
Is ripe for shaking, and the pow'rs above

Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may;
The night is long that never finds the day.

SHAKSPEARE.

CHAP. XVIII.

ANTONY'S SOLILOQUY OVER CÆSAR'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.

Wo 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 utt'rance 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 Cæsar's spirit raging for revenge,
With Até 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.

SHAKSPEARE.

CHAP. XIX.

ANTONY'S FUNERAL ORATION OVER CÆSAR'S BODY.

FRIENDS, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears.

I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones ;.
So let it be with Cæsar! Noble Brutus
Hath told you, Cæsar was ambitious :
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Cæsar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus, and the rest,,

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