s children crowned. The old intolerable thought
returns, 'for Banquo's issue have I filed my mind'; and with it, for all
the absolute security apparently promised him, there returns that inward
fever. Will nothing quiet it? Nothing but destruction. Macduff, one
comes to tell him, has escaped him; but that does not matter: he can
still destroy:[223]

And even now,
To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:
The castle of Macduff I will surprise;
Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in's line. No boasting like a fool;
This deed I'll do before this purpose cool.
But no more sights!

No, he need fear no more 'sights.' The Witches have done their work,
and after this purposeless butchery his own imagination will trouble him
no more.[224] He has dealt his last blow at the conscience and pity
which spoke through it.

The whole flood of evil in his nature is now let loose. He becomes an
open tyrant, dreaded by everyone about him, and a terror to his country.
She 'sinks beneath the yoke.'

Each new morn
New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows
Strike heaven on the face.

She weeps, she bleeds, 'and each new day a gash is added to her wounds.'
She is not the mother of her children, but their 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.

For this wild rage and furious cruelty we are prepared; but vices of
another kind start up as he plunges on his downward way.

I grant him bloody,
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
Sudden, malicious,

says Malcolm; and two of these epithets surprise us. Who would have
expected avarice or lechery[225] in Macbeth? His ruin seems complete.

Yet it is never complete. To the end he never totally loses our
sympathy; we never feel towards him as we do to those who appear the
born children of darkness. There remains something sublime in the
defiance with which, even when cheated of his last hope, he faces earth
and hell and heaven. Nor would any soul to whom evil was congenial be
capable of that heart-sickness which overcomes him when he thinks of the
'honour, love, obedience, troops of friends' which 'he must n