f could not more naturally
have introduced at intervals the questions 'Ride you this afternoon?'
(l. 19), 'Is't far you ride?' (l. 24), 'Goes Fleance with you?' (l.
36).]

[Footnote 221: We feel here, however, an underlying subdued frenzy which
awakes some sympathy. There is an almost unendurable impatience
expressed even in the rhythm of many of the lines; _e.g._:

Well then, now
Have you consider'd of my speeches? Know
That it was he in the times past which held you
So under fortune, which you thought had been
Our innocent self: this I made good to you
In our last conference, pass'd in probation with you,
How you were borne in hand, how cross'd, the instruments,
Who wrought with them, and all things else that might
To half a soul and to a notion crazed
Say, 'Thus did Banquo.'

This effect is heard to the end of the play in Macbeth's less poetic
speeches, and leaves the same impression of burning energy, though not
of imaginative exaltation, as his great speeches. In these we find
either violent, huge, sublime imagery, or a torrent of figurative
expressions (as in the famous lines about 'the innocent sleep'). Our
impressions as to the diction of the play are largely derived from these
speeches of the hero, but not wholly so. The writing almost throughout
leaves an impression of intense, almost feverish, activity.]

[Footnote 222: See his first words to the Ghost: 'Thou canst not say I
did it.']

[Footnote 223:

For only in destroying I find ease
To my relentless thoughts.--_Paradise Lost_, ix. 129.

Milton's portrait of Satan's misery here, and at the beginning of Book
IV., might well have been suggested by _Macbeth_. Coleridge, after
quoting Duncan's speech, I. iv. 35 ff., says: 'It is a fancy; but I can
never read this, and the following speeches of Macbeth, without
involuntarily thinking of the Miltonic Messiah and Satan.' I doubt if it
was a mere fancy. (It will be remembered that Milton thought at one time
of writing a tragedy on Macbeth.)]

[Footnote 224: The immediate reference in 'But no more sights' is
doubtless to the visions called up by the Witches; but one of these, the
'blood-bolter'd Banquo,' recalls to him the vision of the preceding
night, of which he had said,

You make me strange
Even to the disposition that I owe,
When now I think you can behold such _sights