on to a _commonwealth_, or _conjunct body_ of
men.

NOTE VIII.

_Macbeth._--Come what come may,
_Time and the hour_ runs through the roughest day.

I suppose every reader is disgusted at the tautology in this passage,
_time and the hour_, and will, therefore, willingly believe that
Shakespeare wrote it thus,

--Come what come may,
Time! on!--the hour runs thro' the roughest day.

Macbeth is deliberating upon the events which are to befall him; but
finding no satisfaction from his own thoughts, he grows impatient of
reflection, and resolves to wait the close without harassing himself
with conjectures:

--Come what come may.

But, to shorten the pain of suspense, he calls upon time, in the usual
style of ardent desire, to quicken his motion,

Time! on!--

He then comforts himself with the reflection that all his perplexity
must have an end,

--The hour runs thro' the roughest day.

This conjecture is supported by the passage in the letter to his lady,
in which he says, _They referr'd me to the_ coming on of time _with,
Hail, King that shall be._

NOTE IX.

SCENE VI.

_Malcolm._--Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it. He dy'd,
As one that had been studied in his death,
To throw away the dearest thing he _ow'd_,
As 'twere a careless trifle.

As the word _ow'd_ affords here no sense, but such as is forced and
unnatural, it cannot be doubted that it was originally written, The
dearest thing he _own'd_; a reading which needs neither defence nor
explication.

NOTE X.

_King._--There's no art,
To find the mind's construction in the face:

The _construction of the mind_ is, I believe, a phrase peculiar to
Shakespeare; it implies the _frame_ or _disposition_ of the mind, by
which it is determined to good or ill.

NOTE XI.

_Macbeth._ The service and the loyalty I owe,
In doing it, pays itself. 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 tow'rd your love and honour_.

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 have admitted as the true reading:

--our duties