applicable to a _bird_,
and that birds of ill omen should be _new-hatch'd to the woeful time_ is
very consistent with the rest of the prodigies here mentioned, and with
the universal disorder into which nature is described as thrown, by the
perpetration of this horrid murder.

NOTE XXII.

--Up, up, and see
The great doom's image, Malcolm, Banquo,
As from your graves rise up.--

The second line might have been so easily completed, that it cannot be
supposed to have been left imperfect by the author, who probably wrote,

--Malcolm! Banquo! rise!
As from your graves rise up.--

Many other emendations, of the same kind, might be made, without any
greater deviation from the printed copies, than is found in each of them
from the rest.

NOTE XXIII.

_Macbeth_.--Here, lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature,
For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murtherers
Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers
_Unmannerly breech'd with gore_.--

An _unmannerly dagger_, and a _dagger breech'd_, or as in some editions
_breach'd with gore_, are expressions not easily to be understood, nor
can it be imagined that Shakespeare would reproach the murderer of his
king only with _want of manners_. There are, undoubtedly, two faults in
this passage, which I have endeavoured to take away by reading,

--Daggers
_Unmanly drench'd_ with gore.--

_I saw_ drench'd _with the king's Mood the fatal daggers, not only
instruments of murder but evidences of_ cowardice.

Each of these words might easily be confounded with that which I have
substituted for it by a hand not exact, a casual blot, or a negligent
inspection.

Mr. Pope has endeavoured to improve one of these lines, by substituting
_goary blood_ for _golden blood_, but it may easily be admitted, that he
who could on such an occasion talk of _lacing the silver skin_, would
_lace it_ with _golden blood_. No amendment can be made to this line, of
which every word is equally faulty, but by a general blot.

It is not improbable, that Shakespeare put these forced and unnatural
metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth, as a mark of artifice and
dissimulation, to show the difference between the studied language of
hypocrisy, and the natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole
speech, considered in this light, is a