nking fortitude
in crime, that in other circumstances she would probably have shewn
patience in suffering. The deliberate sacrifice of all other
considerations to the gaining "for their future days and nights sole
sovereign sway and masterdom," by the murder of Duncan, is gorgeously
expressed in her invocation on hearing of "his fatal entrance under her
battlements:"--

----"Come all you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here:
And fill me, from the crown to th' toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night!
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heav'n peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, hold, hold!"----

When she first hears that "Duncan comes there to sleep" she is so overcome
by the news, which is beyond her utmost expectations, that she answers the
messenger, "Thou'rt mad to say it:" and on receiving her husband's account
of the predictions of the Witches, conscious of his instability of
purpose, and that her presence is necessary to goad him on to the
consummation of his promised greatness, she exclaims--

----"Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal."

This swelling exultation and keen spirit of triumph, this uncontroulable
eagerness of anticipation, which seems to dilate her form and take
possession of all her faculties, this solid, substantial flesh and blood
display of passion, exhibit a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted,
gratuitous, servile malignity of the Witches, who are equally instrumental
in urging Macbeth to his fate for the mere love of mischief, and from a
disinterested delight in deformity and cruelty. They are hags of mischief,
obscene panders to iniquity, malicious from their impotence of enjoyment,
enamoured of destruction, because they are themselves unreal, abortive,
half-existences--who become sublime from their exemption from all human
sympathies