r;" and cheers his wife
on the doubtful intelligence of Banquo's taking-off with the
encouragement--"Then be thou jocund: ere the bat has flown his cloistered
flight; ere to black Hecate's summons the shard-born beetle has rung
night's yawning peal, there shall be done--a deed of dreadful note." In
Lady Macbeth's speech "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had
done 't," there is murder and filial piety together; and in urging him to
fulfil his vengeance against the defenceless king, her thoughts spare the
blood neither of infants nor old age. The description of the Witches is
full of the same contradictory principle; they "rejoice when good kings
bleed," they are neither of the earth nor the air, but both; they "should
be women, but their beards forbid it;" they take all the pains possible to
lead Macbeth on to the height of his ambition, only to betray him "in
deeper consequence," and after showing him all the pomp of their art,
discover their malignant delight in his disappointed hopes, by that bitter
taunt. "Why stands Macbeth thus amazedly?" We might multiply such
instances every where.

The leading features in the character of Macbeth are striking enough, and
they form what may be thought at first only a bold, rude, Gothic outline.
By comparing it with other characters of the same author we shall perceive
the absolute truth and identity which is observed in the midst of the
giddy whirl and rapid career of events. Macbeth in Shakspeare no more
loses his identity of character in the fluctuations of fortune or the
storm of passion, than Macbeth in himself would have lost the identity of
his person. Thus he is as distinct a being from Richard III. as it is
possible to imagine, though these two characters in common hands, and
indeed in the hands of any other poet, would have been a repetition of the
same general idea, more or less exaggerated. For both are tyrants,
usurpers, murderers, both aspiring and ambitious, both courageous, cruel,
treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature and constitution. Macbeth
becomes so from accidental circumstances. Richard is from his birth
deformed in body and mind, and naturally incapable of good. Macbeth is
full of "the milk of human kindness," is frank, sociable, generous. He is
tempted to the commission of guilt by golden opportunities, by the
instigations of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. Fate and metaphysical
aid conspire against his virtue and his loyalty. Richar