f the weird figures confronting
them across the plain. But the horses, with some sharper instinct, are
aware and afraid, straining, quivering. One of them throws back its
head, but dares not whinny. As though under some evil spell, all nature
seems to be holding its breath. Stealthily, noiselessly, I turn the
leaves of my catalogue... 'Macbeth and the Witches.' Why, of course!

Of the two horsemen, which is Macbeth, which Banquo? Though we peer
intently, we cannot in those distant shadows distinguish which is he
that shall be king hereafter, which is he that shall merely beget
kings. It is mainly in virtue of this very vagueness and mystery of
manner that the picture is so impressive. An illustration should stir
our fancy, leaving it scope and freedom. Most illustrations, being
definite, do but affront us. Usually, Shakespeare is illustrated by
some Englishman overawed by the poet's repute, and incapable of
treating him, as did Corot, vaguely and offhand. Shakespeare expressed
himself through human and superhuman characters; therefore in England
none but a painter of figures would dare illustrate him. Had Corot been
an Englishman, this landscape would have had nothing to do with
Shakespeare. Luckily, as an alien, he was untrammelled by piety to the
poet. He could turn Shakespeare to his own account. In this picture,
obviously, he was creating, and only in a secondary sense illustrating.
For him the landscape was the thing. Indeed, the five little figures
may have been inserted by him as an afterthought, to point and balance
the composition. Vaguely he remembered hearing of Macbeth, or reading
it in some translation. Ce Sac-espe're...un beau talent...ne'
romantique. Hugo he would not have attempted to illustrate. But
Sac-espe're--why not? And so the little figures came upon the canvas,
dim sketches. Charles Lamb disliked theatrical productions of
Shakespeare's plays, because of the constraint thus laid on his
imagination. But in the theatre, at least, we are diverted by movement,
recompensed by the sound of the poet's words and (may be) by human
intelligence interpreting his thoughts; whereas from a definite
painting of Shakespearean figures we get nothing but an equivalent for
the mimes' appearance: nothing but the painter's bare notion (probably
quite incongruous with our notion) of what these figures ought to look
like. Take Macbeth as an instance. From a definite painting of him what
do we get? At worst, the impressi