Here, then, is our case, as lawyers say: Macbeth, in right of his wife, was a claimant of the crown. He kills the existing holder; but there is nothing in the older accounts of the affair to show that he did so otherwise than in the fair course of war. It was what the old civilians would have called a _casus belli_,--an expression which, by the way, we find some accomplished editors using as the Latin for a justification of war. The murder is found only in the later chronicles, which, in all parts of their narrative, have covered their more sober predecessors with a coating of fabulous details like the stalactites of a dripping cave. However the real fact may have stood, we have no _statement_ of Macbeth having murdered Duncan until between three and four centuries after the event. Why,--the case looks vastly better than we thought it did when we began with it; we have some thoughts of believing our own theory, which is more than ever we knew a historical critic do, within the range of our personal observation. Having so disposed of this question, we are inclined to amuse our readers with some further notices--real and unreal--about Macbeth. Wyntoun gives us a strange wild legend of his supernatural parentage, beginning "Bot, as we fynd be some stories, Gotten he was in fairly wys; His modyr to woods made oft repaire, For the delyte of halesome air; Swa sho passed upon a day 'Til a wood her for to play, Scho met of cas with a fair man (Never nane so fair as sho thought than Before than had sho seen with sight) Of beauty pleasand, and of hycht Proportioned wele in all measure, Of limb and lyth a fair figure." Such is the description of the putative father of Macbeth. In the sententious explanation of Wyntoun, who scorned expletives, "he the devil was;" and so he told the wandering damsel-- "And bade her nought fleyed to be of that, But said that her son should be A man of great state and bounty; And na man sould be born of wife Of power to reve him of his life. And of that deed in taknyng, He gave his leman then a ring, And bade her that sho sould keep that wele, And hald for his love that jewel." Wyntoun's melodious verses were lying in a dusty parchment manuscript when Shakspeare wrote; we know not if he had access to the volume, nor have we any strong reason for presuming that he would have perused it if he had. It would be too adventurous to predict whether, knowing the legend, he would have considered any reference to it as consistent with the character of his drama; but it is curious to observe, that the tale appears to have been in the eye of Sir Walter Scott, when he wrote the history of Brian the Hermit, in the _Lady of the Lake_, beginning-- "Of Brian's birth strange tales were told: His mother watch'd a midnight fold."