Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
We shall now indulge our readers with a glance at a totally different
feature in the career of Macbeth. It appears that he was a very able
financier. We presume that he was his own First Lord of the Treasury
and Chancellor of the Exchequer: yet in his days there was no pressure
on the money-market; there was no drain of gold; there was no
restriction of issue; no great houses suspended payment; there were
no rumours of turns-out and distress in the manufacturing districts;
there was no Highland destitution. Our proof of this position lies in
two lines of our illustrious poet Wyntoun, which contain as much as a
smaller genius could have crowded into a volume on "The state and
progress of Scotland during the reign of Macbeth; with an account of
the arts, industry, and manufactures of the country; returns of the
exports and imports, and of the goods entered for home consumption,
with the annual gross and net revenue from customs and excise,
post-office, assessed taxes, hereditary revenue, and other
miscellaneous sources, during that reign: dedicated, by permission, to
the Statistical Society." Wyntoun's simple statement is--
"All his time was great plenté,
Abundant both by land and sea."
What more is necessary? It is true, that on another occasion we have
repudiated Wyntoun as an authority; but it is the privilege of the
antiquarian speculator to found on an author when he is right, and
repudiate him when he is wrong.
We now come to a subject on which really, jocularity apart, we stand
upon firm and secure ground--the spot where Macbeth fell. All the
chroniclers with one voice state that it was at a place called
Lunfanan. Even Raphael Hollinshed, whose version, it is universally
admitted, was the one perused by Shakspeare,--after he tells how the
beleaguered fugitive beheld the miraculous forest with which his doom
was involved approaching him, continues to say--"Nevertheless, he
brought his men in order of battle, and exhorted them to do valiantly:
howbeit, his enemies had scarcely cast from them their boughs, when
Macbeth, perceiving their numbers, betook him straight to flight, whom
Macduff pursued with great hatred, even till he came to Lunfannane."
Perhaps Shakspeare, not knowing precisely where Lunfanan lay, supposed
that it was some spot close to Dunsinane, and did not wish to burden
his action with the particularity of an unimportant movement. Lunfanan
is, however, north of the Dee, and distant full fifty miles in a
straight line from Dunsinane, the rough mountains of the Braes of
Angus lying between the two places; so that the two parties must have
had a pretty long running fight, and Macbeth stood out even harder
game than he has generally credit for. Our favourite poet describes
the chase across the broad valley of Strathmore, through the rocky
glens of Clova, over the Isla and the Esk, down through the hoary
forest of Glentanner, across the raging Dee, and up again through
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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