falls at once into poetic declamation about the night, and indulges himself in strange images and personifications. A man about to commit a murder who invents these conceits must be a poetical villain:— “Now witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s offerings; and wither’d murder, Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost.” Can anything be more extraordinary and elaborate than this pressing of one conceit upon another? Wither’d murder has a sentinel, the wolf, who howls his watch, and who with stealthy pace strides with Tarquin’s ravishing strides like a ghost! Shakespeare makes no other character systematically talk like this. But the fumes of the brain pass, and leave the stern, determined man of action:— “Whiles I threat, he lives; Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.” We have no such rant as this in Lady Macbeth. In the scenes of the murder, she does not befool herself with visions and poetry. She is practical, and her attention is given solely to the real facts about her. Contrast the simple language in which she speaks, while waiting for Macbeth, with his previous rhodomontade. Agitated, in great emotion, listening for sounds, doubting whether some mischance may not have befallen to prevent the murder, she speaks in short, broken sentences; but she does not liken her husband to Tarquin, and say now is the time when “witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate’s offerings,” nor employ this interval in making a poem full of conceits. Macbeth goes in to the king, and commits the murder; no scruples of any kind prevent him. But when that is secure, he has a superstitious fit, and imagines phantom-voices, that talk as no phantoms ever did before. Still he is a coward in the presence of phantoms, and will not go back. The deed has been done, and ghosts alarm him. But, as has been before observed, all this raving as usual passes by at once. In a half-hour he is as cold and calm as ever. The phantom-voices did not reach his conscience, and awakened no remorse. They were the children of superstition and imagination, and they vanished with cockcrow and daylight, leaving no trace behind in his memory. They have not altered his mood nor his plans.