And we must notice that Hecate thus introduces and accounts for the "artificial sprites,"--the apparitions which deceive Macbeth in Act iv. 1, and entice him to "be bloody, bold, and resolute." This scene is certainly Shakspeare's. It is therefore probable that he would have preceded it by some inkling of the deceptive nature of the armed head, the bloody child, and the child crowned. On the ground of an apparently un-Shakspearean style of metre in Act i. 2, which introduces the wounded sergeant, several commentators credit that scene also to Middleton. It is said to be too slovenly and bombastic for Shakspeare. It is unsafe to limit the critical treatment of Shakspeare's verse to metrical or verbal tests. Æsthetic emergencies will sometimes overrule the decisions of the sharpest critics who construct Shakspeare out of reputed peculiarities of his style. He escapes from them to be raggeder than we think is personal to him, broader than our taste can tolerate, more thin or more fulsome than his grandest tone, whenever occasion summons traits which fit into a deeper consistency than that of style. Then, if the critic of metrical and verbal niceties is not also a human observer, or is too much preoccupied with his theory of the Shakspearean method, he will be apt to disparage some prescriptions of Nature. It is also a very common procedure to illustrate the excellences of Shakspeare by comparing them with the inferior work of the contemporary dramatists. Either Shakspeare at his best ought to be matched with the other playwrights at their best, or else we ought to concede that his occasional weaknesses, which are like theirs, are not theirs, but his own. It is absurd to keep Shakspeare posturing incessantly in the finest attitude of the several periods of his style. During the Elizabethan age, England's soil stood thick with true poets whose fragrance often makes us suspect that Shakspeare is near. It is dangerous to be too positive upon the matter of sentiment as well as style. Take for an instance this:-- "I am so light At any mischief, there's no villainy But is a tune methinks." That lightness of heart is Middleton's. It is stray pollen from the garden of Shakspeare. But nothing is fructified: there is no tune in the villainous stuff which precedes and follows. The wounded sergeant easily justifies his mangled metre and ragged pomposity of style. We should suspect a more polished messenger of shamming faintness from loss of blood. He talks exactly as a common soldier should who is fresh from the great fight, puffed up with "valor's minion," and steadying himself upon reeking lines to deliver his message of victory. Middleton could not have so caught the color of the moment. It is also supposed that Middleton wrote the scene, because when Ross enters he tells the King that "Norway himself, with terrible numbers, Assisted by that most disloyal traitor The thane of Cawdor, 'gan a dismal conflict."