See the end of the fourth scene of the third act. From this on, the great guilty heart sinks till we come to the 'Sleep-Walking scene.' Then, it is my belief that the strong brain had given way under the mental tortures endured by Gruach. It seems to me that the whole of the first scene of the fifth act is a résumé of all Lady Macbeth's part in the tragedy. And who can doubt but that in that scene she believed herself to be in Hell?

We will give the pendants—if the expression be allowed-to several speeches of Gruach's in the previous parts of the Play.

(Act II. scene ii.)-—

"Whence is that knocking?

How is 't with me when every noise appals me?

What hands are here! Ha! they pluck out mine eyes!
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnardine,

Making the green-one red."

Mrs Siddons-so says Gervinus-believed Lady Macbeth to have been a fair beauty; and I have heard that a traditional picture of her existed years ago in an ancient Scottish Castle, belonging to a descendant, it was said, of Macbeth. It was the portrait of a small fair woman, with blue eyes, rather red (weak-looking?) about the lids.

It was the great wish of Rachel the mighty to act Lady Macbeth. When told that Mrs Siddons had exhausted all ideas about the part-especially with respect to the Sleep-Walking scene—she replied, "Ah! mais j'ai une ideé moi-je lécherais ma main." Does not that make one think of Ugolino when he "La bocca sollevò dal fiero pasto?" It would be interesting to inquire whether Shakspere ever read Dante-Shakspeare who harmonized so many old Italian stories in his Plays! He must have known much of Italy. Did the Inferno, and the early reminiscences of its perduta gente,' suggest to him the Sleep-Walking scene? We believe that Gruach,' after life's fitful fever,' 'sleeps well.' The last we hear of her is at the time of her death: "A cry within of women." She was not all evil. Her own sex and her servants mourned for her.

MR FURNIVALL. I think Lady Charlemont's suggestion of a possible family likeness between Duncan and Lady Macbeth's father an interesting one. But as to the poet's knowing that Lady Macbeth and her husband had good cause for taking vengeance on Duncan, we must recollect that Shakspere took his Macbeth story from Holinshed, the great authority for British History in his day, and that there is nothing in Holinshed about the murder of either Lady Macbeth's or Macbeth's relatives by Malcolm, Duncan's grandfather.

The notion that Lady Macbeth stirrd, nay forc't, Macbeth to his villainous murder, to gratify his ambition only, and not her own too, is so in the teeth of Shakspere's authority, Holinshed, "but speciallie his wife lay sore upon him to attempt the thing, as she that was very ambitious, burning in unquenchable desire to beare the name of queen."-Scottish Chronicle, i. 340, ed. 1805, and is, to me, so flatly contradictory to Shakspere's plain revelation of Lady Macbeth's tigrish nature, and her own words,

I have given suck; and know
How tender 't is to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn,

As you have done to this.

Macb.
Lady M.

If we should fail,

But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we 'll not fail.

We fail.

He that's coming

Must be provided for: and you shall put

This night's great business into my dispatch;
Which shall, to all our nights and days to come,
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

that I don't think the point worth arguing1. Any one desiring to spare Lady Macbeth, as Chaucer did Creseyde, "for very routh," may make excuses for her; but to ask us to think that love for her husband was her only motive, is going too far.

'cankered,' adj. spiteful: John, II. 194; 1 Hen. IV., II. iii. 137. "For, in writing of prologues, he bestowes his labour to a wrong end, who doeth not tell you the matter of the comedy, but answereth to the railing speeches of the malitious cankred [malevoli] old Poet."-R. Bernard's Terence in English, p. 4, ed. 1607 (1st ed. 1598).

'heels': lay by the heels. Hen. VIII., V. iv. 83. “Quo iure, quâque iniuria, me in pistrinum dabit vsque ad necem. By right or wrong, no matter how, he wil lay me by the heeles: he will lodge me in a faire paire of stocks."-R. Bernard's Terence in English, p. 20; ed. 1607 (1st ed. 1598).

'Inn': Take my ease in my inn. 1 Hen. IV., III. iii. 93. "but in myn In, or euer I toke my eace [orig. to my cace], to walke about, it did me best pleace." i

? 1536-40. The Pilgrims Tale, 1. 17, p. 77, of F. J.Furnivall's ed. of Francis Thynne's Animadversions, 1875.

Teeth, in despite of the': Merry Wives, V. v. 133. "I will keepe this wench in despite of all your teethes [Ego istam inuitis omnibus]."-R. Bernard's Terence in English, p. 277 (1st ed. 1598); "the women I bought, he hath led away from me in despite of my teeth."-ib. p. 229.

1 Lady Charlemont writes in answer, "Of course Lady Macbeth had no objection to share the throne she helped her husband to get. As to the expression 'our nights and days,' married people usually use the first person plural,"

shrewd turn': All's Well, III. v. 71. "Then mystresse, my master hath one shrewd turne done him more then he had."-R. Bernard's Terence in English, p. 233, ed. 1607 (1st ed. 1598). "Vnlesse I deceiue my selfe, I shall goe neare to haue a shrewde turne, [haud multum à me aberit infortunium]: all the shifts that I haue are now driuen into so narrowe a straight by this thing: except I finde out some way that the olde man may not knowe that this is his sonnes loue." p. 235.

'swabber': Tw. Night, I. v. 217; Temp., II. ii. 48. "Marruffino, the yoongest prentise in a house, one that is put to all druggerie [drudgery], a swobber in a ship."-1598; Florio.

'swaggerer': 2 Hen. IV., II. iv. 81, 83, 91, 104, 105, 117. "Masnadiero, a ruffler, a swash-buckler, a swaggerer, a high way theefe, a hackster."-1598; Florio.

'tittle-tattle': Winter's Tale, IV. iv. 248.

"Faggiolata, Fagiolata, a flim-flam tale, as women tell when they shale peason, which hath neither head nor foote, nor rime nor reason; a flap with a foxe-taile: court holie water, a tittle-tattle, or such." -1598; Florio.

'whist': Tempest, I. ii. 379.

"Houische. (An Interiection whereby silence is imposed) husht, whist, ist, not a word for your life."-1611; Cotgrave.

'Wittenburg': Hamlet, I. ii. 113, 119, 164, 168.
"Out of Denmarke a man may go in to Saxsony.

The chefe cyte or town of Saxsony is called Witzeburg, [Wittenburg,] which is a vniuersite."-1542, 1547; Andrew Boorde, Introduction of Knowledge, p. 164; ed. F. J. Furnivall, E. E. Text Soc., 1870.

'atonement,' union, reconciliation. "But now I trust from henceforth there shall be perfect attonement and love between us for ever, Thais [æternam inter nos gratiam fore, Thais]."-R. Bernard's Terence in English, p. 174, ed. 1607 (1st ed. 1598).

'baked meats': Hamlet. "Pastisserie: f. (All kind of) pies or baked meats; pasterie worke; also, the making of past-meats."1611; Cotgrave.

'attent,' adj.: Hamlet, I. ii. 193. "Animum advertite: Marke; be ye attent; giue eare; vnderstand yee, hearken."-R. Bernard's Terence in English, p. 4, ed. 1607 (1st ed. 1598).

'chat,' sb.: L. L. Lost, IV. iii. 284. "Iuveniet orationem. He will finde you chat: he will want no words. He will diuise matter of talk. He will not be nonplus."-R. Bernard's Terence in English, p. 41, ed. 1607 (1st ed. 1598).

'conditioned': Merch. of Ven., III. ii. 295. Conveniunt mores. We be both alike conditioned: our manners be one." R. Bernard's Terence in English, p. 75, ed. 1607 (1st ed. 1598).

200

VIII. ON THE CHARACTER OF BANQUO.

BY ALGERNON FOGGO, M.A., CAMB.

(Read at the 25th Meeting of the Society, held on May 12, 1876.)

THE whole of the part of Banquo might be printed on a page of moderate size; and yet within such narrow limits many features of character are not merely indicated, but strongly and clearly defined.

All these honour, magnanimity, piety, valour, courtesy, tenderness of heart, an observant love of nature, calm judgment, and practical wisdom are the attributes of Banquo; at the same time he is no impossible monster of perfection, but pre-eminently human.

Macbeth and Banquo, generals of the armies of Duncan, king of Scotland, are, fresh from victory, leading home their troops. In friendly companionship they are passing over a wild and barren heath. They are about to encounter the three witches, the suggesters of evil, whose prophetic utterances are to amaze the mind of Macbeth, to perplex him with the riddles of fixed fate and free will, and by help of his lust of power and his wife's irresistible will to draw him on to achieve the success of an usurping tyrant, and the moral ruin of a despairing sinner.

Macbeth's first words, uttered before he has perceived the presence of the witches, give some hint of his imagination having been already newly stirred. Perturbations of the sky, more than usually impressive even in his land of cloudy hills, prompt the remark:

"So foul and fair a day I have not seen!"

Banquo's present mood of mind, though he is a keen observer of nature, contrasts at once with Macbeth's. He is entirely calm; his imaginative faculty quite at rest; and, more concerned to know the length of the road that lies before him than careful to respond to his