his speech, the raven's voice is heard on the battlements of the castle; when Lady Macbeth, adverting to the situation in which the messenger had just been described, most naturally exclaims, "the raven himself is hoarse," &c. Entrance must be here pronounced as a trisyllable, which is better than to read Duncan.

SCENE 5. Page 374.

LADY M. Under my battlements. Come come you spirits.

The second come has been added by Mr. Steevens. On this it may be permitted to remark, that although Shakspeare's versification is unquestionably more smooth and melodious than that of most of his contemporaries, he has on many occasions exhibited more carelessness in this respect than can well be accounted for, unless by supposing the errors to belong to the printers or editors. If the above line was defective, many others of similar construction are still equally so; as for example, this in p. 378,

"This ignorant present, and I feel now,"

which Mr. Steevens strangely maintains to be complete, though undoubtedly as discordant to the ear as the other. Both, strictly speaking, have the full number of syllables; a mode of construction which it is to be feared our elder poets regarded as sufficient in general to give perfection to a line.

SCENE 6. Page 384.

DUN. We cours'd him at the heels, and had a purpose

To be his purveyor.

The duty of the purveyor, an officer belonging to the court, was to make a general provision for the royal household. It was the office also of this person to travel before the king whenever he made his progresses to different parts of the realm, and to see that every thing was duly provided. The right of purveyance and pre-emption having become extremely oppressive to the subject, was included, among other objects of regulation, under the stat. of 12 Car. II.

SCENE 7. Page 395.

LADY M. But screw your courage to the sticking-place.

Mr. Steevens has suggested two metaphors, neither of which seems to advance the explanation. If it could be shown that the stop of a pile-driver, or the bed of a violin peg were ever called sticking-places, one might indeed suspect a miserable pun: but it is submitted that all the metaphor lies in the screwing. Another learned commentator states that Davenant misunderstood the sense when he supposed that stabbing is alluded to; and yet there are grounds for thinking his opinion correct. Lady Macbeth, after remarking that the enterprise would not fail if her husband would but exert his courage to the commission of the murder, proceeds to suggest the particular manner in which it was to be accomplished. In short, if there be a metaphor, abstractedly considered, it signifies nothing; for what would be the use of Macbeth's courage, if, according to Mr. Steevens, it were to remain fast in that sticking-place from which it was not to move? The Scots have a proverb, "Sticking goes not by strength, but by guiding of the gooly," i. e. the knife.

ACT II.

SCENE 1. Page 401.

BAN. This diamond he greets your wife withal,

By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up

In measureless content.

As the last sentence stands, it is at once ungrammatical and obscure; and neither Mr. Steevens's construction of shut up in the sense of to conclude, as referring to the speaker, nor Hanmer's reading and is shut up, as connected with Duncan, will render it intelligible. It should seem as if Banquo meant to say that the king was immured in happiness; but then it is obvious that some preceding words have been lost.

Enter MACDUFF.

SCENE 3. Page 428.

Duff in the Erse language signifies a captain; Macduff, the son of a captain.

SCENE 3. Page 433.

MACD. Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit.

This simile has been elsewhere used by Shakspeare. Thus in Cymbeline, he calls sleep the ape of death. In A midsummer night's dream, he has death counterfeiting sleep. It might indeed from its extreme obviousness have occurred to writers of weaker imagination than our poet; yet as he is known to have borrowed so much, it is not impossible that he might in this instance have been indebted to Marlow's translation of a line in Ovid's Elegies, book ii. el. 9:

"Foole what is sleepe, but image of cold death?"

or to another version of the same line in Cardanus's Comfort: "Is not our sleepe (O foole) of death an image playne?"

Whoever will take the trouble of reading over the whole of Cardanus's second book as translated by Bedingfield, and printed by T. Marshe, 1576, 4to, will soon be convinced that it had been perused by Shakspeare.

Mr. Steevens's explanation must be objected to. Finding that the lower end of a cannon is called its breech, he concludes that the hilt or handle of a dagger must be here intended by the like appellation. But is not this literally to mistake the top for the bottom? It is conceived that the present expression, though in itself something unmannerly, simply means covered as with breeches. The idea, uncouth and perhaps inaccurate as it is, might have been suggested from the resemblance of daggers to the legs and thighs of a

man. The sentiments of Dr. Farmer on this, as on all occasions, are ingenious, and deserving of the highest respect; but it is hardly possible that Shakspeare could have been deceived in the way he states. To give colour to his opinion, he is obliged in his quotation from Erondell's French garden to print the word master's as a genitive case singular, in order to apply the pronoun their to daggers; but without the aid of the French text, the word their is in the original equally applicable to masters. Indeed the subsequent mention of stockings, hose and garters, would have satisfied a person of much less penetration than Shakspeare, that breeches were there intended as an article of dress.

The above conjecture that the term breech'd might signify cover'd, suggests the mention of a circumstance from which it may on the whole be thought to derive support.

It is well known that some ridicule has been cast on one of our translations of the Bible from the Genevan French edition, on account of the following words, "And they sewed fig-tree leaves together and made themselves breeches," Gen. iii. 7; whence it has been called the Breeches Bible, and sometimes sold for a high price. It is generally conceived that this peculiarity belongs exclusively to the above Bible, but it is a mistake. The Saxon version by Eelfric has sipodon ficleaf y porhτon him pædbrec, and sewed fig-leaves and worked them WEED-BREECH, or cloaths for the breech. Wicliffe also translates "and maden hem breechis ;" and it is singular that Littelton in his excellent dictionary explains perizomata, the word used in the Vulgate, by breeches, In the manuscript French translation of Petrus Comestor's commentary on the Bible, made by Guiars des Moulins in the thirteenth century, we have "couvertures tout autressint comme unnes petites braies."

ACT III.

SCENE 4. Page 476.

MACB.. Get thee gone; to-morrow

We'll hear, ourselves again.

i. e. when I have recovered from my fit, and am once more myself. It is an ablative absolute. Ourselves is much more properly used than ourself, the modern language of royalty.

Every partaker of the rational Diversions of Purley will here call to mind what has been advanced on the subject of this difficult and much contested passage; but with all the respect and admiration that are due to their profound and ingenious writer, will he feel himself altogether satisfied? It were to be wished that not only the above grammarian but another gentleman not less eminently qualified to illustrate any subject he undertakes, had favoured us with some example of the neutral use of inhabit in the sense of to house or remain at home. Until this be done, or even then, it may be boldly said, and without much difficulty maintained, that inhibit, in point of meaning, was Shakspeare's word. Nor is it a paradox to affirm that inhabit, the original reading, is also right; because this may be only one of the numerous instances during the former unsettled state of orthography, where the same word has been spelled in different ways. Mr. Malone has already supplied instances of inhabit for inhibit in a passage from All's well that ends well, in all the folios except the first, and another from Stowe's Survey of London. In the edition of the Shepherd's calendar, printed without date by Wynkyn de Worde in 4to, there is this sentence in chap. xxi.: "Correccyon is for to inhabyte & defende by the bridle of reason all errowres," &c. Later