"Here I clip the anvil of my sword."

Coriolanus.

"No grave upon the earth shall clip in it

"A pair so famous."

Anthony and Cleop.

And again in Coriolanus

66

-O let me clip thee

"In arms as sound as when I woo'd," &c.

406. "One of the prettiest touches of all, and that which angled for mine eyes

(caught the water, though not the

fish.)

i. e. What most claimed my observation; but which bedimming with tears my sight, prevented my beholding it, "caught the water, not the fish.” This seems to be an ancient jeer upon unsuccessful anglers. B. STRUTT.

SCENE III.

413. "Hermione was not so much wrinkled; nothing," &c.

The word much, here, is a burthen on the metre; but still more injurious to the sense. The lady, at the time of her supposed death, was not wrinkled at all: it should doubtless be,

"Hermione was not so wrinkled; nothing "So aged, as this seems."

419. "And from your sacred vials.”

. This expression seems to be taken from the custom of pouring a vial of oil on the head of a person anointed king." LORD CHEDWORTH,

MACBETH.'

ACT I. SCENE I.

Enter three witches.

The witches here seem to be introduced for no other purpose than to tell us they are to meet again; and as I cannot discover any advantage resulting from such anticipation, but, on the contrary, think it injurious, I conclude the scene is not genuine.

12. "There to meet with Macbeth."

There is evidently a word wanting here; and if we instead of I were inserted, and go put before we, Mr. Pope's supplement appears to be satisfactory:

"There go we (i. e. let us go) to meet Macbeth." 14. "Fair is foul and foul is fair."

The meaning, I believe, is, now shall confusion work; let the order of things be invertedwhat is fair shall become foul, and what is foul become fair.

SCENE II.

16. " Doubtfully it stood."

The deficiency of this hemistic, Mr. Pope supplied, by inserting "long" after "doubtfully,"

which appears far preferable to Mr. Steevens's expedient of extending " doubtful" adverbially; and censure has been passed perhaps too hastily on the poetic editor, for the application of long in this instance; long and short are terms merely relative, and depend, for their propriety, or unfitness, upon the cases to which they are referred. A lover, in the absence of his mistress, or a patient under the surgeon's knife, will call a moment long; and the contest for victory between two armies may properly enough be so termed, if it is protracted beyond the probable or expected period of decision.

17. "And Fortune, on his damned

ing."

quarry smil

Quarry, in this place, signifies that harvest of spoil which Macdonald with his own hand was reaping in the field of battle.

those ancient arms bestow,

"Which as a quarry on the soil'd earth lay, "Seiz'd only conquest as a glorious pray.' Drayton's Bar. Wars, second Canto.

22.

I must report they were

B. STRUTT.

"As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks." The disorder in the metre is always, I think, a just reason for suspecting corruption. Whatever is overdone, cannot be said to be well done: if the cannons performed their office so as to pour an extraordinary measure of destruction on the foe, they were not "overcharged," although they might have double charges; and these generals, whose resistless valour the cannon is to illustrate, were not less prudent than brave. The

want of a copy of some better authority than that of Messrs. Hemings and Condell, unhappily leaves open a wider door for conjectural emendation in this play than in many others. I should propose to read,

they were

"As cannons charg'd with double cracks; so they Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe."

26. Norway himself, with terrible numbers. The obvious restoration of the prosody, by Pope, in this line, should be adopted,

"Norway himself, with numbers terrible." "Bellona's bridegroom."

Another instance, says Mr. Henley, of our author's ignorance of the ancient mythology; but where is this ignorance at present? Macbeth is represented as a warrior so complete, that the poet would confer on him a kind of semiapotheosis, and marry him to Bellona; for it is not Mars, as Mr. Henley and Mr. Steevens suppose, that is implied by the bridegroom of Bellona, but Macbeth himself.

32.

SCENE III.

I myself have all the other, "And the very points they blow."

The second folio has ports; but admitting, with Mr. Steevens, that blow may stand for blow upon, it is still very difficult to make sense of

the passage.

"I have all the other (winds)

"And the very ports they blow upon."

By having the ports, perhaps we are to understand having a fatal influence over them.

36. "The weird sisters, hand in hand," &c.

It has been suggested to me, by my ingenious friend Mr. Strutt, that the play should properly begin here; and, indeed, all that has preceded might well be omitted. Rosse and Angus express every thing material that is contained in the third scene; and as Macbeth is the great object of the witches, all that we hear of the sailor and his wife is rather ludicrous and impertinent than solemn and material; I strongly suspect it is spurious.

"The weird sisters,”

The play would certainly begin much more dramatically at "the weird sisters," or preferably, I think, a line higher;

"Macbeth doth come!"

ap

This uttered with solemn horror, by one of the prophetic sisters, would immediately fix and propriate the incantation; and give it an awful dignity, by determining its reference to the great object of the play, the fate and fortune of Macbeth; and martial music in the antique style, founded upon some of the oldest Scotch melodies, heard at a distance, as Macbeth is approaching, would give to the opening of the play a very characteristic grandeur, when combined with due scenery, and the weird sisters properly represented. C. LOFFT.

38. "All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane

of Glamis."