Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/137

 England and Scotland in the words of Wat Tinlinn—

Scott himself, in his History of Scotland, has given a good explanation of the effect of his own genius in describing that of the genius of Shakspeare upon the Scottish tale of Macbeth.

"'The genius of Shakspeare,' says Scott, 'having found the tale of Macbeth in the Scottish chronicles of Holingshed, adorned it with a lustre similar to that with which a level beam of the sun often invests some fragment of glass, which, though shining at a distance with the lustre of a diamond, is, by a near investigation, discovered to be of no worth or"