Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/377

 he is still capable of reverting to this cool reason, at least so far as to appreciate that his desperate dreams are the poetry of desperate consequences which will tax all his waking powers. When the apparitions vanish, in Act iv. 1, one of the witches gives a voice to Macbeth's perturbation; but why

"Stands Macbeth thus amazedly?"

It was but the voice of revulsion from amazement, to "cheer up his sprites" and summon resolution.

When Macbeth originates any thing out of himself, that Self is not daunted, for it is too deeply compromised in fact and fancy. But when some phenomenon threatens him from a quarter that is outside the limit of his own creative power, as when Birnam Wood is descried coming toward Dunsinane, he is puzzled, and says:—

"I pull in resolution; and begin To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth. I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun."

Nothing has disturbed him till he appreciates that some agency which he does not control can transplant a forest at his castle gate. The apparition of the witches scarcely lifts his eyebrows. "Speak, if you can," is the calm greeting. When he starts, and seems to fear "things that do sound so fair," it is because the shapes he conjures become suddenly endowed with tongues, and he hears his own ambition syllabled. For a man is not proof against shrinking at the first moment that lends to the "airy nothing" of his desire a distinct name and purpose.