Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/378

 He is astonished at the audacious phrasing of his hopes, and he resents at first what seems definite enough to be an impeachment from something not himself; yet not until that moment was it really his Self. What phantoms have thus leaped out of vacuity into the midnight chambers of desire! What voices have drawn the startled answers of a crime that did not suspect this overlooking! But when the man's Self has undergone this real birth, and the secret parturition becomes a breathing child of consciousness, he soon accepts his own new self, and forgets that it was irritated into a cry by the first salutes of the atmosphere. Casting away all repugnance, Macbeth exclaims to his wicked wishes, before they have a chance to vanish,—

"Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more!                  Speak, I charge you!"

So the dagger that wavers in the heated air of his soul does not surprise him,—"Come, let me clutch thee!" Really, he expected to grasp it; for it was precisely the kind of instrument he thought of using, the very shape and workmanship thereof. There's nothing to perturb until he draws from his belt its counterpart, yet sees the other still solid in the air. That sets him to pondering: his

"Eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, Or else worth all the rest."

But, in spite of that, the murder in his brain reddens, sprinkles the blade and dudgeon with drops of blood, "which was not so before." Now when the illusion