“I thank you, gentlemen.”
Then he relapses into himself again, and every word of his soliloquy shows
the early birth-date of his guilt. He is all-powerful without strength; he
wishes the end, but is irresolute as to the means; conscience distinctly
warns him, and he lulls it imperfectly:—
“If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me
Without my stir.”
Lost in the prospective of his guilt, he turns round alarmed lest others
may suspect what is passing in his own mind, and instantly vents the lie
of ambition:—
“My dull brain was wrought
With things _forgotten_;”—
and immediately after pours forth the promising courtesies of a usurper in
intention:—
... “Kind gentlemen, your pains
Are register’d where every day I turn
The leaf to read them.”
_Ib._ Macbeth’s speech:—
... “Present _fears_
Are less than horrible imaginings.”
Warburton’s note, and substitution of “feats” for “fears.”
Mercy on this most wilful ingenuity of blundering, which, nevertheless,
was the very Warburton of Warburton—his inmost being! “Fears,” here, are
present fear-striking objects, _terribilia adstantia_.
_Ib._ sc. 4. O! the affecting beauty of the death of Cawdor, and the
presentimental speech of the king:—
“There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.”