Banquo's taking-off with the encouragement--'Then be thou jocund:
ere the bat has flown his cloistered flight; ere to black Hecate's
summons the shard-born beetle has rung night's yawning peal, there
shall be done--a deed of dreadful note.' In Lady Macbeth's speech,
'Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't,' there is
murder and filial piety together, and in urging him to fulfil his
vengeance against the defenceless king, her thoughts spare the blood
neither of infants nor old age. The description of the Witches is
full of the same contradictory principle; they 'rejoice when good
kings bleed'; they are neither of the earth nor the air, but both;
'they should be women, but their beards forbid it'; they take all
the pains possible to lead Macbeth on to the height of his ambition,
only to betray him in deeper consequence, and after showing him all
the pomp of their art, discover their malignant delight in his
disappointed hopes, by that bitter taunt, 'Why stands Macbeth thus
amazedly?' We might multiply such instances everywhere.

The leading features in the character of Macbeth are striking
enough, and they form what may be thought at first only a bold,
rude, Gothic outline. By comparing it with other characters of the
same author we shall perceive the absolute truth and identity which
is observed in the midst of the giddy whirl and rapid career of
events. Macbeth in Shakespeare no more loses his identity of
character in the fluctuations of fortune or the storm of passion,
than Macbeth in himself would have lost the identity of his person.
Thus he is as distinct a being from Richard III as it is possible to
imagine, though these two characters in common hands, and indeed in
the hands of any other poet, would have been a repetition of the
same general idea, more or less exaggerated. For both are tyrants,
usurpers, murderers, both aspiring and ambitious, both courageous,