ed mankind from age to age, and animated sometimes the
housebreaker, and sometimes the conqueror; but this sophism Macbeth has
for ever destroyed, by distinguishing true from false fortitude, in a
line and a half; of which it may almost be said, that they ought to
bestow immortality on the author, though all his other productions had
been lost:

I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.

This topick, which has been always employed with too much success, is
used in this scene, with peculiar propriety, to a soldier by a woman.
Courage is the distinguishing virtue of a soldier, and the reproach of
cowardice cannot be borne by any man from a woman, without great
impatience.

She then urges the oaths by which he had bound himself to murder Duncan,
another art of sophistry by which men have sometimes deluded their
consciences, and persuaded themselves that what would be criminal in
others is virtuous in them: this argument Shakespeare, whose plan
obliged him to make Macbeth yield, has not confuted, though he might
easily have shown that a former obligation could not be vacated by a
latter.

NOTE XVII.

Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
Like the poor cat i' th' adage.

The adage alluded to is, The cat loves fish but dares not wet her foot.

Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas.

NOTE XVIII.

Will I with wine and wassel so convince.

To convince is, in Shakespeare, to _overpower_ or _subdue_, as in this
play:

--Their malady _convinces_
The great assay of art.

NOTE XIX.

--Who shall bear the guilt
Of our great _quell_?

_Quell_ is _murder, manquellers_ being, in the old language, the term
for which _murderers_ is now used.

NOTE XX.

ACT II. SCENE II.

--Now o'er one half the world
(a)_Nature seems dead_, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecat's offerings: and wither'd murther,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
_With (b)Tarquin's ravishing sides_ tow'rds his design
Moves like a ghost.--Thou sound and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my where-about;
_And (c)take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it_.--

(a)--Now o'er one half the world
Nature seems dead.

That is, _over our hemisphere all action and motion seem to have
ceased_. This im