er, and the murderer, who, like me, are stealing upon their prey.

When the reading is thus adjusted, he wishes with great propriety, in
the following lines, that the _earth_ may not _hear his steps_.

(c) And take the present horror from the time.
Which now suits with it.--

I believe every one that has attentively read this dreadful soliloquy is
disappointed at the conclusion, which, if not wholly unintelligible, is
at least obscure, nor can be explained into any sense worthy of the
author. I shall, therefore, propose a slight alteration,

--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 _talk_--the present horror of the time!--
That now suits with it.--

Macbeth has, in the foregoing lines, disturbed his imagination by
enumerating all the terrours of the night; at length he is wrought up to
a degree of frenzy, that makes him afraid of some supernatural discovery
of his design, and calls out to the stones not to betray him, not to
declare where he walks, nor _to talk_.--As he is going to say of what,
he discovers the absurdity of his suspicion, and pauses, but is again
overwhelmed by his guilt, and concludes that such are the horrours of
the present night, that the stones may be expected to cry out against
him:

_That_ now suits with it.

He observes in a subsequent passage, that on such occasions _stones have
been known to move_. It is now a very just and strong picture of a man
about to commit a deliberate murder, under the strongest convictions of
the wickedness of his design.

NOTE XXI.

SCENE IV.

_Len_. The night has been unruly; where we lay
Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i'th'air, strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion, and confused events,
_New-hatch'd to the woeful time_.
The obscure bird clamour'd the live-long night:
Some say, the earth was fev'rous, and did shake.

These lines, I think, should be rather regulated thus:

--prophesying with accents terrible,
Of dire combustion and confused events.
New-hatch'd to th'woeful time, the obscure bird
Clamour'd the live-long night. Some say, the earth
Was fev'rous and did shake.

A _prophecy_ of an _event new-hatch'd_, seems to be _a prophecy_ of an
_event past_. The term _new-hatch'd_ is properly