powers away." This we learn first through his wife Anne, who has been constantly "wakèd by his timorous dreams"—how strangely sounds the word "timorous" used of such a character!—and later—almost at the end—from himself, in that one terrifying outburst which gives the first and only clear view into the mental torments which this strong villain has to suffer, as soon as that daytime energy, which is to him as an armour, is laid aside. Is it not very striking—is it not the character-touch of this scene, how—when Richard is once fairly awake again, when the things of waking life have returned, with Ratcliff at the tent-door—how quickly this great load of suffering is shifted off?
A fortiori Macbeth suffers at night, too, but his life is all suffering. We never get the idea of his enjoying life, which, with Richard, we really do; for he is humorous—jocular even—in fact, in tiptop spirits often, but all by day, during the bustle and action of an energetic career. Later, the wound of guilt begins to show itself, and here, too, we may make an instructive comparison between these two practitioners in crime, so alike in their motive and careers, so different in their fibre and temperament, and yet yielding to the same law. Macbeth, indeed, suffers so much that his mind becomes, at last, almost unhinged, and, in the very end, conscience, perhaps, ceases to afflict him. The machine, too delicate for such rough work, has been broken by repeated blows—the nerve has throbbed itself out. Shakespearean
