The MS. corrector, changing one letter, converts "beast" into boast, whereupon Mr Singer says, "Who could have imagined that any one familiar with the poet, as Mr Collier tells us he has been for the last fifty years, could for a moment entertain the absurd change of 'beast' to boast in this celebrated passage?" Here Mr Singer expresses himself, as we think, a great deal too strongly. In better taste is Mr John Forster's defence of the received reading. He says (we quote from Mr Dyce, p. 124), with great good sense and propriety, "Here Mr Collier reasons, as it appears to us, without sufficient reference to the context of the passage, and its place in the scene. The expression immediately preceding, and eliciting Lady Macbeth's reproach, is that in which Macbeth declares that he dares do all that may become a man, and that who dares more is none. She instantly takes up that expression—if not an affair in which a man may engage, what beast was it then in himself or others that made him break this enterprise to her? The force of the passage lies in that contrasted word, and its meaning is lost by the proposed substitution." We admit the force of this reasoning, and it, together with the consideration that beast is the word actually in possession of the text, rather inclines us, though not without much hesitation, to prefer the old reading. We strongly suspect that the contrast of the beast and the man may have been an accident due to the carelessness, or perhaps an alteration due to the ingenuity of the printer. There is to our feelings a stronger expression of contempt, a more natural, if not a fiercer taunt in boast than in "beast." "What vain braggadocio fit—what swaggering humour was it, then, that made you break this enterprise to me?" There is nothing in Mr Dyce's objection, that Macbeth had not previously vaunted his determination to murder Duncan. He certainly had broken the project to his wife both by letter and in conversation, and that pretty strongly too, as is evident from her words, "Nor time nor place did then adhere," that is, when he first broached the subject, "yet you would make both"—that is, you would make both time and place bend to the furtherance of your design, even when they were not in themselves ripe and suitable. And even though Macbeth had not announced his project in a boastful manner, it was quite natural that the lady, disgusted by his vacillation should, in her excited state, upbraid him as an empty boaster, and a contemptible poltroon. Tried by their intrinsic merits, we regard "boast" as rather the better reading of the two; and if we advocate the retention of "beast," it is only on the ground that it, too, affords a very good meaning, and is de facto the text of the old folios.
Act III. Scene 4.—The following passage has occasioned some discussion among the commentators. Macbeth addresses the ghost of Banquo,
"Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
The armed rhinoceros or the Hyrcan tiger;
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble; or, be alive again,
And dare me to the desert with thy sword:
If trembling I inhibit, then protest me
The baby of a girl."
This is the common reading, or at least was so until a comparatively recent period. "Inhabit," says Henley "is the original reading, and it needs no alteration. The obvious meaning is—should you challenge me to encounter you in the desert, and I, through fear, remain trembling in my castle, then protest me," &c. Horne Tooke (Diversions of Purley, ii. p. 55) slightly varies this reading by placing the comma after then, instead of after inhabit.
"Dare me to the desert with thy sword,
If trembling I inhabit then;"—
i.e., if then I do not meet thee there; if trembling I stay at home, or within doors, or under any roof, or within any habitation; if, when you call me to the desert, I then house me, or through fear hide myself from thee in any dwelling—
"If trembling I do house me then, protest me," &c.
Probably, then, the best reading is,
"if trembling I inhabit then, protest me," &c
At any rate, the MS. corrector's prosaic substitution—"if trembling I exhibit," i.e., if I show any symptoms of trepidation, cannot be listened to for a moment.
Act IV. Scene 1. —The MS. correc-
