Though I would not often assume the critick’s privilege, of being confident where certainty cannot be obtained, nor indulge myself too far, in departing from the established reading; yet I cannot but propose the rejection of this passage, which, I believe, was an insertion of some player, that, having so much learning as to discover to what Shakespeare alluded, was not willing that his audience should be less knowing than himself, and has, therefore, weakened the author’s sense by the intrusion of a remote and useless image into a speech bursting from a man wholly possessed with his own present condition, and, therefore, not at leisure to explain his own allusions to himself.  If these words are taken away, by which not only the thought but the numbers are injured, the lines of Shakespeare close together without any traces of a breach.

  My genius is rebuk’d.  He chid the sisters.

(b)—­The common enemy of man.

It is always an entertainment to an inquisitive reader, to trace a sentiment to its original source, and, therefore, though the term enemy of man, applied to the devil, is in itself natural and obvious, yet some may be pleased with being informed, that Shakespeare probably borrowed it from the first lines of the Destruction of Troy, a book which he is known to have read.

That this remark may not appear too trivial, I shall take occasion from it to point out a beautiful passage of Milton, evidently copied from a book of no greater authority:  in describing the gates of hell, Book ii. v.879, he says,

 —­On a sudden open fly,
  With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
  Th’ infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
  Harsh thunder.

In the history of Don Bellianis, when one of the knights approaches, as I remember, the castle of Brandezar, the gates are said to open, grating harsh thunder upon their brazen hinges.

 (c)—­Come fate into the list,
    And champion me to th’ utterance.—­

This passage will be best explained by translating it into the language from whence the only word of difficulty in it is borrowed. Que la destinee se rende en lice, et qu’elle me donne un defi a l’outrance.  A challenge or a combat a l’outrance, to extremity, was a fixed term in the law of arms, used when the combatants engaged with an odium internecinum, an intention to destroy each other, in opposition to trials of skill at festivals, or on other occasions, where the contest was only for reputation or a prize.  The sense, therefore, is, Let fate, that has fore-doomed the exaltation of the sons of Banquo, enter the lists against me, with the utmost animosity, in defence of its own decrees, which I will endeavour to invalidate, whatever be the danger.

NOTE XXV.

Macbeth.  Ay, in the catalogue, ye go for men;
As hounds, and grey-hounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demy-wolves are cleped
All by the name of dogs.