Jamque vagante scypho, discincto gutture was-heil
Ingeminant was-heil:  labor est plus perdere vini
Quam sitis.—­

These words were afterwards corrupted into wassail and wassailer.

NOTE XXXII.

Macbeth.—­Can such things be,
And overcome us, like a summer’s cloud,
Without our special wonder?  You make me strange
Even to the disposition that I owe,
When now I think, you can behold such sights,
And keep the natural ruby of your cheek,
When mine is blanched with fear.

This passage, as it now stands, is unintelligible, but may be restored to sense by a very slight alteration: 

—­You make me strange
Ev’n to the disposition that I know.

Though I had before seen many instances of your courage, yet it now appears in a degree altogether new. So that my long acquaintance with your disposition does not hinder me from that astonishment which novelty produces.

NOTE XXXIII.

  It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood,
  Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;
  Augurs, that understand relations, have
  By magpies, and by choughs, and rooks, brought forth
  The secret’st man of blood.—­

In this passage the first line loses much of its force by the present punctuation.  Macbeth having considered the prodigy which has just appeared, infers justly from it, that the death of Duncan cannot pass unpunished;

  It will have blood:—­

then, after a short pause, declares it as the general observation of mankind, that murderers cannot escape: 

 —­they say, blood will have blood.

Murderers, when they have practised all human means of security, are detected by supernatural directions: 

  Augurs, that understand relations, &c.

By the word relation is understood the connexion of effects with causes; to understand relations as an augur, is to know how those things relate to each other, which have no visible combination or dependence.

NOTE XXXIV.

SCENE VII.

  Enter Lenox and another Lord.

As this tragedy, like the rest of Shakespeare’s, is, perhaps, overstocked with personages, it is not easy to assign a reason, why a nameless character should be introduced here, since nothing is said that might not, with equal propriety, have been put into the mouth of any other disaffected man.  I believe, therefore, that in the original copy, it was written, with a very common form of contraction, Lenox and An. for which the transcriber, instead of Lenox and Angus, set down, Lenox and another Lord.  The author had, indeed, been more indebted to the transcriber’s fidelity and diligence, had he committed no errours of greater importance.