The inferences which we believe to be deducible from the first scene can be profitably employed only in conjunction with those to be discovered in the third.  Our analysis must, therefore, be entered upon by an attempt to ascertain the true character of the impressions which it was the desire of Shakspere to convey by the second.

This scene is almost exclusively occupied with the narrations of the “bleeding Soldier,” and of Rosse.  These narrations are constructed with the express purpose of vividly setting forth the personal valour of Duncan’s generals, “Macbeth and Banquo.”  Let us consider what is the maximum worth which the words of Shakspere will, at this period of the play, allow us to attribute to the moral character of the hero:—­a point, let it be observed, of first-rate importance to the present argument.  We find Macbeth, in this scene, designated by various epithets, all of which, either directly or indirectly, arise from feelings of admiration created by his courageous conduct in the war in which he is supposed to have been engaged.  “Brave” and “Noble Macbeth,” “Bellona’s Bridegroom,” “Valiant Cousin,” and “Worthy Gentleman,” are the general titles by which he is here spoken of; but none of them afford any positive clue whatever to his moral character.  Nor is any such clue supplied by the scenes in which he is presently received by the messengers of Duncan, and afterwards received and lauded by Duncan himself.  Macbeth’s moral character, up to the development of his criminal hopes, remains strictly negative.  Hence it is difficult to fathom the meaning of those critics, (A.  Schlegel at their head), who have over and over again made the ruin of Macbeth’s “so many noble qualities"{10} the subject of their comment.

{10} A. Schlegel’s “Lectures on Dramatic Literature.”  Vol.  II. p. 208.

In the third scene we have the meeting of the witches, the announcement of whose intention to re-assemble upon the heath, there to meet with Macbeth, forms the certainly most obvious, though not perhaps, altogether the most important, aim of the short scene by which the tragedy is opened.  An enquiry of much interest here suggests itself.  Did Shakspere intend that in his tragedy of “Macbeth” the witches should figure as originators of gratuitous destruction, in direct opposition to the traditional, and even proverbial, character of the genus? By that character such personages have been denied the possession of any influence whatever over the untainted soul.  Has Shakspere in this instance re tained, or has he abolished, the chief of those characteristics which have been universally attributed to the beings in question?