I sheathe again undeeded. There thou should't be ;
By this great clatter, one of greatest note

Seems bruited: 3 Let me find him, fortune!
And more I beg not.*

[Exit. Alarum.

Enter MALCOLM and old SIWARD.

Siw. This way, my lord;-the castle's gently render'd:

The tyrant's people on both fides do fight;
The noble thanes do bravely in the war;
The day almost itself profeffes yours,

And little is to do.

duff's mind) fhould be received as a beauty. Shakspeare (as Prior fays of the author of Hudibras)

fagacious mafter, knew

"When to leave off, and when pursue." STEEVENS.

My conjecture is, I believe, unfounded. In Cymbeline, we have a fimilar phrafeology:

66

Let's fee't; I will pursue her

"Even to Auguftus' throne: Or this, or perish."

MALONE.

3 Seems bruited:] From bruit. Fr. To bruit is to report with clamour; to noife. So, in King Henry IV. P. II:

66

his death

"One that rejoices in the common wreck,
"As common bruit doth put it."

Again, in Acolaftus, a comedy, 1540:

"Lais was one of the

moft bruited common women that clerkes do write of." STEEVENS,

4

There thou should'ft be;

By this great clatter, one of greatest note

Seems bruited. Let me find him, fortune!

And more I beg not.] I fufpect, from deficience of metre, that

the latter part of this paffage originally ftood thus--

Seems bruited there. Let me but find him, fortune!

And more &c. STREVENS.

MACB. Why fhould I play the Roman fool, and die On mine own fword? whiles I fee lives, the gashes Do better upon them.

MACD.

Re-enter MACDUFF.

Turn, hell-hound, turn.

MACB. Of all men elfe I have avoided thee: But get thee back, my foul is too much charg'd With blood of thine already.

MACD.

I have no words,

[They fight.

My voice is in my fword; thou bloodier villain

Than terms can give thee out!

Масв. Thou lofeft labour: As eafy may'ft thou the intrenchant air With thy keen fword imprefs, as make me bleed: "

4 Why Should I play the Roman fool, and die

On mine own fword?] Alluding, perhaps, to the fuicide of Cato Uticenfis, which our author must have read of in the old tranflation of Plutarch, as the fame circumftance is mentioned again in Julius Cæfar:

66

I did blame Cato for the death

"Which he did give himself." STEEVENS.

As eafy may't thou the intrenchant air

With thy keen fword imprefs, as make me bleed:] That is, air which cannot be cut. JOHNSON.

Mr. M. Mafon wishes to interpret the word intrenchant differently, and fays that it may fignify furrounding; but of a participle

VOL. VII.

PP

Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;

I bear a charmed life," which must not yield
To one of woman born.

MACD.
Despair thy charm ;
And let the angel, whom thou still haft ferv'd,
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.

MACB. Accurfed be that tongue that tells me so, For it hath cow'd my better part of man! And be thefe juggling fiends no more believ❜d, That palter with us in a double fenfe;"

with fuch a meaning, I believe there is no example.-Shakspeare's indifcriminate use of active and paffive participles has been frequently noticed. In Timon he has trenchant in an active fenfe, and in the line before us intrenchant is employed as paffive.

Milton, in his Paradife Loft, B. VI. feems to have imitated this paffage :

"Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound

"Receive, no more than can the fluid air." STEEVENS. So, in Hamlet:

"For it is as the air invulnerable." MALONE.

6 I bear a charmed life,] In the days of chivalry, the champions' arms being ceremonioufly bleffed, each took an oath that he used no charmed weapons. Macbeth, according to the law of arms, or perhaps only in allufion to this cuftom, tells Macduff of the fecurity he had in the prediction of the fpirit.

To this likewife Pofthumus alludes in Cymbeline, A& V:
-I, in my own woe charm'd,

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"Could not find death." UPTON.

So, in The Dumb Knight, 1633, by L. Machin:

"Here you fhall fwear by hope, by heaven, by Jove,
"And by the right you challenge in true fame,
"That here you ftand, not arm'd with any guile,
Of philters, charms, of night-fpells, characters,
"Or other black infernal vantages," &c.

Again, in Spenfer's Faery Queen, B. I. c. iv :

he bears a charmed fhield,

"And eke enchaunted arms that none can pierce."

STEEVENS.

་ -palter with us in a double fenfe:] That Shuffle with ambiguous expreflions. JOHNSON.

That keep the word of promife to our ear,
And break it to our hope.-I'll not fight with thee.
MACD. Then yield thee, coward,

And live to be the show and gaze o'the time.
We'll have thee, as our rarer monfters are,
Painted upon a pole; and underwrit,

8

Here may you fee the tyrant.

I'll not yield,

MACB. To kifs the ground before young Malcolm's feet, And to be baited with the rabble's curfe. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunfinane, And thou oppos'd, being of no woman born, Yet I will try the laft: Before my body

I throw my warlike fhield: lay on, Macduff; And damn'd be him that first cries, Hold, enough. [Exeunt, fighting.

So, in Marius and Sylla, 1594:

"Now fortune, frown and palter, if thou please."

Again, in Julius Cæfar:

9

Romans, that have spoke the word,

"And will not palter." STEEVENS.

We'll have thee, as our rarer monfters are,

Painted upon a pole ;] That is, on cloth fufpended on a pole.

MALONE.

Hold, enough.] See Mr. Tollet's note on the words "To cry, bold, hold!" p. 377, n. 9. Again, in Stowe's Chronicle, one of the combatants was an efquire, and knighted after the battle, which the king terminated by crying Hoo, i. e. hold. STEEVENS.

"To cry hold, is the word of yielding," fays Carew's Survey of Cornwall, p. 74, i. e. when one of the combatants cries fo.

TOLLET.

Retreat. Flourish. Re-enter with Drum and Colours, MALCOLM, old SIWARD, ROSSE, LENOX, ANGUS, CATHNESS, MENTETH, and Soldiers.

MAL. I would the friends we mifs, were fafe arriv'd.

SIW. Some must go off: and yet, by these I see, So great a day as this is cheaply bought.

MAL. Macduff is miffing, and your noble fon. ROSSE. Your fon, my lord, has paid a foldier's debt:

He only liv'd but till he was a man;

The which no fooner had his prowefs confirm'd
In the unfhrinking ftation where he fought,
But like a man he died.

SIW.

Then he is dead?

ROSSE. Ay, and brought off the field: your caufe

of forrow

Muft not be meafur'd by his worth, for then

It hath no end.

SIW.

Had he his hurts before?

Why then, God's foldier be he!

ROSSE. Ay, on the front.

SIW.

Had I as many fons as I have hairs,

I would not wish them to a fairer death:

And fo his knell is knoll'd.*

2 Had I as many fons as I have hairs,

I would not wish them to a fairer death:

And fo his knell is knoll'd.] This incident is thus related from Henry of Huntingdon by Camden in his Remains, from which our author probably copied it.

When Siward, the martial earl of Northumberland, understood that his fon, whom he had fent in fervice against the Scotchmen, was flain, he demanded whether his wounds were in the fore part or hinder part of his body. When it was anfwered, in the fore part, he replied, "I am right glad; neither with I any other death to me or mine." JOHNSON.