Lady Macbeth's final repentance leads her to address her husband thus:—
You may in peace resign the ill-gain'd crown.
Why should you labour still to be unjust?
There has been too much blood already spilt.
Make not the subjects victims to your guilt.
resign your kingdom now,
And with your crown put off your guilt.
[Page 379.] Saturday Night.
The Gem, 1830. Signed "Nepos." Not reprinted by Lamb.
This little essay was written to accompany an engraving of Wilkie's picture with the same title. Whether Lamb's grandmother was as he has recorded we cannot know; his reminiscences of her in "Dream Children" and "The Grandam" are very different. That was Mrs. Field; Lamb, I think, never knew a paternal grandmother. The recollection of the fly in the eye seems to have an authentic air.
[Page 380,] line 9. Burking. After Burke and Hare, who suffocated their victims and sold them to the hospitals for dissection. Burke was executed in January, 1829.