To our own lips.
Then in the passage that follows he realises in more particular detail the horror and execration which such a deed will awaken. Duncan’s virtues, he sees,
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off:
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
Here we see set forth in clearest language both the scope and the limit of Macbeth’s moral vision; and as we note his growing irresolution, it is impossible not to be reminded of another of Shakespeare’s characters in whom the imaginative temperament worked with equal potency. Macbeth and Hamlet are in some points strangely allied, but when they are placed side by side the elements of antagonism quickly overpower the outward appearance of similarity. Both were men in whom the supremacy of the imagination induced paralysis of action, but in the one case its exercise is bounded by the limits of our present world, and in the other it starts from the confines of mortal life and seeks to pierce the veil of eternity. Macbeth takes no heed of what may lurk in those dark recesses beyond the grave; if he can only be assured of safety here he is ready to “jump the life to come.” To Hamlet, on the other hand, the fortune of this world, and even death itself, are but as shadows, for his imagination is haunted by the mysteries of that unseen realm of which death is but the portal—