A prophecy of an event new hatch'd, seems to be a prophecy of an event past. And a prophecy new hatch'd is a wry expression. The term new hatch'd is properly applicable to a bird, and that birds of ill omen should be new-hatch'd to the woful time, that is, should appear in uncommon numbers, is very consistent with the rest of the prodigies here mentioned, and with the universal disorder into which nature is described as thrown, by the perpetration of this horrid murder. (see 1765, VI, 413, 7)
II.iii.117 (452,3) Here, lay Duncan,/His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood] Mr. Pope has endeavoured to improve one of these lines by substituting goary blood for golden blood; but it may easily be admitted that he who could on such an occasion talk of lacing the silyer skin, would lace it with golden blood. No amendment can be made to this line, of which every word is equally faulty, but by a general blot.
It is not improbable, that Shakespeare put these forced and unnatural metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth as a mark of artifice and dissimulation, to shew the difference between the studied language of hypocrisy, and the natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole speech so considered, is a remarkable instance of judgment, as it consists entirely of antithesis and metaphor.
II.iii.122 (432,5) Unmannerly breech'd with gore] An unmannerly dagger, and a dagger breech'd, or as in some editions breech'd with, gore, are expressions not easily to be understood. There are undoubtedly two faults in this passage, which I have endeavored to take away by reading,
—daggers
Unmanly drench'd with gore:—
I saw drench'd with the King's blood the fatal daggers, not only instruments of murder but evidence of cowardice.
Each of these words might easily be confounded with that which I have substituted for it, by a hand not exact, a casual blot, or a negligent inspection, [W: Unmanly reech'd] Dr. Warburton has, perhaps, rightly put reach'd for breech'd.
II.iii.138 (454,8)
In the great hand of God I stand; and thence,