And while he is making this just reflection, the obvious impulse of a mind not warped from the erectness of a moral and religious integrity and reverence, Macbeth soliloquizes with a kind of inexpressible anticipatory triumph.
“Two truths are told
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.”
And he then goes on, like a ready made, long-matured rascal as he is—like one whose mind had no habit of virtuous or religious contemplation, but which has always had a familiarity with evil and a tendency downward:
——“Why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,” etc.
The very moment his attention is directed to the subject of his becoming king, he conceives the idea of murdering the actual occupant of the throne, notwithstanding the fact that there are two sons living.
An innocent man, were he told he would become king of England, would not instantly set about murdering the queen. He would (supposing him to have faith in the prediction) say to himself, as indeed Macbeth does at one time:
“If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me, without my stir.”