To find the mind’s construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust. O worthiest cousin!!
[Enter Macbeth, etc.
I do not know whether we may safely at all times ascribe the remarkable reflection of facts upon each other in the works of Shakspeare to the deliberate intention of the poet, or whether we may suppose them in some degree accidental. I am inclined to think, however, that it belongs to the high order of genius with which he was invested to exercise a power which, in its sphere, and with reverence be it spoken, is not without something of omnipresence. Here the king has just rid himself of one traitor of the blackest dye, whose guilt is placed beyond doubt, as it is almost beyond parallel, by his open and nearly successful treason in the late battle, and by his own confession. The betrayed sovereign then, just barely escaped from the ruinous treachery of one villain—yet one in whom he had built “an absolute trust”—after all the experience which we may suppose him to have acquired, for he is an old man, turns to another gentleman in whom also he builds “an absolute trust,” and, with a wise and just reflection scarcely ceased sounding from his lips—(a reflection to which every passing century will bear more and more ample testimony,
There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face,)
he turns to the new arch villain whose dark mind is even at the moment busily employed in calculating the risks and gains of killing him in his sleep—he turns to his new “Cawdor” with
O worthiest cousin!
The sin of my ingratitude even now