Then, seeking sympathy and consolation, he turned to the partner of his bosom and his greatness with the agonizing outburst,—
“O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife.”
Close on the awful remorse and on the pathetic tenderness, with consummate truth to nature the selfish instincts were shown hardening the man in his crime, making him resolve to strengthen with further ill things bad begun:
“I am in blood
Stept in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
So unstably poised was his disposition between his good affections and his wicked desires that the conflict was still repeated, and with each defeat of conscience the dominion of evil grew completer. As his remorseful fears translated themselves into outward spectres, Forrest vividly illustrated the curdling horror human nature experiences when guilt opens the supernatural world to its apprehension. He made Macbeth show a proud and lion-mettled courage in human relations, but seem cowed with abject terror by ghostly visitations. His criminal course collects momentum till it hurries him headlong to wholesale slaughters and to his own inevitable ruin. In his mad infatuation of self-entangling crime he says of his own proposed massacre of the family of Macduff,—
“No boasting like a fool:
This deed I’ll do before this purpose cool.”
Relying on the promise of the witches that none of woman born should harm him, and that he should never be vanquished till Birnam wood came to Dunsinane, he added crime to crime till the whole land was in arms for his overthrow. Then, despite his forced faith and bravery, a profound melancholy sank on him. His vital spirits failed. He grew sick of life and weary of the sun. To this phase of the character and career Forrest did conspicuous justice. Nothing of the kind could exceed the exquisite beauty of his readings of the three famous passages,—