Edinburgh Review (January 1831). On the emancipation of slaves in the colonies he never wavered, but stood unflinchingly true to his father's principles. He offered to resign his position with the ministry rather than yield his views on this subject; but the question was satisfactorily settled and his resignation not accepted.

Meanwhile he found time to write. The essays on 'Byron, Johnson' and 'Hampden' appeared in 1831; Burleigh' and Mirabeau, in 1832; War of the Succession in Spain' and 'Horace Walpole, in 1833, and the first essay on Chatham, January 1834.

He

His appointment in 1832 as a commissioner of the Board of Control was followed by absorption in East Indian affairs, and in 1833, when the charter of the East India Company was renewed, he was offered a position on the East Indian Council with a salary of £10,000 per annum for five years. His brilliant career in Parliament was seemingly permanently endangered; but Macaulay did not hesitate. He estimated that he could save half his salary and in five years have a competence. needed money on account of his father's poverty, for the sake of his two sisters, as well as for his own career; and he accepted, going out in 1834 and returning in 1838. The genius for government which the father had displayed at Sierre Leone, the son now manifested at Calcutta. His important permanent reforms were the creation of the Indian Penal Code and the Code for Criminal Procedure, achieved in the face of bitter local opposition, and the organization of a sound educational system.

Macaulay's family ties were very strong and there is no record of any love affair in his life. A sister, Jane, had died in 1830, and his mother in 1831. One of his favorite sisters, Margaret, was married in 1832, an occurrence which he accepted as a source of personal distress. The other, Hannah, accompanied him to India, and there she met and was shortly married to Charles Trevelyan, an officer in the government service. Macaulay was much pleased with the match, and the two households lived together under the same roof. Ever afterward, as the young Trevelyans, his nieces and nephews, grew up, they became a very real part of Macaulay's life. His love for children, and particularly for these, was a marked trait, and one of them afterward filially wrote his uncle's biography. Meanwhile his sister Margaret had died in Engiand, and likewise his father died while Macaulay and the Trevelyans were on their homeward voyage. These deaths affected him deeply, and the home-coming was a sad one.

While in India he made opportunity for an immense amount of reading, particularly of the Latin and Greek classics, to which he returned with increasing delight. He also read widely in Italian and French, and did some German on the return voyage. His love for the great poets, dramatists, orators and historians affected his culture, his style and his ideals. The lists of his reading from now to the end of his life became a part of his biography and would stock a good library. His long walks with a copy of Homer or Virgil, from which he was reading or spouting, became an accustomed sight. Thenceforward he determined that he would write a history in emulation of Thucy

11

dides and Tacitus and Livy, and his set speeches caught something of the spirit of Lysias and Cicero.

Upon his return to England he left for a tour in Italy, revelling in its beauties and associations with the enthusiasm of a first visit and the eye of an historian and student of Latin and Italian literatures. The literary fruits were the 'Lays of Ancient Rome.'

Returned home, he sincerely hoped to begin his 'History of England,' which he had planned to write from the Revolution of 1688 to the death of George III. Had he begun it then, with 20 years of life to devote to it, he might easily have left 10 or more volumes covering the century instead of the first five extending through but 15 years- a brilliant fragment.. But he was again dragged into politics and Macvey Napier, editor of the Edinburgh Review, made heavy draughts upon his time.

-

In India he had contributed but two essays to the Review, that on Mackintosh's History' and the very long one on 'Bacon. However, his experience furnished him the material for the brilliant narratives on Clive) (1840) and "Warren Hastings' (1841). Besides these in the six years after his return he contributed 'Sir William Temple) (1838)—written in an entirely fresh spirit; Gladstone on Church and State (1839); Von Ranke's History of the Popes (1840); the Comic Dramatists of the Restoration' and 'Lord Holland) (1841); 'Frederick the Great' (1842); Mme. d'Arblay) and 'Addison' (1843); 'Barère' and the second essay on the 'Earl of Chatham' (1844). This, perhaps his noblest essay, proved to be his last. He was forced to give up writing in order to find time for his History. His complaisance in continuing to write for the Review had undoubtedly worked to his detriment. But the entrance into politics was only in part due to the exigencies of his friends; for public life exercised a subtle fascination over him.

In 1839 he was elected member of Parliament for Edinburgh and was made Secretary at War with a seat in the Cabinet. Fortunately the ministry soon expired, and his freedom from official duties gave him some leisure. He retained, however, his seat for Edinburgh, and his most important work was the Copyright Bill, which, after many radical suggestions, passed in almost the exact terms in which he advocated it.

In 1842 the 'Lays' appeared and achieved a great success despite the natural fears of friends. "Christopher North" of Blackwood's, who had attacked Macaulay on account of the Southey reviews, made up- -on poetry they could agree. In 1843 the Essays were collected and published. There had been a constantly growing demand for them in a permanent form, which their author at first resisted. They had been written at odd moments of leisure, and he regarded them as ephemeral, but copies were being introduced from America, and Macaulay had to consent. The sale proved their popularity to be a permanent one. Macaulay's Essays still are unapproached of their kind, as condensed booklets of knowledge. An analysis of their contents shows how their author's mind was revolving constantly upon a definite period of English history the Revolution and the consequent development under constitutional government, the subject he set

for himself in writing his 'History and these are uniformly among his best. Those on foreign subjects and the controversial ones are less satisfying.

The History had been delayed year after year for lack of leisure to begin actual work. At length the first two volumes appeared in 1849. They comprised the reign of James II and the Revolution, but reproduced the setting as a whole and included details at once picturesque and dramatic such as could only be drawn by a supreme master of narrative. Macaulay had set for himself high ideals; he wished to be read and to be understood; he sought to give a series of brilliant mental pictures; and he achieved what he set out to do. He is weakest, perhaps, on the side of ethical interpretation, in searching out the causes and setting forth the nexus of events; his narrative is brilliant and effective, but it has the supreme fault in a history of being entirely lacking in detachment of view. In opinions he represented the great middle class and the world of Whiggism and its mode of thinking; in many things, Philistine; in some things, even vulgar; where mysticism and all esoteric systems of philosophy and kindred schools of poetry were accounted as foolishness.

The popularity of the 'History' was something enormous, surpassing even that of Byron's poems and of Scott's and Dickens' novels. In 1849, in consequence of this success, Macaulay was made rector of the University of Glasgow and Fellow of the Royal Society. He had been appointed trustee of the British Museum in 1847. He declined a professorship of history at Cambridge, and steadily refused positions under the government which would take up his time.

He had represented Edinburgh in Parliament for eight years, when in 1847, on account of his characteristic independence in voting for the Maynooth grant for the maintenance of a Catholic university in Ireland -he offended many Edinburgh electors, and was not returned at the polls. He accepted his defeat with relief, and turned the more eagerly to the 'History.' In 1852, without any solicitation on his part and with a steady refusal to give pledges, he was returned voluntarily by the electors of Edinburgh to his former seat. Under such circumstances he felt he could not refuse election; but the duties it involved aided in sapping his strength, and that year he had a spell of illness from which he never wholly recovered.

In 1853 his speeches were collected and published. In 1855 the third and fourth volumes of his 'History appeared. Macaulay feared for their success after the splendid reception accorded to the former two; but the new subject was the life and career of William of Orange, his favorite hero, he had worked hard to sustain himself and 26,500 copies were sold in 10 weeks. In 1856 he withdrew from the House of Commons; and in 1857 he was made a peer, and chose the title, Baron Macaulay of Rothley, from his birthplace. Likewise this year he was made a foreign member of the French Academy, member of the Prussian Order of Merit and high steward of Cambridge. In 1858 he wrote five short biographies for the eighth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica - Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Johnson and Pitt. These show greater compactness and maturity

in judgment than his earlier treatment of the same themes.

In 1856 he left his bachelor quarters in town, at The Albany, and leased a pleasant villa, Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, Kensington. In 1859 his brother-in-law, now Sir Charles Trevelyan, was appointed governor of Madras, and the thought of the separation bore heavily upon him. Fortunately his sister and the children remained behind a while longer. Macaulay had not been well for some time, and he died at Holly Lodge, 28 December. On 9 Jan. 1860, he was buried in Westminster Abbey in the Poets' Corner at the foot of Addison's statue.

A fifth volume of the History,' concluding the reign of William III, had been completed, was edited posthumously by Lady Trevelyan and appeared in 1861. See MACAULAY'S ESSAYS; LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME.

Bibliography. The official life, written by George (afterward Sir George) Otto Trevelyan (his nephew), appeared in London in 1876, and is generally conceded to be one of the best biographies in the English language. Consult also Lord Avebury, 'Essays and Addresses' (London 1903); Bagehot, Walter, Literary Studies (ib. 1879); Canning, 'Lord Macaulay and his History' (ib. 1822); Hughes, D. A., "Thomas Babington Macaulay the Rhetorician: an Examination of his Structural Devices' (Ithaca, N. Y., 1898); Macgregor, D. H., 'Lord Macaulay) (London 1901); Viscount Morley, 'Critical Miscellanies' (ib. 1877); Morrison, J. Cotter, 'Macaulay) in the English Men of Letters (ib. 1882); Spedding, 'Evenings with a Reviewer' (ib. 1881).

J. B. HENNEMAN, Late Professor of English in the University of the South.

MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. Macaulay did not originate the essay of literary and historical criticism. But Macaulay's essays so far surpass all others in brilliancy, style and solidity of matter that his name ranks with those of Bacon and Montaigne, each a master in his own special field. Macaulay's first published articles, written while he was still in residence at Cambridge University, appeared in Knight's Quarterly Magazine in 1823 and 1824, and from that time until his death in 1859 he wrote two score essays for the Edinburgh Review and many articles for the Encyclopædia Britannica.' The subjects he wrote upon were many. Dante, Dryden, Mill on Government, Mr. Robert Montgomery's poems, Moore's Life of Byron, Lord Bacon, Von Ranke, Leigh Hunt, Frederick the Great, Madame d'Arblay, Barère, etc., but by far the greater number deal with poets and men of letters or political personages in English history. Perhaps his most famous essays are those on Lord Clive, Warren Hastings and William Pitt, but others that deal with men of letters, Addison, for instance, or Samuel Johnson, are just as brilliant.

Macaulay's essays are set off by all the arts of rhetoric; they are ornamented by all the resources of omnivorous reading and a marvelous memory; they sparkle with a youthful enthusiasm, and are compact of sound information. In their own class they have no rivals. They are books to be taken on a long sea voyage, to be put on the shelf of a lonely ranchman, to be read and reread by all who have any taste for

literature. Pick up the essay on Addison and you are delighted with the tender sympathy of the critic who can set forth a good man's character in so generous and beautiful a manner. Read that on Croker's edition of 'Boswell's Johnson, and you not only derive pleasure from Macaulay's admiration for Johnson, but you also get a lively idea of what the editor of a biography should not do. Take up any essay you please and you find knowledge, wit, sympathy, admiration; you are delighted to find with what extraordinary ease you acquire information, and how your horizon rapidly reaches out as if you were going up in a balloon, how places and things once so dark become enveloped in light as if the sun were rising, how great historical events seem to have been familiar to you from boyhood and how eminent personages, hitherto unknown, leap into your sudden intimacy.

Thus to delight, in form, and exhilarate the reader is a wonderful feat, and for nine men out of 10 Macaulay's essays are wholly satisfactory. They give a busy man what he wants to get from history and literature; but the 10th man finds himself not wholly satisfied. He feels oppressed by the arts of rhetoric. These animated pages, paragraphs, sentences that advance upon him, rank by rank, marshaled according to the most brilliant rules of tactics and strategy, trouble his spirit. Not a single sentence, here or there, appears in undress uniform. Such prose affords no room for subtleties. And the author's dogmatism rings in our ears like a trumpet in a room; this world of ours so full of perplexities, uncertainties, obscurities, cannot be truly expressed in opinions of absolute definiteness. History, literature, art, are not mathematics; a column of figures adds up the same for all; but William of Orange, James the Second, Archbishop Laud, Alexander Pope, Francis Bacon, must different to different people. We need, in literature, in history, light and shade, we need twilight and even night; high noon all the time is intolerable. It seems unlikely that all right views on English politics, during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, were embodied in the Whig creed, that all the good in religion is with the Protestants and none with Roman Catholics, that a comparative estimate of national characters summed up in the phrase "as the Italian is to the Englishman, as the Hindoo is to the Italian, as the Bengal is to other Hindoos," etc., should not need explanations and qualifications. And why should a historical writer, all the time, be giving his personages good or bad marks for conduct, like a village schoolmaster?

seem

Such faults certainly exist. Macaulay had the temperament and the manner of an orator. He took, or rather he inherited, a view, he accepted it unquestioningly with enthusiasm, even with passion, he expressed that view in as absolute and as lucid a manner as possible. He had the method of an orator whose oration will be heard but once, and who must be positive in order to convince. This may be a merit in an advocate but it is a grave fault in a writer; and one would say that with such a fault it would be impossible for a man to be a great writer. But this very fault is proof of Macaulay's extraordinary talents; with his eloquence, with his immense fund of information, with his obvious honesty and his contagious enthusiasm, he is able to cover up and conceal what in any other writer would be fatal defects.

13

A man without doubts, without metaphysics, without high imagination, without dreams, cannot be one of the world's greatest writers; but Macaulay was a great English writer and occupies a place in which he not only has no rival, but no competitor who can be compared with him. CARL E. EGGERT.

MACAULAY, Trevelyan's Life of. The authoritative biography of Thomas Babington Macaulay is the Life and Letters by Sir George Otto Trevelyan. It is likely always to remain the chief source of information on account of the opportunity open to the biographer of knowing the subject thoroughly and of having free access to all available material. The writer is a nephew of Lord Macaulay, the son of Hannah More Macaulay, one of the historian's favorite sisters; from his earliest boyhood he knew his uncle intimately, and was 21 years old when Macaulay died in December 1859. Lady Trevelyan bequeathed to her son the task of writing his uncle's biography, a task that occupied many years, the completed work appearing in 1876.

The excellence of the work was recognized from the first. John Morley and William Ewart Gladstone approved it at once in extensive reviews, and succeeding years have de tracted not at all from their judgments. Mr. Morley commended "the skill and candor with which Mr. Trevelyan has executed a very delicate and difficult task." Excellent and abun dant materials and extensive knowledge do not necessarily ensure the production of a great biography. Nor do intimacy and strong affection; close relationship, indeed, is frequently the snare that prevents success. It is a tribute to Trevelyan's genius that he was not blinded by relationship or affection, nor overcome by the excess of material with which he had to deal. The biography exhibits careful selection. If now and then the loyal nephew is unable to see anything but good in the famous uncle, he nevertheless does not represent him as faultless; he admits that Macaulay had both limitations and prejudices. Trevelyan does not intrude himself unduly upon the narrative: he keeps our attention at all times chiefly upon Macaulay. Gladstone said that one of the greatest merits of Trevelyan's work is the fact that it has movement life. And Gladstone was right. The biography is no lifeless transcript of facts; it is a characterization and an interpretation, possessing all the qualities of the best artistic work-proper perspective, proportion, gradation. The style is attractive and contributes much to the delight of reading.

Trevelyan adopted the method employed and established by Boswell, that of allowing the subject to tell, "as far as possible," his own story. The Life of Macaulay is sometimes, to be sure, mentioned along with the 'Life of Johnson,' and there is no doubt that it has taken its place as one of the greatest English biographies. It is true, however, that with all of the advantages open to Trevelyan, he yet falls short of the success attained by Boswell. The 'Macaulay' contains no such record of conversation, no such variety of "exquisite personal touches," no such dramatic quality as the Johnson. Neither does it so freely portray faults and foibles. Falling somewhat short of the Life of Johnson' in sheer artistry, it surpasses Lockhart's 'Life of Scott' in movement and concen

tration. Morley was giving high yet just praise when he expressed the belief that this 'Life of Macaulay would be read throughout the world with a curiosity and an interest only to be surpassed by the success of Lord Macaulay's own writings. Consult the review of the 'Life' by John Morley (in the Edinburgh Review, Vol. 143); and that by Gladstone (in the Quarterly Review, Vol. 142). WALDO H. DUNN.

MCAULEY, Catherine, Irish founder and first superior of the Sisters of Mercy: b. Stormont House, County Dublin, Ireland, 29 Sept. 1787; d. Dublin, 11 Nov. 1841. In childhood she was adopted by a wealthy Protestant family who allowed her to remain in the church of her father, the Roman Catholic, and left her a large fortune which she wished to use for the benefit of the poor. She first erected a commodious house wherein might be taught a number of poor children, and where homeless young women might find lodging and board. This institution was opened in Dublin, 24 Sept. 1827, but the religious order was not established until 12 Dec. 1831. The members of the order take the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience; and the works which they perform are visiting the poor, sick and imprisoned, teaching, establishing hospitals, orphanages, homes for the friendless and other works of mercy. There are houses of her order in nearly all parts of the world. In the United States it comprises over 4,700 members. The order includes a college for young women, at Mount Washington, Md., a large number of academies, high and elementary schools and hospitals and orphanges in nearly every State in the Union. Consult Hartnett, Memoir of Mother McAuley); Murphy, Sketches of Irish Nunneries'; Member of Order of Mercy, Life of Catherine McAuley.' See MERCY, SISTERS OF.

MCAULEY, m'kä'li, "Jerry," New York City missionary: b. Ireland, in 1839; d. New York City, 18 Sept. 1884. He came to New York in 1852 and became a thief and prizefighter. In 1857 he was sent to Sing Sing prison on a false charge of highway robbery, but was pardoned in 1864. He returned to his evil life. In 1872, having reformed, he opened a mission, "The Helping Hand," in Water street, a criminal neighborhood in New York. In 1882 he opened another mission, "The Jerry McAuley Cremorne Mission" and in 1883 began the publication of Jerry McAuley's Newspaper. He appealed with the greatest success to outcasts considered beyond redemption. After his death the work was continued by Samuel H. Hadley and John H. Wyburn. In 1912 a modern sanitary building was erected on the site of the first mission in Water street. Consult Jerry McAuley: his Life and Work,' autobiography edited by the Rev. Robert M. Offord (New York 1885).

MACAW, mă'kä', name given to 15 or more species of large, long-tailed and strongflying parrots of gaudy coloring. They belong to the genus Ara, and are natives of the Western Hemisphere. They live on the mainland of America from Mexico to Paraguay, being especially abundant in Bolivia, where no fewer than seven (or nearly one-half) are found. They are also in Colombia and in Cuba. In the true macaws (Ara) the bony orbitical ring is complete and the lores (space between the eye

common

and the upper mandible) and, to a greater or less extent, the cheeks are naked. One of the handsomest and best known is the Blue and Yellow Macaw (Ara ararauna), which enjoys an extensive range in South America from Guiana in the east to Colombia in the west and from Panama to Bolivia. A little over 30 inches long it has the upper parts blue, the forehead olive-green and the ear-coverts, sides of neck, breast and abdomen yellow-orange, while the wings and long tail are blue above and golden olive-yellow below. This bird is seen in almost every zoological garden and is often kept in private houses. It possesses a fairly good temper and grows much attached to those who tend it; but, like all other macaws, it persists in violent screaming. Salmon-fishers use its feathers for the making of artificial flies. Larger and even more gorgeously plumaged is the great Red and Blue Macaw (Ara macao), which is mainly scarlet-red both above and below, but with the back and upper and lower tail coverts pale blue, as are the wingquills, while the shoulders and greater coverts are chrome yellow. The tail feathers are scarlet, the two central ones scarcely tipped with blue, the blue tips increasing in extent on the outer feathers, the three outermost being almost exclusively blue. The home of the Red and Blue Macaw extends from Mexico, through Central America, to Bolivia, Guiana and the Amazon Valley. It is usually seen in pairs, or in companies of pairs. It is also a bird in captivity. The Red and Green Macaw (Ara chloeoptera), ranging from Panama to Brazil, has a shorter tail than the other two and is not so frequently met with in zoological gardens. It does not extend north of Panama. It differs from the Red and Blue in being of a darker red, or crimson, and having the middle wing coverts olive-green instead of yellow. The Green Macaw (Ara milateris) is green throughout, except for the presence of a scarlet patch on the forehead and blue on back, rump, wings and tail. It is 27 inches long and ranges from Mexico to Peru and Bolivia,-the most northern of all in distribution. It is well known in captivity. Colonel Grayson and other writers explain that this macaw is called "guacamayo" by the natives of Mexico and Central America, because they believe that it descends to the ground only once a year, and this in the month of May, when it searches the ground for a very hard-shelled palm-nut of which it is fond. This rather surprising statement is probably substantially true, as there seems no other reason why it should ever alight on the ground, where it would be exposed to much more danger than in the tree-tops, where it finds abundant food the year round. The tree of this nut the Mexicans call Ava, a species of Nux vomica. Both the milky sap of the tree, as well as the fruit, are deadly poison to any other creature but this parrot. The shell is exceedingly hard, but the enormous bill and powerful jaws of the Guacamayo enables it to split the nut with ease. When migrating to some distance these birds pass at a great height, flying in pairs and uttering harsh and discordant cries.

The Hyacinthine Macaw (Ara hyacinthus) of the central provinces of Brazil is a splendid bird. It is about three feet long, the plumage being nearly uniform cobalt blue, relieved by

bright yellow skin about the eyes and at the base of the lower mandible and a black bill which is of enormous size. This appears to be a rare species, occurring, according to Riker, about the inland ponds in the dense forests of the interior, where it feeds chiefly upon the fruit of a palm peculiar to these localities. Some of these palm fruits are of extraordinary hardness, but these birds crush them to pulp by their bills. The nesting habits of the Hyacinthine differ from those of other macaws in that they excavate a hole in the river bank for their nest instead of placing it in a hollow tree. In Spixi Macaw (Cynopsittacus Spixi), of the province of Bahia, Brazil, the lores are naked and the general color also blue; but parts of the head are more or less grayish.

All macaws live well in captivity and are often kept chained to a perch. Few persons are acquainted with their strong, wonderful and graceful flight. They all scream harshly. They are gregarious and apparently monogamous, and lay two lustreless white eggs in nests in hollow trees. One of their characteristics is a long and graduated tail with the individual feathers tapering to a point and the middle pair always the longest. The bill is powerful and usually deeper than long. Consult Greene, William Thomas, Parrots in Captivity,' with notes (3 vols., London 1884-87); íd., Parrots in Captivity, colored illustration (London 1884); Lear, Edward, Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots (folio, London 1832); Page, Charles N., Parrots and Other Talking Birds: their Foods, Care and Training) (Des Moines 1906).

MACAW TREE (Acrocomia sclerocarpa), a palm of the same family as the cocoanut. It is a native of the West Indies and of the warm parts of America. It grows from 20 to 30 feet high with pinnated leaves from 10 to 15 feet long. The fruit yields oil of a yellowish hue, sweetish taste and with an odor like violets. This oil is about the consistency of butter. In the native regions of the tree the inhabitants use this oil as an emollient for affections of the joints. It is extensively imported and is used in the manufacture of toilet soaps as palm oil. The leaves yield a fine, soft fibre. In Guiana the tree is called Macoya, in Brazil it is called Macahuba, in Jamaica Grugru. In southern California this palm is cultivated as an ornamental tree.

MACAYO, mä-si-ō, Brazil. See MACEIO. MACBETH, or MACBETHAD, MacFinlegh, king of Scotland, who reigned from 1040 to 1057. The facts of his life, so far as known, are these. During the reign of Duncan he was "mormaer" of Moray by inheritance, and by his marriage with Gruoch, granddaughter of Kenneth IV. Duncan, in his attempt to subdue the independent chiefs of the north, was defeated in a battle with the Earl of Orkney and Shetland at Burghead, near Elgin in 1040; but was murdered at Pitgaveny, nine miles from the battlefield, by Macbeth, his general. By this means Macbeth became king, and, according to accounts, his reign was fairly successful. He was finally defeated in battle and slain by Malcolm Ceannmor, son of the murdered Duncan, at Lumphanan, Aberdeen (1057). The legends which gradually gathered round the name of Macbeth were collected by John of

Fordun and Hector Boece, reproduced by Holinshed in his 'Chronicle (1577) and made use of by Shakespeare for his great tragedy. These writers appear to have overlooked the excellent qualities of Macbeth as king, and regarded him with horror as a usurper. Consult Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings' (1862); Skene, Celtic Scotland' (1876-80), and Rhys, E., Celtic Britain' (3d ed., London 1904).

MACBETH. This play was not published until 1623, though it was probably written several years before Shakespeare's death. A reference to it in 1610 by Dr. Simon Forman, the probable reference to the accession of James the First (1603) that brought about the union of two crowns, and the proportion of rhyme, blank verse and prose, point to 1605-06 as the probable date. Because of its late publication the text is one of the most corrupt of Shakespeare's plays. It may have been taken down from the play as acted, or it may be a transcript of the author's manuscript which was in great part not copied from the original but written to dictation. Act 1, scene 2, and part of scene 3 may be an interpolation, but the Porter Scene, which was long considered to be the work of a collaborator, is now justified by reason of its dramatic contrast with the preceding scene and by the amazing felicity of such lines as, "go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire." With the exception of a few lines and scenes Macbeth is an example of amazing concentration it has neither underplot, nor, with the exception of the Porter Scene, such comic scenes as are found in nearly all of the other tragedies of Shakespeare. It is shorter by some thousand lines than any other tragedy and moves along with the swiftness of a tempest. The 20 years of history become nine days of dramatic time, and so swift is the passage of time that it seems but a few hours.

Shakespeare was indebted for the main events of the play to Holinshed's 'Chronicles of Scotland. The character and the story of Macbeth, partly historical and partly legendary, were drawn largely from this source, but the witches were the creation of Shakespeare's genius from the shadowy creatures of a crude folklore. There is just enough of the popular conception of supernatural creatures of evil to satisfy the demands of the age in which he lived, but he informed this popular and somewhat vulgar superstition with a moral significance suited to all ages alike. These invisible, unearthly creatures do not create the evil in Macbeth's mind; they only serve to bring into lifelike reality the evil that is already there. They are an embodiment of the same forces as the thunder, lightning, rain nature "red in tooth and claw" that constitute the background for the evil forces that are at play in this drama. While the minor characters of the play, and especially Banquo, are adequately presented, the interest centres in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, who while engaged in the same evil deeds yet reveal differences of temperament and character that afford the most significant dramatic contrasts. Lady Macbeth before the murder of Duncan displays firm, sharp, wiry, matter-offact intellect and energy of will; she becomes for the time being possessed by one thought, one ambition. She has no imagination to represent