Robber. I am a Thracian, and a soldier.

Alex. A soldier!—a thief, a plunderer, an assassin! the pest of the country; I could honor thy courage, but I must detest and punish thy crimes.

Robber. What have I done, of which you can complain?

Alex. Hast thou not set at defiance my authority; violated the public peace, and passed thy life in injuring the persons and properties of thy fellow-subjects?

Robber. Alexander! I am your captive I must hear what you please to say, and endure what you please to inflict. But my soul is unconquered; and if I reply at all to your reproaches, I will reply like a free man.

Alex. Speak freely. Far be it from me to take the advantage of my power, to silence those with whom I deign to

converse.

Robber. I must then answer your question by another. How have you passed your life?

Alex. Like a hero. Ask Fame, and she will tell you. Among the brave, I have been the bravest: among sovereigns, the noblest among conquerors, the mightiest.

Robber. And does not Fame speak of me too? Was there ever a bolder captain of a more valiant band? Was there ever - but I scorn to boast. You yourself know that I have not been easily subdued.

Alex. Still, what are you but a robber a base, dishonest

robber?

Robber. And what is a conqueror? Have not you, too gone about the earth like an evil genius, blasting the fair fruits of peace and industry; plundering, ravaging, killing, without law, without justice, merely to gratify an insatiable lust for dominion? All that I have done to a single district with a hundred followers, you have done to whole nations with a hundred thousand. If I have stripped individuals, you have ruined kings and princes. If I have burned a few hamlets, you have desolated the most flourishing kingdoms

and cities of the earth. What is, then, the difference, but that as you were born a king, and I a private man, you have been able to become a mightier robber than I?

Alex. But if I have taken like a king, I have given like a king. If I have subverted empires, I have founded greater. I have cherished arts, commerce, and philosophy.

Robber. I, too, have freely given to the poor what I took from the rich. I have established order and discipline among the most ferocious of mankind, and have stretched out my protecting arm over the oppressed. I know, indeed, little of the philosophy you talk of, but I believe neither you nor I shall ever atone to the world, for half the mischief we have done it.

Alex. Leave me. Take off his chains, and use him well. Are we then so much alike? Alexander like a robber? Let me reflect.

LESSON CXLVIII.

Soliloquy of Macbeth, when going to murder Duncan, King of Scotland. SHAKSPEARE.

Is this a dagger, which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:
I have thee not; and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind; a false creation,
Proceeding from a heat-oppressed brain ?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses
Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still;

And on thy blade, and dudgeon,* gouts † of blood,

Which was not so before. — There's no such thing;
It is the bloody business, which informs

Thus to mine' eyes. Now o'er the one half world,
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep; now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus, with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
The very stones prate of my whereabout,

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives;
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

I go,

and it is done; the bell invites me.

Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell,

That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.

SCENE.

LESSON CXLIX.

Dialogue from Macbeth.-SHAKSPEARE.

MALCOLM and MACDUFF, in the king's palace in England.
Enter ROSSE from Scotland.

Macduff. SEE, who comes here?

Malcolm. My countryman; but yet I know him not.
Macd. My ever gentle cousin, welcome hither.
Mal. I know him now: Good God, betimes remove

The means that make us strangers!

Rosse. Sir, Amen.

Macd. Stands Scotland where it did?

*Haft, handle.

+ Drops [gouttes, French]. "Gut for drop is

still used in Scotland by physicians."-Johnson. The diphthong ou in

gouts has the sound of oo, as in croup and group.

Rosse. Alas, poor country;

Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot

Be called our mother, but our grave: where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;

Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks, that rent the air,
Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy; the dead men's knell

Is there scarce asked, for who; and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying, or ere they sicken.

Macd. O, relation,

Too nice, and yet too true!

Mal. What is the newest grief?

Rosse. That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker;

Each minute teems a new one.

Macd. How does my

Rosse. Why, well.

wife?

Macd. And all my children?

Rosse. Well too.

Macd. The tyrant has not battered at their peace ?

Rosse. No they were well at peace, when I did leave them.

Macd. Be not niggard of your speech: how goes it?
Rosse. When I came hither to transport the tidings,

Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumor
Of many worthy fellows that were out;
Which was to my belief witnessed the rather,
For that I saw the tyrant's power afoot:
Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland
Would create soldiers, make our women fight,
To doff their dire distresses.

Mal. Be it their comfort,

We are coming thither: gracious England hath
Lent us good Siward, and ten thousand men ;
An older, and a better soldier, none

That Christendom gives out.

Rosse. Would I could answer

This comfort with the like! But I have words,

That would be howled out in the desert air,

Where hearing should not latch

Macd. What concern they?

them.

The general cause? or is it a free-grief, †

Due to some single breast?

Rosse. No mind, that's honest,

But in it shares some woe; though the main part
Pertains to you alone.

Macd. If it be mine,

Keep it not from me; quickly let me have it.

Rosse. Let not your ears despise my tongue forever,
Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound
That ever yet they heard.

Macd. Humph! I guess at it.

Rosse. Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughtered to relate the manner,
Were, on the quarry of these murdered deer,

To add the death of you.

Mal. Merciful Heaven!

What! man, ne'er pull your hat upon your brows;
Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak,
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
Macd. My children too?

Rosse. Wife, children, servants, all

That could be found.

Macd. And I must be from thence!

My wife killed too!

Rosse. I have said.

Mal. Be comforted:

* Catch.

† A grief that has a single owner.

This interjection, implying doubt and deliberation, and more correctly written hum, is sounded inarticulately, with the lips closed.