This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

[135]

whether he were the most hardened monster that ever outraged humanity, or had remained as loyal a subject as ever received his Sovereign under his roof. Macbeth, in the circumstances in which he finds himself, cannot be expected to pay much attention to the account of the roughness of the night, or to he willing to keep up this conversation:[1] but, on this occasion, his timidity no more betrays his crime to Lenox, than it does by and by to his guests at the banquet, when, after the assassination of Banquo, he affects to complain of his absence from the feast, that he may

  1. Remarks, p. 34.