Languages & literature > Key to the drama

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as if, without giving you caufe to com¬
plain, they had a right to opprefs you.
‘ Macbeth, during thele contentions,
fteered with great dexterity between the
two parties. Cait briefs, fenfible to Mac¬
beth's capacity and influence when he had
a mind to employ them, appealed to have
fmothered every former refentment, and
laboured indefatigably to win him to his
interefl:: and what was furprizing, confider-
ing the atchievements he had already per¬
formed, it neither having entered into the
head of the King nor of Rofs to dignify
Macbeth with any honourable title, Caith-
nefs was the firft who had the merit of pro-
pofing in council, that Macbeth, as an ac¬
knowledgment of his great fervices, fhould
be created Thane of Murray.
1 It was on the fame day that Caithnefs
made that popular motion in council, that
Macbeth himfelf communicated to me the
account of a vifion he pretended to have
been vifited with the preceding evening.
‘ Ruminating (faid he) laft night in my
garden, upon the party diftradtions which
divide the Chiefs of this kingdom, without
ever confulting about any meafures that can
tend to make the fubjedts either happier,
or the nation itfelf lefs contemptible, I was,
by the gentle murmurs of that purling brook
which glides through it, and the foftening
even