But night in the goblin-land, where Dick found himself suddenly deserted, with fantastic forms swaying in the lazy wind, would have had terrors for the most constant mind; terrors such as filled the soul of MacBeth, when Birnam wood came marching to Dunsinane.

He called Macbeth by name, and comforted him against conspiracies, saying, that he should never be vanquished, until the wood of Birnam to Dunsinane-Hill should come against him.

Besides this, the hollow promises of the witches had filled him with false confidence, and he remembered the sayings of the spirits, that none of woman born was to hurt him, and that he was never to be vanquished till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane, which he thought could never be.

When, upon a day, there came a messenger to him, pale and shaking with fear, almost unable to report that which he had seen: for he averred, that as he stood upon his watch on the hill, he looked towards Birnam, and to his thinking the wood began to move!

He was not to fear, till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane: and now a wood did move!

When the besieging army marched through the wood of Birnam, Malcolm, like a skilful general, instructed his soldiers to hew down every one a bough and bear it before him, by way of concealing the true numbers of his host.

Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed to me who wast never born of woman, yet will I try the last."

I have had great romantick satisfaction in seeing Johnson upon the classical scenes of Shakspeare in Scotland; which I really looked upon as almost as improbable as that "Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane[930].

[930] 'Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane.'

Accordingly, he left his home and went north, to Siward, who was engaged in war with Macbeth, and for aught we know he may have helped to bring great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill.

Sometimes Jay punctured her first ticket at a time when you and I are asleep, and when the coster-barrows, waving with ferns and fuchsias, move up the Strand like Birnam Wood moving to Dunsinane.

Before Mr. P. came I usually went off on my forenoon walk alone, unless the children trooped after, and came home a miniature Birnam wood, with all sorts of things except creeping things and flying fowl.

But the truly pathetic part of it was one's consciousness that what Mr. Ruskin did we should all have done, and that not all the trees in Birnam Wood and the Forest of Arden combined would have hidden the multitude of brother-clubmen who sought to avoid the narrator.

375; jealousy of the manufacturers, ii. 459, n. 1; Old Square, ii. 456, n. 2; rapid growth of population, iii. 450; riots of 1791, i. 86, n. 3; iv. 238, n. 1; Soho, ii. 459; St. Martin's Church, i. 90, n. 3; Stork Hotel, ii. 456, n. 2; Swan Tavern, i. 85, n. 3. BIRNAM-WOOD, iii.

Bring me no more reports, let them fly all, Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane, I cannot taint with fear.

I pull in resolution; and begin To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth: "Fear not till Birnam wood Do come to Dunsinane," and now a wood Comes toward Dunsinane.

Near Dunkeld, Birnam Hill lifts its round, dark, bushy head to the height of over 1,500 feet, grand and grim, as if it wore the bonnet of Macbeth and hid his dagger beneath its tartan cloak of firs.

"Birnam Wood," which Shakespeare's genius has made one of the immortals among earthly localities, was the setting of that hill in his day, and perhaps centuries before it.

At a distance, their round moving summits looked like the umbrageous tops of trees, and we might fancy as they approached, the lower portion being hidden by ridges of sand, that "Birnam Wood was coming to Dunsinane.

BIRNAM, a hill near Dunkeld, in Perthshire; contains part of a forest mentioned in "Macbeth." BIRON, a madcap lord in "Love's Labour's Lost.