ITS SUPPOSED PROPHETIC POWER. 
103 
Attend. So please you, it is true :—our thane is coming : 
One of my fellows had the speed of him ; 
Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more 
Than would make up his message. 
Lady M. 
Give him tending; 
[Exit Attendant. 
The raven himself is hoarse 
He brings great news. 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements.” 
On this passage Johnson remarks : “The messenger, says 
the servant, had hardly breath to make up his message ; 
to which the lady answers mentally, that he may well 
want breath ; such a message would add hoarseness to 
the raven. That even the bird whose harsh voice is 
accustomed to predict calamities, could not croak the 
entrance of Duncan but in a note of unwonted harsh¬ 
ness.” 
The preference which the raven evinces for “ sickly 
prey,” or carrion, is not unnoticed by the poet :— 
“ Now powers from home, and discontents at home, 
Meet in one line ; and vast confusion waits, 
As doth a raven on a sick-fallen beast, 
The imminent decay of wrested pomp.” 
King John , Act iv. Sc. 3. 
And again— 
