Not by a thousand Buller-power. Can you believe, Buller, that the word of the Third Witch, "that shalt be KING Hereafter," _sows_ the murder in Macbeth's heart, and that it springs up, flowers, and fruits with such fearful rapidity. BULLER. Why--Yes and No. NORTH. Attend, Talboys, to the words "supernatural soliciting." What "supernatural soliciting" to evil is there here? Not a syllable had the Weird Sisters breathed about Murder. But now there is much soliloquising--and Cawdor contemplates himself _objectively_--seen busy upon an elderly gentleman called Duncan--after a fashion that so frightens him _subjectively_--that Banquo cannot help whispering to Rosse and Angus-- "See how our partner's rapt!" TALBOYS. "My thought whose murder's yet fantastical." I agree with you, sir, in suspecting he must have thought of the murder. NORTH. It is from no leaning towards the Weird Sisters--whom I never set eyes on but once, and then without interchanging a word, leapt momentarily out of this world into that pitch-pot of a pond in Glenco--it is, I say, from no leaning towards the Weird Sisters that I take this view of Macbeth's character. No "sublime flashes of generosity, magnanimity, tenderness, and every exalted quality that can dignify and adorn the human mind," do I ever suffer to pass by without approbation, when coruscating from the character of any well-disposed man, real or imaginary, however unaccountable at other times his conduct may appear to be; but Shakspeare, who knew Macbeth better than any of us, has here assured us that he was in heart a murderer--for how long he does not specify--before he had ever seen a birse on any of the Weird Sisters' beards. But let's be canny. Talboys--pray, what is the meaning of the word "soliciting," "preternatural soliciting," in this Soliloquy? TALBOYS. Soliciting, sir, is, in my interpreting, "an appealing, intimate visitation." NORTH. Right. The appeal is general--as that _challenge_ of a trumpet--_Fairy Queen_, book III., canto xii., stanza 1-- "Signe of nigh battail or got victorye"-- which, all indeterminate, is notwithstanding _a challenge_--operates, and is felt as such. TALBOYS. So a thundering knock at your door--which may be a friend or an enemy. It comes as a summoning. It is more than internal urging and inciting of me by my own thoughts--for mark, sir, the rigour of the word "supernatural," which throws the soliciting off his own soul upon the Weirds. The word is really undetermined to pleasure or pain--the essential thought being that there is a searching or penetrating provocative--a stirring up of that which lay dead and still. Next is the debate whether this intrusive, and pungent, and stimulant assault of a presence and an oracle be good or ill? NORTH.