I should like to know first where and when these two gifted individuals picked up all this information? The king himself had told the Queen, that same night, that he had _not sent_ to Macduff--but that he had heard "by the way" that he was not coming to the Banquet--and he only _learns_ the flight of Macduff after the Cauldron Scene--that is at end of it:-- "_Macbeth._ Come in, without there! _Enter Lenox._ _Lenox._ What's your Grace's will? _Macbeth._ Saw you the Weird Sisters? _Lenox._ No, indeed, my Lord. _Macbeth._ Infected be the air whereon they ride; And damn'd all those that trust them!--I did hear The galloping of horse: Who was't came by? _Lenox._ _'Tis two or three, my Lord, that bring you word_, MACDUFF IS FLED TO ENGLAND. _Macbeth._ FLED TO ENGLAND?" For an Usurper and Tyrant, his Majesty is singularly ill-informed about the movements of his most dangerous Thanes! But Lenox, I think, must have been not a little surprised at that moment to find that, so far from the _exasperated_ Tyrant having "_prepared for some attempt of war_" with England--he had not till then positively known that Macduff had fled! I pause, as a man pauses who has no more to say--not for a reply. But to be sure, Talboys will reply to anything--and were I to say that the Moon is made of green cheese, he would say--yellow-- TALBOYS. If of weeping Parmesan, then I--of the "cheese without a tear"--Double Gloster. NORTH. The whole Dialogue between Lenox and the Lord is _miraculous_. It abounds with knowledge of events that had not happened--and _could not_ have happened--on the showing of Shakspeare himself; but I do not believe that there is another man now alive who knows that Lenox and the "other Lord" are caught up and strangled in that _noose of Time_. Did the Poet? You would think, from the way they go on, that one ground of war, one motive of Macduff's going, is the murder of Banquo--perpetrated since he is gone off! TALBOYS. Eh? NORTH. Gentlemen, I have given you a specimen or two of Shakspeare's way of dealing with Time--and I can elicit no reply. You are one and all dumbfoundered. What will you be--where will you be--when I-- BULLER. Have announced "all my astounding discoveries!" and where, also, will be poor Shakspeare--where his Critics? NORTH.