This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor-- If good, why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? It will be said, that the same "horrid suggestion" presents itself spontaneously to her, on the reception of his letter; or rather, that the letter itself acts upon her mind as the prophecy of the Weird Sisters on the mind of her husband, kindling the latent passion for empire into a quenchless flame. We are prepared to see the train of evil, first lighted by hellish agency, extend itself to _her_ through the medium of her husband; but we are spared the more revolting idea that it originated with her. The guilt is thus more equally divided than we should suppose, when we hear people pitying "the noble nature of Macbeth," bewildered and goaded on to crime, solely or chiefly by the instigation of his wife. It is true that she afterwards appears the more active agent of the two; but it is less through her preeminence in wickedness than through her superiority of intellect. The eloquence--the fierce, fervid eloquence with which she bears down the relenting and reluctant spirit of her husband, the dexterous sophistry with which she wards off his objections, her artful and affected doubts of his courage--the sarcastic manner in which she lets fall the word coward--a word which no man can endure from another, still less from a woman, and least of all from a woman he loves--and the bold address with which she removes all obstacles, silences all arguments, overpowers all scruples, and marshals the way before him, absolutely make us shrink before the commanding intellect of the woman, with a terror in which interest and admiration are strangely mingled. LADY MACBETH. He has almost supp'd: why have you left the chamber? MACBETH. Hath he ask'd for me? LADY MACBETH. Know you not, he has? MACBETH. We will proceed no farther in this business; He hath honored me of late, and I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people, Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, Not cast aside so soon. LADY MACBETH.