The "start" shows that the spark has caught—it has fallen into a tun of gunpowder.
TALBOYS.
The touch of Ithuriel's spear.
NORTH.
May we not say, then, that perhaps the Witches have shown no more than this—the Fascination of Contact between Passion and Opportunity?
SEWARD.
To Philosophy reading the hieroglyphic; but to the People what? To them they are a reality. They seize the imagination with all power. They come like "blasts from hell"—like spirits of Plague, whose breath—whose very sight kills.
"Within them Hell
They bring, and round about them; nor from Hell
One step, no more than from themselves, can fly."
The contagion of their presence, in spite of what we have been saying, almost reconciles my understanding to what it would otherwise revolt from, the suddenness with which the penetration of Macbeth into futurity lays fast hold upon Murder.