shakspeare's writings. 261 



no desire to conceal the commission of a deed, which, 

 in his opinion, that guilt deserved, he is no less 

 moved by her dying falsehood than he was by her 

 living shame. They, who imagine Othello to be 

 any thing but " an honourable murderer" shame- 

 fully wrong the character and misunderstand the 

 author. Excepting in the case of a clandestine 

 marriage, this most splendid embodying exhibits 

 nothing which evinces any natural proneness to ig- 

 noble feelings or deeds. In the overwhelming fury 

 of his revenge, to which Othello is not less actuated 

 by a sense of pure justice than by a sense of his 

 particular wrongs, he only shews us how unbounded 

 would have been his love. That which should have 

 been the nutriment of " absolute content'' is made, 

 by the subtility of lago, to act as a consuming poi- 

 son — a fire of "aspick's tongues" — as milk, the es- 

 sential food of life, has a venomous quality when 

 introduced into the blood. 



Surely, the study of such characters as these, 

 bearing the evident impress of nature is eminently 

 qualified to awaken perception — to expand our pow- 

 ers of judging between man and man — to break 

 away those films of prejudice which entangle our 

 reason — which prevent the full grasp of our compre- 

 hension — which obstruct the full play of our candour 

 — and which retard the moral progress of society. 

 Characters of unmixed good or evil, — as they rarely 

 or never exist in the world, are of little use when 

 they appear as examples in the page of the poet or 

 novelist. Had Othello and Macbeth been more 

 studied in a philosophical and moral sense, many a 

 man would have been redeemed under the cultivation 

 of those gej'mes of virtue, to which, the world (in its 

 abhorrence for some dominant error) has given no 

 credit. Instead of that reckless condemnation which 

 Byron received at the hands of the thoughtless 

 million, the words, applied to his own Manfred, 

 would have been applied to him : — 



