his truest friend to the dagger of an assassin, and finally to these adds the crime of suicide; yet nature is never once violated. Othello in the last scene of the play, pointed at with the finger of amazement and horror, is the same Othello, whom in the first act we had seen honoured by the Venetian senate as the prop and bulwark of the empire.

Iago himself informs us of the plan he is now preparing to execute. Thoroughly acquainted at once with the strength and weakness of his General's mind, he knew every avenue through which his devilish insinuations could be introduced with the greatest safety and the most perfect effect. I will, he says,

Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me,
For making him egregiously an ass,

And practising upon his peace and quiet

Even to madness.

His Adhesiveness, his Love of Approbation, his Selfesteem, and even his Conscientiousness, are all to be assailed, and every proof of Desdemona's infamy is to be made to carry that stamp which will render its impression irresistible to such a mind.

At the first step Cassio is brought into disgrace, and the detail of the event brings out into a strong light, some of those leading features in Othello's character to which we have been adverting. Love had not lulled to sleep, as we observed might have been predicated, the Cautiousness of the soldier even on the bridal night.

Good Michael, (he says to Cassio,) look you to the guard to-night: Let's teach ourselves that honourable stop,

Not to out-sport discretion.

By the machinations of Iago, however, the honest Lieutenant's wits are confounded by a too liberal sacrifice to Bacchus, and his choleric temper being thus unmuzzled, the court of guard becomes a scene of uproar and confusion. The alarum-bell is rung, and the inhabitants of a "town of war get wild, the people's hearts brimful of fear," thrown into a state of commotion. The scene, the third of the second act, which ensues, is finely descriptive of the disposition of mind we have assigned to Othello, illustrated alike in what

he himself utters, as in the crafty wording of Iago's explan

ations:

Oth. Hold, for your lives.

Iago. Hold, hold, lieutenant-sir, Montano-gentlemen, Have you forgot all sense of place and duty?

....

The general speaks to you; hold, hold, for shame!
Oth. Why, how now, ho! From whence ariseth this?
Are we turned Turks; and to ourselves do that
Which Heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?
For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl:
He that stirs next to carve for his own rage,
Holds his soul light; he dies upon his motion.-
Silence that dreadful bell, it frights the isle
From her propriety.-What is the matter?....
Honest Iago, that looks dead with grieving,
Speak, who began this? on thy love I charge thee.

Hitherto Self-esteem, Conscientiousness, Firmness, and the Benevolence which was diffused through his nature, keep his kindling Destructiveness in subjection; but when, on farther investigation, he cannot obtain the true account how "this foul rout began," his anger begins to break through all restraint, while his higher faculties, still struggling against its rising power, make him aware of the consequences which are about to ensue :

Oth. Now, by Heaven,

My blood begins my safer guides to rule;

And passion, having my best judgment collied,
Assays to lead the way: If I once stir,

Or do but lift this arm, the best of you
Shall sink in my rebuke.

1

Iago, being thus apparently driven to avow the truth, arranges his words with such a depth of cunning, as to make it appear to the Moor that his "honesty and love doth mince this matter, making it light to Cassio," when, in truth, he has told all, and infused into the General's mind suspicions of much more. He thus gains the double object of prepossessing the latter in his favour, while he utterly ruins Cassio, and by this means lays the ground-work of all his subsequent operations.

Conscientiousness, accompanied by Self-esteem, and stimulated by Destructiveness, manifest their presence in circumstances like those in which Othello is now placed, by the

stern and severe application of justice to punish so palpable a breach of duty as appears to have been committed; the more especially, since that duty had arisen from a command issued by himself. What follows, therefore, is in strict harThe faithful soldier and the valued mony with nature.

friend must submit to the stern decree of inflexible justice: Cassio, I love thee;

But never more be officer of mine.

The scene which follows soon after, wherein Iago first insinuates the damning suspicion into his General's mind, is perhaps the finest in the whole play. He does not begin by hinting at once that the intimacy of the Lieutenant with Desdemona exceeded propriety; but, as if merely expressing aloud a thought which had suddenly passed across his mind, he cries,

Ha! I like not that.

Oth. What dost thou say?

Iago. Nothing, my lord: or if-I know not what.
Oth. Was not that Cassio, parted from my wife?
Iago. Cassio, my lord? No, sure, I cannot think it,
That he would steal away so guilty like,

Seeing you coming

Othello himself is thus made to suggest the idea on which Iago had himself apparently just lighted; and in the dialogue that ensues, the crafty ancient puts his interrogatories with the air of one who desires simply, to satisfy his own mind. Othello's attention being thus arrested, and a gleam of suspicion darting across him, he becomes himself the inquisitor; and every word which Iago now utters has the appearance of being forced from him, and wears the complete aspect of friendship and truth:

Iago. My lord, you know I love you.

Oth. I think, thou dost;

And, for I know that thou art full of love and honesty,
And weigh'st thy words before thou giv'st them breath,—

Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more:

For such things, in a false disloyal knave,

Are tricks of custom; but, in a man that's just,
They're close denotements working from the heart
That passion cannot rule.

The complete confidence he reposed in Iago's friendship,.

in the honesty of his disposition, and in his zeal for his service, gave to every half-uttered and broken syllable the force of an appeal from Adhesiveness, Self-esteem, and Conscientiousness, in the one, to the same faculties in the other. But the Moor's love for his wife was too strong, and his trust in her virtue too well-founded, to give way to bare suspicions: 'Tis not to make me jealous,

To say-my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,
Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well;
Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.

But his Destructiveness, Self-esteem, and Firmness, all of which we have seen to maintain a powerful sway in his character, are strongly manifested in the following declaration : Think'st thou I'd make a life of jealousy

To follow still the changes of the moon

With fresh suspicions? No!-to be at once in doubt
Is once to be resolved.

Iago's object is now attained.

Othello has been made

himself broadly to express and entertain what his insidious enemy hardly ventures to breathe; the "iron has entered his soul," and is left corroding his very vitals.

But every obstacle is not yet removed. His conjugal affection, arising from his large Amativeness and Adhesiveness, still clings fondly to its object, and the paroxysm to which it leads suggests the possibility of his suspicions being false. The course of Conscientiousness being thus for a moment turned, reproaches him for having wronged a faithful wife; and Destructiveness, kindling within him at the thought of such baseness, he holds over the head of his insidious foe the sword of a just and terrible revenge, ready to stab him to perdition, if his information should prove false:

Villain! be sure thou prove my love a whore;
Be sure of it: give me the ocular proof;

Or, by the worth of mine eternal soul,

Thou had'st been better have been born a dog,
Than answer my waked wrath.

Immediately, however, there is a re-action of Conscien

tiousness, and he fears he has wronged the object of his threats.

VOL. I.-No IV.

2 M

Nay, stay-thou should'st be honest.

The current of his passion is now arrested, and flows towards another object. The Love and Conscientiousness which, a moment before, had been as a spur to urge him on to avenge a calumniated wife, now stimulate him to doom to assassination her supposed seducer, and to find "some swift means of death" for the "fair devil" herself.

In the dialogue which ensues here between Othello and Iago, we see those faculties in the mind of the former which we have noticed as being the most predominant in a state of alternate activity, according as his jealousy or affection gets the ascendant :

Oth. O, Iago!

Iago. And did you see the handkerchief?
Oth. Was that mine?

Iago. Yours, by this hand, &c.

Oth. I would have him nine years a killing: A fine woman! a fair woman! a sweet woman! Iago. Nay, you must forget that.

Oth. Ay, let her rot, and perish, and be damned to-night; for she shall not live: No, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand. O, the world hath not a sweeter creature, &c.

Iago. Nay, that's not your way.

Oth. Hang her! I do but say what she is :-So delicate with her needle !—An admirable musician! O, she will sing the savageness out of a bear!-Of so high and plenteous wit and invention !

Iago. She's the worse for all this.

Oth. O, a thousand, a thousand times:-And then of so gentle a condition!

Iago. Ay, too gentle.

Oth. Nay, that's certain: But yet the pity of it, Iago!-0, Iago, the pity of it, Iago!

Iago. If you are so fond over her iniquity, give her patent to offend; for, if it touch not you, it comes near nobody.

Oth. I will chop her into messes :-Cuckold me!

Iago. O, 'tis foul in her.

Oth. With mine officer !

Iago. That's fouler.

Oth. Get me some poison, Iago; this night :-I'll not expostulate with her, lest her body and beauty unprovide my mind again: this night, Iago.

We see here Combativeness and Destructiveness directed chiefly against Cassio, but also in a high degree against Des