demona. Then Amativeness, Adhesiveness, Ideality, and Veneration, come into play, and he enumerates all his wife's admirable qualities. Again, wounded Self-esteem and rekindling Destructiveness cry out for revenge, and thus the balance sways from side to side several times before it settles in the bloody resolution, which it requires all Iago's art to keep fixed and steady. It is this circumstance in the progress of jealousy,-this vibration from love to hatred and revenge, which induced Collins so to pourtray it in his inimitable Ode to the Passions :

Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fix'd,
Sad proof of thy distressful state;

Of differing themes the veering song was mix'd, And now it courted love, now raving called on hate. However strange the assertion may seem, it is in the works of the poet, rather than of the philosopher, we are to look for correct delineations of human nature and human feelings. The latter, ever wedded to some favourite hypothesis, saw facts through a medium which often entirely changed their aspect, and even distorted the information which was supplied by his own consciousness. The poet, on the other hand, describes what he has seen in others, or has experienced within himself, with no other view than to give it force and effect and the consequence has been hitherto, that, while the one has generally exhibited an "airy nothing,' the other has frequently produced the reality of life.

To return to Othello.-His Love and Pride are lacerated and torn by the wounds they have received, his Destructiveness is excited to revenge his wrongs, and Conscientiousness, deeply offended by the base return he has received for all the love, and friendship, and honour he had preserved so inviolate, lends even more than an approving voice to the deed he meditates. There is a speech occurs here, in which Othello, now contemplating the completeness of his misery, almost pourtrays his own character:

Had it pleased Heaven, (he says,)

To try me with affliction; had he rained

All kinds of sores, and shames, on my bare head;
Steeped me in poverty to the very lips ;

Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes;
I should have found in some part of my soul
A drop of patience: But (alas!) to make me
A fixed figure, for the time of scorn
To point his slow, unmoving finger at,-
O! O!

Yet could I bear that too; well, very well:
But there, where I have garner'd up my heart;
Where either I must live, or bear no life;
The fountain, from the which my current runs,
Or else dries up; to be discarded thence!
Or keep it as a cistern, for foul toads

To knot and gender in !-turn thy complexion there!
Patience, thou young and rose-lipp'd cherubim ;
Aye, there, look grim as hell!

Self-esteem and Firmness would enable him to bear any physical hardships. Of these, as we learn from his speech to the senate, he had already borne many, and was even proud of the endurance of them. Acquisitiveness being in all probability moderate, the idea of poverty carries with it nothing very terrible or alarming; and under its pressure he feels that Conscientiousness and Hope would supply him with the "drops of patience," of which, in such circumstances, he would stand in need:

But, alas! to make me
A fix'd figure, &c.

To a mind in which Self-esteem is a presiding sentiment, and where Love of Approbation is also large, contempt is much harder to bear than poverty. If conscious, however, that the contempt is undeserved, Conscientiousness may enable it to endure even the "world's dread laugh :"

Yet could I bear that too :

But there, where I have garner'd up my heart, &c.
to be discarded thence!

Or keep it as a cistern, for foul toads

To knot and gender in!-turn thy complexion there! There indeed the last drop of patience had been dried up. This large Amativeness and Adhesiveness, producing such a love for Desdemona as rendered his soul a chaos of unutterable darkness when its light was withdrawn, influenced, as is usual in the indications of his character, by his great Self-esteem, which comes out conspicuously in the last lines

of his speech, had sustained a laceration that was altogether intolerable. He has now parted with all that constituted the happiness of his life and made existence desirable; and the speech in which he does so is a beautiful and striking emanation from those propensities and sentiments which we have seen so predominant in his character:

O now, for ever,

Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner; and all quality,

Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
And O, you mortal engines, whose rude throats
Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone.

It is unnecessary to carry our analysis through all the scenes which precede the completion of what he has resolved. Iago continues to adduce his damning proofs, until no prop remains on which he can sustain a single doubt of his dishonour. His mind is a prey to a succession of paroxysms,. and the energy of his character seems but to drive him from misery to madness. Accordingly, when he enters Desdemona's chamber to execute the purpose with which he was fraught, Reason seems almost tottering on her throne. It is not alone, however, the deed he is about to commit which produces the dreadful agitation of mind under which he labours, but rather the shock his prevailing propensities and sentiments have sustained by the information he has received. The abruptness of the soliloquy here renders its meaning somewhat obscure, which Johnson has noticed and explained in the following words :-"I am here, says Othello in his mind, overwhelmed with horror. What is the reason of this perturbation? Is it want of resolution to do justice? Is it the dread of 'shedding blood? No. It is not the action that shocks me; but it is the cause,-it is the cause, my soul! Let me not name it to you, ye chaste stars, it is the cause." It is very probable that this is the true meaning Shakspeare meant to convey by these words; but we are inclined to

suspect Othello would have been deceiving himself had he really uttered them. His Benevolence and Adhesiveness, in the prospect of such a violation of the feelings they are calculated to generate, must have produced, independent of the cause which appeared to render such a violation necessary, a considerable share of his mental agony and agitation. In proof of this opinion, we see the influence of these very faculties staying his murderous arm, and half-subduing, for a moment, the dreadful frenzy which filled his soul:

O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade

Justice to break her sword !-One more, one more.
Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,
And love thee after.

And it is not till these traces of lingering affection have awakened his unhappy wife, and that the transient calm had been succeeded by the storm of rage which he excites by recurring to the evidences of her guilt, that the opposition of these restraining faculties is overcome, and the deed of horror is committed.-We have said, that Conscientiousness lent even more than an approving voice to the commission of this foul deed. Wounded Self-esteem and Destructive ness appear, indeed, to have been the feelings under whose influence the murder was first resolved on, and it is evident they had again the ascendency at the moment of its perpetration. During the whole period that intervened, however, the voice of Conscientiousness may be distinctly heard speaking in aid of his resolution. When Iago suggests to him to strangle her on the bed she had contaminated, he answers, Good. The justice of it pleases me.

Afterwards, in the chamber, when he says he will not shed her blood, he adds,

Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.
When he kisses her before the murder, he says,
Oh balmy breath, that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword.

And again, when he justifies the deed to Emilia,
O, I were damn'd beneath all depth in hell,
But that I did proceed upon JUST grounds
To this extremity.

No sooner are his eyes opened to the treachery that had been practised to deceive him, than the combination which produced his jealous fury changes its mode of action: Conscientiousness, Love of Approbation, and Self-esteem, are again in vigorous exercise; but it is only to tell him that a blind and headlong passion has made him the murderer of an innocent and affectionate wife; that henceforth he must regard his proud name as stained with the foulest of crimes; that the reputation of him that "was Othello" is lost for When the story of the handkerchief is explained, and Othello sees how completely he has been gulled by Iago, all his sentiments and propensities are turned against him, and against the deed he has committed. Self-esteem and Love of Approbation, tortured by the idea of his being so cheated, and so blind as not to see the cheat, are finely indicated in the exclamation he utters when every doubt has been removed.

ever.

O fool! fool! fool!

All his fondness for his wife revives, and what he had so lately persuaded himself was an act of justice, now wears the horrid features of foul and atrocious murder. Of what description his feelings now were, we may judge from the following words, in which his paroxysm exhausts itself:

O cursed, cursed slave !-Whip me, ye devils,
From the possession of this heavenly sight!
Blow me about in winds! roast me in sulphur!
Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!-
O Desdemona! Desdemona! dead?

He is reduced to a perfect wreck, and his faculties are in such a state of internal warfare, that even his usual valour forsakes him:

And again,

I am not valiant neither,

But every puny whipster gets my sword.

Man but a rush before Othello's breast,

And he retires.

Remembrance of the dreadful deed he has committed, sets in array against him every nobler sentiment of his soul. He feels that a stain has fallen on his reputation which no