he raised himself from the precarious and dependent situation of
a military adventurer to the first throne of Italy. To such a man
much was forgiven, hollow friendship, ungenerous enmity, violated
faith. Such are the opposite errors which men commit, when their
morality is not a science but a taste, when they abandon eternal
principles for accidental associations.

We have illustrated our meaning by an instance taken from
history. We will select another from fiction. Othello murders his
wife; he gives orders for the murder of his lieutenant; he ends
by murdering himself. Yet he never loses the esteem and affection
of Northern readers. His intrepid and ardent spirit redeems
everything. The unsuspecting confidence with which he listens to
his adviser, the agony with which he shrinks from the thought of
shame, the tempest of passion with which he commits his crimes,
and the haughty fearlessness with which he avows them, give an
extraordinary interest to his character. Iago, on the contrary,
is the object of universal loathing. Many are inclined to suspect
that Shakspeare has been seduced into an exaggeration unusual
with him, and has drawn a monster who has no archetype in human
nature. Now we suspect that an Italian audience in the fifteenth
century would have felt very differently. Othello would have
inspired nothing but detestation and contempt. The folly with
which he trusts the friendly professions of a man whose promotion
he had obstructed, the credulity with which he takes unsupported
assertions, and trivial circumstances, for unanswerable proofs,
the violence with which he silences the exculpation till the
exculpation can only aggravate his misery, would have excited the
abhorrence and disgust of the spectators. The conduct of Iago
they would assuredly have condemned; but they would have