the best sense, with the slight change of one letter, me for my-monosyllables always pronounced alike in oldfashioned colloquial English, unless my is specially emphatic. According to this reading, the Moor, remarking that he had reached that age when, (in Hamlet's phrase,) "the heyday of the blood is tame, and waits on judgment," says that he asks this favour, not in indulgence to the heat of youthful passion (which had passed away in him) nor for his own satisfaction, but to indulge the wishes of his bride. Proper, for own, was of common use, (as the Duke in this scene says, " though our proper son;") and affects for passions may be found in all the poets of that age.

ACT II.-SCENE I.

"Observe in how many ways Othello is made, first, our acquaintance, then our friend, then the object of our anxiety, before the deeper interest is to be approached."-COLERIDGE.

Stevens, and others, have substituted "distinct satisfaction," which also gives a reasonable sense, and may have been so written originally, for to me it is manifest that there is some typographical error in the old copies. Mr. Collier, however, retains the folio reading, and thus explains it:-"Nothing can be clearer, allowing only a little latitude of expression. Othello refers to his age, elsewhere several times alluded to, and 'in my defunct and proper satisfaction' is merely 'in my own dead satisfaction' or gratification; the youthful passions, or 'young affects, being comparatively 'defunct' in him."

"For she is with me"-i. e. Because she is with me. The folio substitutes When for "For" of both the quartos.

"- and active instruments" - Our text is from the two quartos, agreeing. In the folio, 1623, seel is printed for "foil;" offic'd for "active;" instrument for "instruments;" and estimation for "reputation."

"-if thou hast eyes to see"-The quarto, 1622, alone reads, "have a quick eye to see."

"I have looked upon the world for four times seven years" It is clear that Shakespeare has fixed Iago's age at twenty-eight, since he makes him distinguish between the whole time he had looked upon the world, and the time since he could "distinguish between a benefit and an injury." The common notion of careless readers is otherwise; and the actors who have been most celebrated in the part, from Quin to Cooke, are understood to have represented him as at least a middle-aged man. Yet the incident of Iago's youth seems to add much to the individuality and intensity of the character. An old soldier of acknowledged merit, who after years of service, sees a young man like Cassio placed over his head, has not a little to plead in justification of deep resentment, and in excuse, though not in defence of his revenge: such a man may well brood over imaginary wrongs. The caustic sarcasm and contemptuous estimate of mankind are at least pardonable in a soured and disappointed veteran. But in a young man, the revenge is more purely gratuitous, the hypocrisy, the knowledge, and dexterous management of the worst and weakest parts of human nature, the recklessness of moral feeling, even the stern, bitter wit, intellectual and contemptuous, without any of the gayety of youth, are all precocious and peculiar; separating Iago from the ordinary sympathies of our nature, and investing him with higher talent and blacker guilt.

"-as luscious as LOCUSTS--The old and still the popular name for the ceratonia, or carob, an evergreen of the south of Europe, bearing sweet black pods. The Mediterranean commerce had made the fruit familiar enough to a London audience, and the comparison was well suited to the mouth of an Italian. This is more probable than the opinion of some of the annotators that there is an allusion to the Baptist's food of "locusts and wild honey."

"-defeat thy favour"-Means, alter thy appearance, or, more strictly, thy countenance.

"Traverse"-An ancient military word of command. Bardolph gives it to Wart in HENRY IV.

with high and monstrous MANE."-In the folio, this word is spelt maine; in the quarto, mayne. Most modern editions read 'main.' This gives no tolerable sense, "the surge with high and monstrous main sea!" We have therefore adopted the reading of Collier and Knight, the latter of whom well observes :"In the high and monstrous mane we have a picture which was probably suggested by the noble passage in Job: Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? One of the biblical commentators upon this passage remarks, that Homer and Virgil mention the mane of the horse: but that the sacred author, by the bold figure of thunder, expresses the shaking of the mane, and the flakes of hair which suggest the idea of lightning. The horse of Job is the war-horse, who swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage;' and when Shakespeare pictured to himself his mane wildly streaming, 'when the quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield,' he saw an image of the fury of the wind-shak'd surge,' and of its very form; and he painted it with high and monstrous mane." "

"- cast water on the burning bear."

The "burning bear" is the constellation near the pole. The next line alludes to the star Arctophylax, which word signifies the guard of the bear.

"A VERONESE." This is printed in the quarto Veronessa, and in the folios Verrennessa. There is no doubt that this means a Veronese, with the final e accented, to give the Italian sound; just as Spenser has "Albanese;" but the doubt is, whether it is Cassio who is called a Veronese, or the ship. Warton, Malone, and the later editors, prefer the latter, as it is certain that Cassio is elsewhere made a Florentine; and they maintain the vessel to be called a Veronese, (as we now say of ships, an American, a Dane, a Hamburgher,) because fitted out by Verona, a subject city of Venice. On the other hand, the old editions agree in punctuating as here; and Cassio is called a Veronese, either from a slip of the poet's memory, or, if the reader prefer it, from a mistake of the relater. I have, with Collier, chosen to retain the original punctuation, without being very confident that Warton (who seldom errs) is not right here.

"Thanks you, the valiant of the warlike isle." The reading of the quarto is

'Thanks to the valiant of this worthy isle."

Many editors give us a mixed reading.

"- does bear all excellency"-The folio reads, "does tire the ingeniuer," which has been taken for inginer. Our text is that, not only of the quarto, 1622, but of the quarto, 1630. By the "essential vesture of creation" the poet means her outward form, which he in another place calls "the muddy vesture of decay." If the reading of the folio be adopted, the meaning would be this-She is one who excels all description, and in real beauty, or outward form, goes beyond the power of the inventive pencil of the artist. Fleckno, in his Discourse on the English Stage, 1664, speaking of painting, mentions "the stupendous works of your great ingeniers." And Ben Jonson, in his Sejanus, act iv., sc. 4:

'No, Silius, we are no good ingeniers,
We want the fine arts.'

An ingenier or ingeniuer undoubtedly means an artist or painter; and is perhaps only another form for engineer, anciently used for any kind of artist or artificer. "If this poor trash of Venice, whom I TRACE.""Trace" seems used to indicate some species of confinement (like a trace applied to horses) in order to keep back a dog that is too quick in hunting.

"in the RANK GARB"-Having puzzled Stevens and Malone, is merely-in the right down, or straight forward fashion. In AS YOU LIKE IT we have "the right butterwoman's rank to market." And in KING LEAR, Cornwall says of Kent in disguise, that he "doth affect a saucy roughness, and constrains the garb (i. e. assumes the fashion) quite from his nature." Gower says of Fluellen, in KING HENRY V.:-" You thought, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel." The folio reads " in the right garb."-SINGER.

"Knavery's plain face," etc.-An honest man acts upon a plan, and forecasts his designs; but a knave depends upon temporary and local opportunities, and never knows his own purpose, but at the time of execution.-JOHNSON.

SCENE III.

they have given me a ROUSE already"-Respecting the word "rouse," see the King's "rouse" in HAMLET.

"A life's but a span" -The folio reads "Oh man's life's but a span."

"King Stephen was a worthy peer" -The ballad from which these two stanzas are quoted is to be found entire in Percy's "Reliques." In Camden's " Remains" is a story respecting the breeches of William Rufus; but there the king complained, not that his breeches were "all to dear," but that they did not cost enough.

"If drink rock not his cradle" -That is, if he have no drink he'll keep awake while the clock strikes two rounds, or four-and-twenty hours. Chaucer and other old writers use "horologe" familiarly.

"Diablo"-An exclamation employed by other dramatists. It is the Spanisky title of the devil.

"And passion, having my best judgment COLLIED,"Blackened, discoloured. The quarto reads cooled; evidently a mistake.

"Probal"-Thus, all the old editions. There may be (says Stevens) such a contraction of the word probable, but I have not met with it in any other book. "When devils will the blackest sins put on,

They do suggest at first with heavenly shows." The term "put on" is here and in various other places used in the sense of urge on. The meaning is, when devils mean to instigate men to commit the most atrocious crimes, they prompt or tempt at first with appearances of virtue.-MALONE.

"That she REPEALS him"-i. e. recalls him; its etymological sense. To repeal a statute is to recall it.

ACT III.-SCENE I.

"- I never knew

A Florentine more kind and honest."

Cassio does not mean to call Iago a Florentine, since he was a Venetian, as is evident from several parts of this tragedy, but to say that he, Cassio, never knew even one of his own countrymen more kind and honest.

SCENE III.

"I'll watch him TAME."-Hawks and other birds were tamed by being kept from sleep. Thus, in Cartwright's " Lady Errant"

"Not now, sweet DESDEMON."-In five passages of this play, in the folio edition, Desdemona is called Desdemon, and here in the second quarto. The abbreviation was not a capricious one, nor introduced merely for the sake of rhythm. It is clearly used as an epithet of familiar tenderness. In the present instance Othello playfully evades his wife's solicitation with a rarelyused term of endearment. In act iv. scene ii., it comes out of the depth of conflicting love and jealousy

Ah! Desdemon, away, away, away!" In act v. scene ii., it is used upon the last solemn occasion when he speaks to her,

'Have you pray'd to-night, Desdemon?" And, lastly, it is spoken by him when he has discovered the full extent of his guilt and misery :

O Desdemon! dead? Desdemon!"

The only other occasion in which it is employed is by her uncle Gratiano

Poor Desdemon!"

We have no warrant for rejecting such a marked peculiarity.-KNIGHT.

"Save that, they say, the wars must make examples Out of her best."

That is, the severity of military discipline must not spare the best men of the army, when their punishment may afford a wholesome example.-JoHNSON. “Her best," a personification of war, changing the number.

"Or stand so MAMMERING on."-One quarto has muttering. The word in the meaning of suspense, hesitating is used by old writers, as in Lyly's "Euphues"-" Neither stand in a mammering, whether it be best to depart or not."

"Excellent WRETCH!"-The meaning of the word wretch is not generally understood. It is still, in some parts of England, a term of the softest and fondest tenderness. It expresses the utmost degree of amiableness, joined with an idea, which perhaps all tenderness includes, of feebleness, softness, and want of protection. "Excellent wretch" expresses "Dear, harmless, helpless excellence." -JOHNSON.

There is a singular coincidence of phrase between these lines and two in a Latin poein of Buchanan's :

Cesset amor, pariter cessabunt foedera rerum,
In Chaos antiquum, cuncta elementa ruent.'

"By HEAVEN, he echoes me"-Thus, the quarto, 1622: the folio, "Alas! he echoes me;" and the quarto, 1630, "Why dost thou echo me?"

"They are close DELATIONS"-The word "denotements" stands in the quarto, 1622, for delations of the folio and of the quarto, 1630. Johnson conjectures "delations" are accusations or informations; and in this sense Ben Jonson used the verb to delate in his "Volpone,"

Yet, if I do not, they may delate
My slackness to my patron.'

I have preferred the reading which gives a clear sense without the aid of conjectural correction.

"Keep LEETS, and LAW-DAYS"-Leets and law-days are synonymous terms. "Leet (says Jacob, in his Law Dictionary) is otherwise called a law-day." They are there explained to be courts, or meetings of the hundred, "to certify the king of the good manners, and government, of the inhabitants," and to inquire of all offences that are not capital. The Poet's meaning then is-Who has a breast so pure but that foul thoughts and surmises will not sometimes intrude, hold a session there as in a lawful court, and sit judicially by the side of lawful thoughts?

"It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth make
The meat it feeds on."

The old copies have "mock." The correction was made by Sir T. Hanmer. I have not the smallest doubt that Shakespeare wrote "make," and have, therefore, inserted it in the text. The words "make" and "mocke" (for such was the old spelling) are often confounded in these plays.- MALONE.

I have received Hanmer's emendation: because "to mock" does not signify "to loathe;" and because, when Iago bids Othello "beware of jealousy, the greeney'd monster," it is natural to tell why he should beware; and, for caution, he gives him two reasons :that jealousy often creates its own cause, and that, when the causes are real, jealousy is misery. -JOHNSON.

Passages, from Shakespeare and other writers, are quoted in support of this reading. The chief is what Emilia says of jealousy, in the last scene of this act:""Tis a monster, begot upon itself, born on itself."

This emendation was first made by the poet Southern, in manuscript, in his folio copy, and all his emendations are of great authority, as he approached nearer Shakespeare's age than any other of his commentators, was a native of the same town, and had much poetic taste and feeling. Collier has no difficulty in regarding mock as a mere error of the press. Yet Stevens defends and Knight retains the original reading, which is thus explained-"which doth play with, half receive and half reject, the meat it feeds on." Stevens takes it as an allusion to the tiger or the cat, that sports with its victim on which it feeds.

"Exsufflicate"-Todd, in his edition of Johnson's Dictionary, says that "exsufflicate" may be traced to the low Latin exsufflare, to spit down upon, an ancient form of exorcising, and figuratively to spit out in abhorrence or contempt. Exsufflicate may thus signify contemptible. Richardson, in his Dictionary, dissents from this: considering the word "not improbably a misprint for exsufflate, i. e. efflate or efflated, puffed out; and, consequently, exaggerated, extravagant."

"She did deceive her father, marrying you :

And, when she seem'd to shake, and fear your looks,
She lov'd them most."

This and the following argument of Othello ought to be deeply impressed on every reader. Deceit and falsehood, whatever conveniences they may for a time promise or produce, are in the sum of life obstacles to happiness. Those who profit by the cheat distrust the deceiver, and the act by which kindness was sought, puts an end to confidence. The same objection may be made, with a lower degree of strength, against the imprudent generosity of disproportionate marriages. When the first heat of passion is over, it is easily succeeded by suspicion that the same violence of inclination which caused one irregularity, may stimulate to another; and those that have shown that their passions are too violent for their prudence, will, with very slight appearances against them, be censured as not very likely to restrain them by their virtue.-JOHNSON.

" - if I do prove her haggard, Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings.” A "haggard" is a wild, and, as Johnson truly says, an unreclaimed hawk. "Jesses" were short straps of leather tied about the foot of a hawk, by which she was held on the fist. The falconers (Johnson observes) let fly the hawk against the wind: if she flies with the wind behind her, she seldom returns. If, therefore, a hawk was for any reason to be dismissed, she was let down the wind, and from that time shifted for itself, and preyed at fortune.

"Your NAPKIN."-" Napkin" and handkerchief were synonymous. The expression was used as recently as the date of the Scotch proceedings in the Douglas cause, in which a lady is described as constantly dressed in a hoop, with a large napkin on her breast. A pockethandkerchief is still a pocket-napkin in Scotland, and the north of England.

"Be not ACKNOWN On't"--The quarto "Be not you known of't." The more poetical word, acknown, is

used in a similar manner in the "Life of Ariosto," subjoined to Sir John Harrington's translation of it, 1607: "Some say he was married to her privily, but durst not be acknown of it."

"Not poppy, nor MANDRAGORA"--The "mandragora," or mandrake, has a sorporific quality; and the ancients (says Stevens) used it when they wanted an opiate of the most powerful kind. "Ow'dst" is ownedest, a sense of the verb "owe" of which we have many examples.

"The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife." Warton (still known in literature by the familiar name he bore in his life, as Tom Warton) has left a commentary on this line, in which his boy-like love of the drum and fife, gives zest to his antiquarian knowledge. He tells us, that Shakespeare paints from the life: the drum and fife (accompanying each other) being in his age used by the English soldiery, and common throughout Europe. The fife, as a martial instrument, was then long discontinued in England, until it was revived by the Duke of Cumberland (the victor of Culloden) in 1747, since which it became general in the English service. It was at that time borrowed from the German or Dutch allies, and its use is of great antiquity on the continent. Warton traces his "beloved fife" back to the siege of Paria in 1525, and follows the "drommes and viffleurs" through the military drill, feasts, masques, and processions, to Philip and Mary, in 1554. It was formerly used in the French service, especially by the Swiss regiments; but since the revolution, it has gone out of use in France. M. de Vigny, in his spirited translation of this passage, gives only the drum; which Knight attributes to "the fife being unknown to the French in the present day." It is more probably because fifre is less poetical to a French ear, than even the shrill sounding word fife is to us.

A dieu, beaux bataillons aux panaches flottants;
A dieu, guerre, adieu, toi dont les jeux eclatants
Font de l'ambition une vertu sublime!

A dieu donc, le coursier que la trompette anime,
Et ses hennissements et les bruits du tambour,
L'etendard qu'on deploie aves des cris d'amour!"

RUDE throats." -The two quartos read "wide throats;" and as Milton has spoken of the "deepthroated" thunder of artillery, this may have been the author's original phrase. Yet rude seeins to me so much in unison with Shakespeare's characteristic of giving human expression to inanimate objects, that I conjecture this to be an emendation of his own in the later copies-wide having been the first epithet, descriptive and appropriate, but unimpassioned.

"My name, that was as fresh." -This speech is contained only in the last quarto and the folios; the latter having the reading here given, the quarto substituting "her name." This last is now the common reading, having been preferred by all the editors except Rowe, Malone, and Knight. Either reading gives a clear and forcible sense; but the passion of the scene, to my feeling of it, is with the folios. As Othello's name, according to the usual unjust estimate of the world, would be sullied by his wife's infidelity, his intense feeling of personal honour is deeply wounded, even while he still doubts as to her real guilt;

'I think my wife be honest, and think she is not.-
Would I were satisfied.'

and he bursts into ungovernable passion at the thought of his disgrace-"I'll not endure it."

"Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell !” Thus the folios. The two quartos concur in reading "thy hollow cell;" which Collier, upon the weight of their concurring authority, with several other editors, as a matter of taste, prefers and adopts. I think the first reading more poetic and appropriate: "hollow," as applied to cell, strikes me, as it did Warburton, to be unmeaning; but "the hollow hell" is in consonance with the feeling of the speaker, and the poetic phraseology of the age. Milton has repeatedly adopted and applied it-"the hollow deep of hell resounds," and "hell's concave;" and in the old translations of Homer and Seneca, which Shakespeare must have read, the same phrase is used. Besides, the context seems to lead to this very word. Othello in the preceding line says

'All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven'and the antithesis of Revenge arising from hell, was naturally suggested."

"Ne'er FEELS retiring ebb"-The folios (followed in the Pictorial edition) had it, "Ne'er keeps retiring ebb." Pope altered keeps to "feels." This conjecture was happy, as is proved by the quarto, 1630, which was exactly the same word, "Ne'er feels retiring ebb." The later folios repeat keeps, but Southern altered the word, in his copy of the edition of 1685, to knows.

From the word "Like" to " marble heaven," inclusively, is not found in the quarto, 1622. Pope thinks that it would be better omitted, as an unnatural excursion in this place. Shakespeare probably derived his knowledge upon this subject from the second book and ninety-seventh chapter of Pliny's Natural History, 1601:-" And the sea Pontus evermore floweth and runneth out into Propontis; but the sea never retireth backe againe within Pontus." Mr. Edwards conceived this simile might allude to Sir Philip Sidney's device, whose impress Camden, in his "Remains" says, was the Caspian Sea, with this motto-Sine Reflexu.

There is also a continual flow of the tide at Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean "ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on" to the Atlantic.

"- shall be in me REMORSE."-Stevens and others have given numerous quotations from old English writers, showing remorse to have been anciently used by them for pity, compassion; as in Hollingshed-" to have remorse and compassion upon others' distresses." lago must therefore be understood as saying-Let him command any bloody work, and to obey will not be an act of cruelty, but of compassion for his wrongs.

"My friend is dead."-It is remarkable how the impress of Shakespeare's mind can be traced through all English poetry and eloquence, even where one would least expect to find it. In Lord Clive's defence of his conduct in India, a speech famous in the last generation, and ascribed to Wedderburn, is this passage, evidently suggested by the above words: "Ali Kawn was my friend, whom I loved; but the service of my country required that he should die-and he was dead."

SCENE IV.

"Full of CRUZADOES"-A Portuguese gold coin, so called from the cross stamped upon it.

" But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts." Warburton, with his accustomed ambitious ingenuity, maintains this to be a satirical allusion to the bloody hand borne on the arms of the order of baronets, first created by James I. This is approved by the high authority of Johnson, Douce, and Judge Blackstone. Stevens, and other later editors, reject it, and apparently with reason. This creation was not until ten years after the now ascertained date of the first performance of OTHELLO; the passage therefore must have been added to the first draft of the play. This is possible; as we know that many other small and some important alterations and additions were made. Yet it is hardly possible that Shakespeare would have introduced so obvious an anachronism as making Othello refer to the last

heraldic innovation of the day; and this for the purpose of a needless allusion, offensive to the court and the new order.

"That handkerchief."-Mrs. Jameson (a much better judge in this, as well as in many other matters, than the male critics) observes, that this handkerchief was one of those embroidered handkerchiefs, which were as fashionable in Shakespeare's time as in our own, it being described in the Italian as "lavorato alla morisco;" which, she says, " is the pattern we now call arabesque. This slight description suggested to the poetical fancy of Shakespeare one of the most exquisite and characteristic passages in the whole play." In the last scene of the play, Othello says, that this was "an antique token, my father gave my mother." This has been noted as an oversight; but Stevens considers it as a fresh proof of the Poet's art :-"The first account was purposely ostentatious, in order to alarm his wife the more. When he again mentions it, the truth was sufficient."

"- in a more continuate time."-One quarto, convenient. Continuate time is-time uninterrupted.

"I must be circumstanc'd"-i. e. I must yield to cir

"-hypocrisy against the devil"-Means, hypocrisy to cheat the devil. As common hypocrites cheat men, by seeming good and yet living wickedly, these men would cheat the devil, by giving him flattering hopes, and at last avoiding the crime which he thinks them ready to commit.-JOHNSON.

"CONVINCED or SUPPLIED them" i. e, overcome or satisfied them. This is an ordinary sense of "convince;" as, in MACBETH, a malady is said " to convince the assay of art."

"- without some INSTRUCTION."-Warburton would read induction. Johnson thus explains "instruction :” "There has always prevailed in the world an opinion, that when any great calamity happens at a distance, notice is given of it to the sufferer by some dejection or perturbation of mind, of which he discovers no external cause. This is ascribed to that general communication of one part of the universe with another which is called sympathy and antipathy; or to the secret monition, instruction, and influence of a superior Being, which superintends the order of nature. Othello says, 'Na

ture could not invest herself in such shadowing passion

without instruction.' 'It is not words that shake me thus.' This passion, which spreads its clouds over me, is the effect of some agency more than the operation of words; it is one of those notices which men have of unseen calamities."

Sir Joshua Reynolds says-"Othello alludes only to Cassio's dream, which had been invented and told him by Iago. When many confused and very interesting ideas pour in upon the mind all at once, and with such rapidity that it has not time to shape or digest them, if it does not relieve itself by tears, (which we know it often does, whether for joy or grief,) it produces stupefaction and fainting.

"Othello, in broken sentences and single words, all of which have a reference to the cause of his jealousy, shows, that all the proofs are present at once to his mind, which so overpowers it that he falls into a trance, the natural consequence."

"-in a patient List" i. e. in a patient limit or boundary.

"Fitchew"-The polecat; apparently a cant phrase for a courtesan.

"TO ATONE them"-i. e. to reconcile them, or at one them; as in CORIOLANUS and elsewhere.

SCENE II.

"A fixed figure, for the time of scorn," etc. By the "fixed figure," we understand a living man exposed to public shame; or, an effigy exhibited to a multitude, as Butler has it:

To punish in effigie criminals."

By "the time," we receive the same idea as in Ham

LET:

'For who would bear the whips and scorns of time?" "Time" is by Hamlet distinctly used to express the times, the age; and it is used in the same way by Ben Jonson :

O how I hate the monstrousness of time!"

In the passage before us, then, the "time of scorn" is the age of scorn. Shakespeare has also personified scorn in his 78th sonnet :

When thou shalt be dispos'd to set me light,
And place my merit in the eye of scorn.'

The slow finger is the pausing finger, pointing at the fixed figure; but, while it points, it moves in mockery. Shakespeare was, perhaps, thinking of the Digito Monstrari of the ancients; or, it may be, of the finger gesticulations of the Italians."-KNIGHTт.

"Patience, thou young and rose-lipp'd CHERUBIN."Cherubin, in the singular, as elsewhere in Shakespeare; not cherubim, as it appears in very many good editions. Cherubin is the older English word for cherub, as also seraphin for seraph. Cherubim is the Hebrew plural adopted through the Latin into our language, and used in solemn and devotional style for cherubs.

"-discourse, or thought, or actual deed." The folio reading is "discourse of thought," which is followed in many of the best editions. This gives a good and clear sense, in old poetic language, as meaning "the discursive range of thought;" like Hamlet's "discourse of reason." But the quarto reading is, as here printed, "discourse, or thought;" which Pope adopted, and Stevens defends. It appears to me more probable in itself, because more impressive, and more in unison with the particularity of Desdemona's asseveration of innocence in every possible manner :

- that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense,
Delighted them in any other form;
Or that I do not yet, and ever did,
And ever will,' etc.

It is natural that, in this minute asseveration, she should also affirm her innocence of any trespass against her plighted love, even in word or discourse. The phrase too, resembles, and is supposed to have been perhaps suggested by the language of the liturgy and old catechisms,-"offending in thought, word, or deed." The authorities being balanced, I rest my own decided preference for the reading in the text, upon the superior intensity of expression thus gained by the repetition of or.

SCENE III.

"He looks gentler than he did."-" Here is one of those side-intimations of the fluctuations of passion, which we seldom meet with but in Shakespeare. He has here put into half a line what some authors would have spun into ten set speeches."-HAZLITT.

"- she had a song of-willow."-In Percy's "Reliques," will be found an old ballad, from the black-letter copy in the Pepys Collection, entitled "A Lover's Complaint, being forsaken of his Love." Shakespeare, in adopting a portion of this ballad, accommodated the words to the story of "poor Barbara." We subjoin two stanzas of the original from which the song in the text has been formed :

A poore soule sat sighing under a sicamore tree;
O willow, willow, willow!

With his hand on his bosom, his head on his knee:

O willow, willow, willow!

O willow, willow, willow!

Sing, O the greene willow shall be my garland.

The cold streains ran by him, his eyes wept apace;

O willow, willow, willow!

The salt tears fell from him, which drowned his face:

"-this young QUAT"-The quarto reads gnat; and the older commentators were much puzzled by either reading, until Johnson explained, that a quat, in the midland counties, is a pimple, which by rubbing is made to smart, or is rubbed to sense. It has since been found in other old authors.

"I will make proof of thine"-Malone explains that Cassio's speech implies that he wore some secret armour. The coat was the buff jerkin, which agreed with the Italian costume, and was usual in England until after Charles I. Walter Scott mentions it in some of his novels.

"O inhuman dog!"-The modern stage-direction here in several editions is "Dies," but it is evident from what is said at the end of the act, that Roderigo does not die immediately. This stage-direction is not in any of the old copies.

"Good GENTLEMEN." -The quarto reads, good gentlewoman, which Malone adopts; but Lodovico and Gratiano are going away with Cassio, when Iago stops them, to hear his accusation of Bianca.

SCENE II.

"Put out the light, and then put out the light?" This passage is printed in the old copies

'Put out the light, and then put out the light."

This has long been a favourite text for critical and theatrical discussion. Nearly a century ago, Fielding, in his "Journey to the Next World," makes Betterton and Booth, the great actors of the preceding generation, dispute in the Elysian Fields on the different readings or meanings of the line, and finally refer it to Shakespeare himself, who frankly confesses that he is not