THE CLEARING OF THE GLENS.

"Donald Caird finds orra things,Whare Alan Grigor fand the tings."

You apparently now stand alone and unsupported in your advocacy of high farming, foolishly so called, as the substitute for Protection, and as a source of profitable investment under the depressed prices of agricultural produce. "The leading organ of the Protectionists," is so heterodox in your estimation, that one cannot expect you to imbibe wisdom from such a source. But perhaps you may listen more benevolently to the other powerful and accredited organ of political opinion in North Britain on the question of high farming, and the possibility of its adoption as apresent remedyfor the clamant evils under which the agricultural community now labours. You will do well, before you write again, to ponder over and inwardly to digest the following pregnant sentences, which embody an admirable synopsis of the truth. The italics are mine.

"It is true, that high farming can maintain a large labouring population; but high farming requires, not only that high scientific knowledge which is ofslow growth, but also alarge expenditure of capital. It is the possession ofgreat skill,habitual energy, andvast capital, which alone renders possible such a system of farming, horticultural rather than agricultural, as has grown up in Belgium in the midst of abundant markets, wealthy towns, and flourishing manufactures,—a system theorigin and growth of which has been favoured by every circumstance that can promote industry and protect its fruits."—Edinburgh Review, January 1850, (p. 18.) Mr Mechi speaks problematically of the profit of high farming; that amiable experimenter, Mr Huxtable, ingenuously confesses his losses, and allows that last year he wasminus£32 of his rent; Mr M'Culloch even seems half disposed to leave you in the lurch. He is reported, in theScotsmanof the 13th February last, to have said at a public meeting in Newton-Stewart, on the 1st February,—"That, before the improved system could be properly carried out, the landlords must give encouragement particularly in draining and buildings." Millions of money, which the proprietors have not, must be expended; and millions of additional capital must be at the command of the farmers, which they have not, before the system can be carried out. Enthusiast although he be, Mr M'Culloch begins to see the impracticable nature of the scheme. Moreover, before the improvements could be effected, supposing the requisite capital to be had, and before any profit could accrue from them, years would elapse. For the improvements and profits of agriculture, unlike those in manufactures, cannot be realised in a few months. The farmers, with a continuation of the present prices, will in the mean time be ruined, unless rents are diminished one-third, and, on the poorer soils, extinguished altogether—in which event, again, two-thirds of the proprietors of the kingdom would be ruined. These are the immediate accompaniments attending your cheap food for the people, your plethora of potatoes, and your plethora of beef. The ultimate issue will speedily reach the people whom you delude, and the Manchester Free-traders whose sweet voices you court.

But you have further shown us, that there is a necessity for the compulsitor of an act of Parliament to nullify existing leases, and to establish the conditions of the liberal covenant, and that a change of the figure in the rent is imperiously called for. In other words, you prescribe not for the existing condition of agriculture, but for an imaginary case of your own construction. Your views are based on hopes and contingencies vague and visionary. Your theory, as further illustrated, avowedly contemplates a possible case, which not only does not exist, but which is a moral impossibility. That such views should have attracted any notice, and raised any serious discussion, the critical emergency of thetimes, as already stated, sufficiently explains. Drowning men catch at straws; and, during the prevalence of an inscrutable pestilence, the afflicted and excited sufferer, loth to relinquish the hope of life, flees to any doctor, however quackish and empirical. The practical agriculturists of the kingdom have made up their mind upon the practicability and general utility of your schemes; and, while frankly allowing that much remains to be done for the further advancement of agriculture, and that high farming, in any profitable or practicable sense, is indispensable, they unanimously repudiate the utopianism of your theory as a cure for the dire evils into which, by no fault of their own, they have been plunged. The Perthshire farmer, the only brother tenant of whom you have spoken in the language of civility, and who, in his judicious pamphlet, had shown that Mr M'Culloch, in 1848, must have lost by his farm, repels your advances, and scorns your supercilious compliments. He writes, that "he would far rather have received Mr Caird's buffet than his embrace." (Stirling Journal, 15th February.)

You are now "left alone in your glory;" but that glory is neither small nor contemptible. By that portion of the press who are fired with a hatred of landlordism, and who have taken a vow to sacrifice the agricultural classes to the cupidity of the master manufacturers, you are praised and flattered as the only man of mark and likelihood in North Britain. Although Adam Smith, and more recently M. de Tocqueville, have given it as their opinion that the agricultural classes are more intelligent and intellectual than the manufacturing, yet there is a section of "the fourth estate" in the realm, who cannot speak of farmers without employing insulting epithets derogatory to their intelligence and education. With this fraternity you are an especial favourite; and not without cause. They are wise in their generation, and they see well enough that your speculations, as those of a farmer, serve their purpose better than any of their own could possibly do. They perceive that your Georgical essays are raising delusions in the minds of the ignorant, and bolstering up the vain hopes of Free-trade proprietors, and pandering to the agrarian passions of the unprincipled, and are thus admirably calculated to divert attention from the clamant sufferings of the agricultural community, and to stifle any attempt to devise a real remedy for them. I am sure that, in your heart, you mean none of these things; but it is surprising that the fulsome praises of such parties, and their enlistment of you into their ranks, have not raised a suspicion in your mind regarding the tendency of your writings, and the somewhat dubious and equivocal position which you now occupy.

That powerful print, theTimes, disparages the intelligence of farmers, and writes with levity on the subject of their present sufferings. If landlords and tenants cannot prosper under present prices, it tells them cavalierly to sell off, and to emigrate. Surveying them and their fields, it kindly intimates—

"Hæc mea sunt; veteres migrate coloni."

Seated beside the Thunderer, you are to dispense the award to agricultural mortals. Have pity on your frail and erring brethren, and wield not the giant's strength tyrannically. But your faculties are as great as your fame; and as Julius Cæsar, in the midst of preparations for battle, marked the revolutions of the stars, so you, in the interval that elapses betwixt the publication of your high farming essays, take a glance at Ireland, and solve the enigma that had puzzled all preceding statesmen, and prescribe the cure for the chronic ailments of our unhappy neighbour. With a few flourishes of your pen, you have slainBlackwoodand all his allies. The mind is proud of its triumphs in proportion to the reputed greatness of what it has overcome. Plutarch, in his life of Artaxerxes, tells us of a soldier who wounded King Cyrus in battle, and who grew thereupon so arrogant that in a short space after he lost his wits. I fear for you, even in the midst of your triumphs, for you are manifestly perturbed. At a time when every one had treated you with unexampled gentleness and courtesy, you complain of being upbraided, and of having lost the smiles of men of rank.Can it be that the monitor within is pricking you for your left-handed advocacy of the farmers' interest? The taint of agreenand yellow melancholy is on you. That curious old writer, Felix Plater, tells us, with high humour, of a certain one who fancied that he had some of Aristophanes' frogs in his belly, and who studied physic seven years, and took the tour of Europe, with a view of relieving himself. Your itinerancy may be salubrious, and tend to evacuate the croaker. But if not, happy are you to have such a doctor—the crutch-destroyer, I mean—as your "guide, philosopher, and friend." By his nimble manipulations, he will easily effect the happy exorcism of every obstruction; and, having him as your Mæcenas, well may you feel

"Divinity within you breeding wings,Wherewith to scorn the earth."

If I have contributed in any degree, by this agreeable epistle, to abate and dissolve your present flatulency, it will be a source of delightful reflection to me in the evening of life.

Cato.

They'll speak of him for many a year,In Britain's sad decline,In other lands, perchance, than this,Across the weltering brine.They'll speak of him who drove them forthIn alien fields to toil,Who forced them from their fathers' hearths,The children of the soil!

Amidst the deserts of the WestWhen evening shadows fall,Around their aged grandsire's kneesThe babes will gather all—And "Tell us, grandsire," thus they'll speak,"O tell us yet again,Of that dear native land of yoursThat lies beyond the main.

"Why did you leave that happy land,And seek a shelter here,Where keenly sweeps the northern windThrough frozen forests drear?And why forsake the purple hillsWhere Scotland's heather grows,To shudder in this dreary wasteOf cold Canadian snows?"

"Ah, children—Ye recall the timeWhen I was young and strong;When never roebuck on the braeMore swiftly raced along.I dwelt within a bieldy hutFar up a Highland glen,With forty more, our name that bore,All true and loyal men.

"We sowed the seed, and reaped the grain,With thankful hearts and kind;Our cattle grazed upon the hillThat rose our homes behind.Each Sabbath-day we worshipped GodWithin the homely fane,All circled by the blessed gravesI ne'er shall see again.

"Our chief—ah, me! how proud were weThat honoured name to hail,Was, like his fathers, true and just—In heart and soul, a Gael.His lands were narrowed in their rangeSince dark Culloden's day,But o'er our hearts the ancient nameStill bore its ancient sway.

"He loved us: Ay! he did not leaveHis old ancestral home,As many did, with stranger friendsIn foreign lands to roam.God's blessing rest upon his head,Alive or dead, say I;For 'midst his clan, though dwindled sore,He looked to live and die!

"And so we dwelt, in peace and rest,For many a changing year:Not rich; but riches never madeA home so doubly dear.From kindly earth, from verdant hill,From river, loch, and wood,We drew the stores that kept us stillIn raiment and in food.

"One year—I know not which it was,For it was long ago,—The summer had been cold and wet,And early fell the snow;A heavy blight came down from heavenOn plant, and root, and grain,And what the pestilence had touched,Ne'er rose to life again.

"It was an awful winter. WantAnd famine raged around;Yet little felt we of their power,Within our master's ground.Our debts were few, our rents were small,And these were all forgiven—No heavier burden did we bearThan that which fell from heaven!

"The spring came round—the primrose bloomedUpon the bank and brae,And blythesome looked the bonny glenWithin the light of May.The lowing of a hundred herds,The voices of the rills,The bleat of flocks, the glad bird's songRang o'er our Highland hills.

"The blade was springing in the fieldRight healthily and green,With promise of the fairest yieldThat eye had ever seen.And joy rose up within our hearts,We feared no more decay,But thanked our Maker—who had ta'enThe grievous curse away.

"O little knew we of the menWho ruled within the land;The days were gone when Scottish heartsO'er Scotland held command.The days were gone when valiant souls,Who knew their country's right,Stood foremost at the council boardAs they were first in fight.

"The spirit of the olden time,That blazed so bright of yore,Had died away, and no one spokeOf faith or honour more.They deemed this glorious earth was made,And vaulted with the sky,For nothing but to gather gold—To traffic, fawn, and lie!

"And so they reared the chimney-stalk,And so they laid the keel,And trampled on the labouring poorWith hard and heavy heel.A cold and crafty Southron carleWas lord and master there:No gentle blood had he who stoodBeside the monarch's chair.

"He made his laws—I wot not how—But this I know full well,That ruin like a biting frostUpon the country fell.It mattered not how bright the sun,How bountiful the rain,The wickedness of man had madeThe gifts of God in vain.

"These were sore days. Within the townsWas naught but foreign bread;By foreign serfs beyond the seasThe people now were fed.No work was there for us to do,No labour far or near;We dared not render thanks to HimWho sent a fruitful year.

"The plough lay rusting in the field:We drove our cattle down,We sold them—'twas our last resource,Within a distant town.The poor dumb creatures! when they wentI knew the hour must comeFor the like woeful journey next,To those that were not dumb.

"And so it fell. One weary dayThe bitter news was told,That the fair land we loved so wellWas to a stranger sold.The race that for a thousand yearsHad dwelt within the glen,Were rudely summoned from their homes,To beg as broken men.

"Some would not leave—the ruffians toreThe crumbling thatch away;They plucked the rafters from the wall,And bade them starve and stay!The old, the bedrid, and the sick,The wife and new-born child—I thank my God I did not strike,Although my heart was wild!

"We parted—kinsfolk, clansmen, friends,With heavy hearts and sore;We parted by the water-side,To meet on earth no more.The sun was sinking to his restAmidst a lurid sky,And from the darkening hill aboveWe heard the falcon's cry."

"O wicked deed, O cruel men!O sad and woeful day!But, grandsire, tell us of your friendsAnd kinsfolk, where are they?""They lie within the festering heaps,Among the city dead—Scant burial had they for their bones,No gravestone marks their head;

"Some died of want, of sorrow some,And some of broken age:They who lived on were sad as birdsCooped in a narrow cage.O children, with the savage beastsI'd rather lay me down,Than dwell among the stifling lanesWithin a factory town!

"Sharp hunger forced us to the mills;We slaved for scanty food'Midst flashing looms, and buzzing wheels,And strangers rough and rude.From morn to night we toiled and spunLike beasts to labour driven,And only through the dingy panesWe saw the light of heaven.

"Ay, there was room for all! The childThat scarce could walk alone,The little ones we loved so well,The stripling and the grown;The modest maiden forced to bearThe coarse and scurril jest;The old man with his silver hairs—The wife with babe at breast.

"All, all might work—for England ne'erHad borne so high a name,Though not for Christian chivalryShe strove to keep her fame.No longer streamed Saint George's crossThe foremost in the air,Her glory lay in cotton balesAnd yards of flimsy ware.

"For this we toiled, for this we span;For this all round and roundTen thousand chimney-stalks were rearedAbove the blackening ground.For this they made the reaper's song,The ploughman's whistle cease;And 'midst the clanking of the chainsProclaimed the reign of peace!

"But we—the Highland-born, the free,How could we struggle there?Still in our hearts we felt the breathOf our fresh mountain air—We saw the shadows of the hillsHang in the waters clear,The purling of the distant rillsWas sounding in our ear.

"We sang the old familiar songs—We sang them at the loom;We sang of light, and love, and joy,When all around was gloom.O then, O then—the bitter tearsRose to each aching eye—O were we but once more at home,Though only there to die!

"Death came, but came not quickly. PaleAnd weak my sister grew;With sharpened pain and wasting sobsHer heavy breath she drew.At last I laid her in her bedWhen she could work no more.I kissed her poor, thin, wasted cheek—I prayed—and all was o'er!

"I laid her in a stranger's grave.And then I turned and fled,I cared not whither—anywhere—To earn my honest bread;In any land where flesh and bloodWere reckoned more than gain—Where tyrant masters did not wringTheir wealth from woe and pain."

O England—England! many a heartIs sad and sore for thee,Though basely, meanly, falsely drivenTo dwell beyond the sea.O England! if the bonny RoseWas drooping on your crown,Why did you stretch a cruel handTo pluck the Thistle down?

There's many a name of noble fameWrit in your ancient roll;There's many an honest statesman yetOf free and generous soul:Why stoop to those who cannot walkWith high and upright head,Whose living souls no kindred ownWith thy time-honoured dead?

The worst of all—the thrice-forsworn—The gamester of thy fame—How dares he deem that aftertimesWill give him aught but shame?Let monuments be reared above—Of marble heap a hill—The peasant's curse upon his headShall weigh the heavier still!

You recollect the words of Edmund in Lear—

"A credulous father, and a brother nobleWhose nature is so far from doing harm,That he suspects none; on whose foolish honestyOne's practices ride easy."

This is exactly Iago with Othello—believing in virtue, using, despising it. These idolators of self think the virtuous worship imaginary, unreal Gods. But they never doubt the sincerity of the worship; and therein show a larger intelligence, a clearer insight, than those other idolators who, shut up in their own character, ascribe their own motives to all; and in virtues can see only different shapes of hypocrisy.

The Devil himself knows better, sir. He knows that Virtue exists; only he flatters himself that he can undermine its foundations. "And ofttimes does succeed"—seeking Evil "as contrary to His High Will whom we resist!"

The Evil Principle at war with the Good.

In what war soever, sir, you are once engaged, you soon feel yourself pledged to it. A few blows given on both sides settle you fast, and you no longer inquire about the cause.

To an evil soul all good is a reproach; therefore he wars on it. To the self-dissatisfied the happiness of the good is a reproach; therefore, if he be thoroughly selfish, he pulls it down.

Every one's impulse is to throw off pain; and if no pity, no awe, no love be there to stay him, he pulls down of course.

My dear Talboys, believe me, that, for a moment, every man has motives fit for a fiend. Perhaps he obeys—perhaps rejects them. The true fiend is constant.

Every man has motives fit for a fiend! I beg you to speak for yourself, my dear sir.

I speak of myself, of you, and of Iago. What is the popular apprehension or theory of the malice disclosed in "mine Ancient"—not the Old One, but the Standard-bearer?

Why, the prompt, apt, and natural answer will be, he is a Devil.

And pray what is a Devil?

Iago.

Don't reason in a circle, sir.

I'd rather reason in a circle, sir, than not reason at all. I like reasoning in a circle—it is pleasant pastime in a cold, raw morning—far preferable to ascending Cruachan; for you are never far from home, and when tired can leap out at your own pleasure, and take some reasoning in a straight line.

You are always so pleasant, Talboys, circular or ziz-zag. Whence is the malice in the heart of a Devil?

I want data, sir. Milton has given some historical elucidation of it; but the People reason less, and are no philosophers.

Hate in a devil is like Love in an Angel—uncaused, or self-causing; it is his natural function—his Essence, his Being. Herein the seraph is a seraph—the fiend is a fiend.

"Evil! be Thou my good! By Thee at leastDivided Empire with Heaven's King I hold,By Thee, and more perhaps than half will reign."

Reason—Motive—Cause.

Prospero calls Caliban a devil—a born Devil.

Also, a demi-Devil—as Othello calls Iago.

The Philosopher knows—in humanity—of no born devil. He follows, or tries to follow, the causes which have turned the imperfect nature into the worst. The popular sense takes things as it finds them, and acknowledges "born devils," Iago being one, and "of the prime." Thetotalityof monster in the moral world seems to that unphilosophical, sincere, and much-to-the-purpose intuition, expressed under the image ofa nativity. The popular sense recognises a temper of man which elects evil for evil's sake—which inflicts pain, because it likes to see pain suffered—which destroys, because it revels in misery.

Coleridge calls Iago's "a motiveless malignity." He hated Othello for not promoting him, but Cassio. That seems to me the real, tangible motive—a haunting, goading, fretting preference—an affront—an insult—a curbing of power—wounding him where alone he is sensitive—in self-esteem and pride. See his contempt for Cassio as a book-warrior—and "for a fair life"—simply like our notion of a "milksop." Why Othello, who so prizes him for his honesty as to call him ever "honest Iago," keeps him down, I have not a guess—

Haven't you? And pray what right have you to interfere with the practice of promotion in the army of the Venetian State?

I cannot approve of this particular instance—it looks like favouritism. Othello fancied Cassio—Cassio was the genteeler young fellow of the two—the better-born—Iago had risen from the ranks—and was a stout soldier—

You don't take your character of Cassio, from Iago?

I do. Iago was a liar—but here I think he spoke truth—there is nothing in the Play indicating that Cassio had seen much service—he had never been at Cyprus—nor anywhere else—he had never seen a Turk—he had never—

Hold your tongue.

A more disgraceful Brawl—

Hold your tongue, I say.

Don't keep pouring out your excuses for him, sir, with such overwhelming volubility—it won't do. He knew his own wretched head. "I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking," yet drink he would,—"I have drunk but one cup to-night, and that was craftily qualified too"—worse than shirking—"behold what innovation it makes here,"—and yet he would not join the Teetotallers. Out on such a Lieutenant! Iagowasan ill-used man.

Talboys—

O that ceaseless volubility! Shakspeare afterwards makes Iago say that Cassio "has a daily beauty in his life." Where do we see it? In hisliaisonwith that "fitchew?" From pleading with the Divine Desdemona on a question to him of life or death, to go straight to sup—and sleep with Bianca!

Othello's "Now thou art my Lieutenant," shows the importance meant by Shakspeare to be attached to the previous oppression—or "holding down" of Iago. Alas! how that allocution instigating Iago to murder by more than a promise of promotion, sadly lowers Othello to me—I hardly know why. I feel a descent from his own passion to a sympathy with Iago's desire to step into his superior officer's shoes. I can fancy that Shakspeare meant this. Ay, that he did; for I believe that turbulent passion, in some of its moods, lowers—degrades—debases a great and generous nature.

Iago, was jealous of Othello. He says he was, and either believes it, or tries to believe it. His own words intimate the doubt, and the determination to believe. Malignity and hate indulge in giving acceptance to slight grounds—such he says, in his own coarse way, was the rumour—and perhaps it was true—

Certainly it was false. High characters, as Coriolanus, Hotspur, Othello, are, by a native majesty of spirit, saved and exalted from the pursuit of illicit pleasure.

They are. But let his jealousy of Othello—sincere or assumed—or mixed or alternating—enter as an element into the hatred.

Let it. Iago was, you said truly, a stout Soldier—and I add, a hard, unfeeling, unprincipled Soldier. Of all trades in the world, that of a Soldier is the worst and the best—witness an Iago—an Othello. The same trade helped to make both. In Othello we almost see Wordsworth'sHappy Warrior—in Iago one—

"Yet ill he lived, much evil saw,'Mongst men to whom no better lawNor better life was known;Deliberately and undeceived,Those bad men's vices he receivedAnd gave them back his own!"

You are convinced, without a hint, that he is infidel—atheist: everything shaped like religion, like moral conscience—his mind shakes off and rejects with scorn. He does not, however, as I said, disbelieve in Virtues. He believes in them, and uses them to the destruction of the havers. What he disbelieves is the worth of Virtues. To that savage Idol, Self, the more bleeding and noble victims, the more grateful the sacrifice.

A singular combination in him, sir, is his wily Italian wit—like Iachimo's—and his rough—soldierlike—plain, blunt, jovial manners—the tone of the Camp, and of the wild-living,recklessCamp—plenty of hardihood—fit for toil, peril, privation. You never for a moment doubt his courage—his presence of mind—his resources—he does not once quail in presence of Othello at his utmost fury. He does not stir up the Lion from without, through the bars of his cage, with an invisible rod of iron—that is, a whip of scorpions; he lashes up the Wild Beast, and flinches not an inch from paw that would smite, or tusk that would tear—a veritable Lion Queller and King.

I cannot but believe that the Othello of Shakspeare is black, and all black. I cannot conceive the ethnography of that age drawing—on the stage especially—the finer distinction which we know between a Moor and a Blackamoor or Negro. The opposition, entertained by nature, is between White and Black—not between White and Brown. You want the opposition to tell with all its power. "I saw Othello's visage in his mind" is nothing, unless the visible visage is one to be conquered—to be accepted by losing sight of it. I say again, that I cannot myself imagine the contemporary audience of Shakspeare deciding colour between a Moor and a Negro. The tradition of the Stage, too, seems to have made Othello jet black. Such, I opine, was the notion of the Moor,then, to the People, to the Court, to the Stage, to Shakspeare.

Woolly-headed?

Why, yes—if you choose—in opposition to the "curled darlings."

Yet Coleridge has said it would be "something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl failing in love with a veritable Negro."

Coleridge almost always thought, felt, wrote, and spoke finely, as a Critic—but may I venture, in all love and admiration of that name, to suggest that the removal which the stage makes of a subject from reality must never be forgotten. In life you cannot bear that the White Woman shall marry the Black Man. You could not bear that an English Lady Desdemona—Lady Blanche Howard—should—under any imaginable greatness—marry General Toussaint or the Duke of Marmalade. Your senses revolt with offence and loathing. But on the Stage some consciousness that everything is not as literally meant as it seems—that symbols of humanity, and not actual men and women, are before you—saves the Play.

I believe that Wordsworth's line—

"The gentle Lady married to the Moor,"

expresses explicitly the feeling of the general English heart—pity for the contrast, and a thought of the immense love which has overcome it.

White and Black is the utter antithesis—as, at intensity, Night and Day.Yes—Talboys—Every jot of soot you take from his complexion, you take an iota from the signified power of love.

As you say, sir, the gap which is between the Stage and Reality must prevent, in our hearts, anything like loathing of the conjunction.

The touch of such an emotion would annul the whole Tragedy. A disparity, or a discrepancy, vast as mysterious—but which love, at the full, is entitled to overlook—overstep! Whether Fate dare allow prosperity to a union containing so mighty an element of disruption, is another question. It seems like an attempt at overruling the "Æterna fœdera rerum."

For half an hour after her death, Othello believes her guilty. You must take it for a representation of what his feelings would have been, if she had really been guilty.

Unless the fact of her innocence have a secret potency that reaches, through all appearance and evidence of her guilt, into his innermost soul. Be that as it may, he is, after the deed, perplexed and unmanned, totally unlike a man who has performed a great sacrifice to the offended gods. You may say that the convulsion of uptorn love is too fresh, and that he would in time have regained his strength—that had she been guilty, the first half-hour must have been just what it was. All I know is, that his mind first becomes clear, when he knows her innocent. Then he is, in a measure, himself, and sees his way. Had she been guilty, he would have lived two years with a stern, desolate soul—not harsh, perhaps, to honest folks, though—and have then fallen in battle.

But how is Iago affected by the blackness? No doubt, with more hate and aversion at being commanded by and outshone by him. High military rank and command—high favour by the Senate—high power and esteem in the world—high royalty of spirit—happiness in marriage—all these in Othello are proper subjects of envy, and motives of hate in Iago. The Nigger!

Antipathy of bad to good—of base to noble—exacerbated by physical antipathy of colour! But I never could fathom the hate and malice and revenge of Iago.

It is unfathomable—and therefore fit agent in Tragedy.

Even so. I don't believe that Shakspeare always means you to be able to lay motives in the balance and weigh them. Far otherwise.

Ay—Think how the Murder of Duncan leaps up, Hell-born, into the heart of Macbeth—at the breath of the Weird Sisters!

Perhaps. Poetry shaping out an action, distinguishes herself, amongst other points of distinction herein, from History, that while she shows lucidly, and of her own clear knowledge, the concatenation of Cause and Effect, yet passion and imagination require the indefinite. There is then a conflict of claims and powers; and the part of logic is hence imperfectly rendered. You see the river sweeping by you, without knowing all the springs that have fed it.

Say that again, sir.

Thereisthe hatred—a tragical power, which the Poet is principally concerned to use—less to explain.

You said, sir, the noble Moor must have been much disennobled ere he could have cried to Iago, "Now thou art my lieutenant."

I did, and you think so too.

I do. Othello and Iago, are joint conspirators to two double murders. Can you conspire to a murder—a private assassination—without lowering yourself—even on the Stage? Othello takes on himself the murder of Desdemona—act, responsibility, consequences; but does he not seem to hire Iago to assassinate Cassio?

What did Othello intend to do—after all was accomplished? Consequences indeed! He was stone-blind to the future. What does he expect? that when he has killed his wife, everything is to go on as smoothly as before? That no notice will be taken of it? or that he will have to make another speech to the Senate? He has told them how he married her—the counterpart will be to relate "a plain unvarnished tale of my whole course" of smothering and stabbing her with bolster and dagger. "Now thou art my lieutenant"—shows—if not stone-blindness—a singular confidence in the future.

The Personages who come in at the End look at the matter contrariwise. Othello exalts the killing of his wife into a sacrifice to Justice. But Cassio? That is mere—pure Revenge. "O that the slave had forty thousand lives,—one is too poor, too weak for my revenge."

Upon what pedestal does Othello standnow—engaging another to kill Cassio in the dark, for his own revenge? I repeat it, surely the Noble Moor is now very much disennobled.

I rejoice, my dear sir, that you have so completely got rid of that nasty cough—your voice is as clear as a bell. Lungs sound—

As those of a prize bagpiper. Talboys, I cannot help thinking that Shakspeare shows up in Othello, foul passions—that you see in him two natures conjoined—the moral Caucasian White, and the animal tropical Black. In the Caucasian, the spiritual or angelical in us attains its manifestation. In the offspring of the tropics, amongst the sands, and under the suns of Africa, the animal nature takes domination. The sands and suns that breed Lions, breed Men with Lion's hearts in them. The Lion is for himself noble, but blood of the Irrational in the veins of the Rational is a contradiction. The noblest moral nature and the hot blind rage of animal blood!

Ay, the noblest moral nature, and high above every other evidence of it, his love ofHer—which, what it was, and what it would have remained, or become—and what he was and would have been, had Iago not been there—we may imagine! With all the power of a warrior, and a ruler, he has the sensibility of a Lover—with all spontaneous dignity and nobility, he has the self-mastery of reason—before his overthrow.

Wherefore, my dear Sheriff, I prefer Othello as a specimen of theEthical Marvellous. Like, as in another kingdom, a Winged Horse or a Centaur—the meeting of two natures which readily hold asunder. All this has under the Æthiop complexion its full force—less if you mitigate—if not mitigate merely, but take away, where are we all? The innate repugnance of the White Christian to the Black Moorish blood, is the ultimate tragic substratum—the "must" of all that follows. Else—makeOthello White—and, I say again,seewhere we are!

Shakspeare, sir, is not one to flinch from the utmost severity of a Case.

Not he, indeed—therefore IswearOthello is a Blackamoor.

And I take it, sir, that Othello's natural demeanour is one of great gravity, to which the passionate moods induced are in extremity of contrast. I conceive that, by these mixtures and contrasts, he is rendered picturesque and poetical.

I swear Othello was a Blackamoor—and that Desdemona was the Whitest Lady in Europe.

Had he lived to be tried for murder, I think his counsel might have successfully set up the plea of insanity.

They might have successfully set it up—but I, the Judge, would have successfully put it down. Honestly, I don't think Othello mad; and for this reason, that the thought never before came into my head. An incident that appears to me most wonderful in dramatic invention is—the Swooning. Look at the precise words preceding his falling down. To me it has no other effect or sense, than that of the blood being driven up into the head, and oppressing with physical pressure that bodily organ—the brain. The soul strikes the body like a hammer, and knocks it down.

Ay, how his words waver—"That's not so good now"—from a man believing, or on the point of believing. There is to me a physical faintness in these words, and in the play upon the words "lie with her," &c., intellect reeling to fall.

Good. But I believe body and soul of Othello—or the relation between body and soul—to be physiologically right and sound. The swooning goes soon off—the accident of an hour—the mind is else in full vigour, sound, and misled. You must recollect that a mind of supereminent physical (may one say so?) and moral power—a mind that would have been strong and calm through the Russian Campaign of Napoleon—is not in a day stricken into a state which requires the medical skill and attention of Dr Willis. Othello had an immensely strong physical constitution undoubtedly—had he not, the adventures related would long ago have extinguished him. This is one meaning of that sudden and strange narrative which children are taught by rote, and which men may not have quite fathomed; but a strong body and strong soul conjoined, do not lightly admit of disjunction. Madness, properly so called, is a disjunction, in some way or kind, of the natural union between soul and body. A few days disrupt the ties in the aged Lear. You may think that in Othello—I suppose Ætat. 40 or 45—the ties would bear some wrenching of the rack, ere snapping. I think that they held firm.

True, sir, insanity would even detract from the moral majesty and splendour of Othello.

It would. The time comes back to me when I didnot care for the Play or the Man. The Play now seems to me wonderful, more even than Hamlet or Lear—and the Man, in poetical invention, a match for Achilles or Satan.

Sir—sir.

Passion in the blood like that of a Negro—and right in the soul as of Socrates or Epaminondas. Yes, Talboys, the Majesty of the Moral soul in Othello seems to me the most prophetic, or divining, or inconceivable of Shakspeare's conceptions.

Nay—nay—my dear sir.

Everything else might seem to offer its own reason—

Nay—nay—my dear sir. Compare the gross Hamlet of Saxo Grammaticus with Ours.

Well, do—but Othello—you don't know whence he is derived. He is a tropical animal—kindred to the lion—the tiger—the dragon—and, on the other hand, he has the rational equipoise of the faculties that stamp the Philosopher—and he is everything between the two.

An Eloge, indeed—perhaps aleetletoo eulogistic.

No. What a simple sincerity colours the narrative of his love-making! Is yourimaginationbewitched by the wild story of his adventurous life? Hers, doubtless, was fascinated. But yoursoul, methinks, is won to approving the Venetian Maiden's choice by a profounder, a more legitimate charm. Who ever heard Othello relate, and hung back from believing him? He is honest, and she is honest. That is the bond whereby the Parcæ united their souls and their threads. Why they disunited both—how that infernal intervention of Lachesis and Atropos crossed their pure souls in their pure conjunction, let Clotho—if she can—tell.

Let's be more cheerful.

Ay—let's.

Othello shows that our Good—our excellence—our capacity of happiness—lies all in Love. That our light in which we walk—our light which we give forth—is Love. He declares this, by cleaving to this Good—by having it—by losing it—by recovering it. The self-consciousness of Othello returns to its unison with universal being—with heaven's harmony of the worlds. Iago denies this Good—never acknowledges it—although he serves involuntarily to demonstrate the truth—of which Othello perishes the self-sacrificed witness. It is great, sir, in the Tragedy, but in him the House of Love is divided against itself. His jealousy, child of his love, lifts up a parricidal hand, wounds and is wounded—but only unto its own death. And what is the feeling left by the catastrophe?

Say, my friend, say.

Peace—rest—repose—depth of tranquillity—like the sea stilled from storms.

The charmed calm that reflects heaven.

Peace grounded in this proved thought—thatLove is Best. Of all the Persons, whose stars will you accept to be your own? If you are a man, Othello's; if woman, the wronged and murdered Desdemona's. Study for ever the two closing and summing up verses—"Ikissedthee ere Ikilledthee; no way but this—Killing myself to die upon a kiss!" To gather up all the terror that is past, as if not only the winds were upgathered like sleeping flowers, but upgathered into the sleeping flowers. I don't know how to avoid comparing—all unlike as the characters are—the end of Romeo and Juliet—Lear and Cordelia—Othello and Desdemona. I never can separate them.Lovethe mightiest torn asunder in life—reunited in death. Love—the solace of lapsed and mortal humanity.

Lend the Old Hobbler your arm.

NOW FOR THE GRAND INQUIRY.

How long, think you, was Othello Governor of Cyprus, and Desdemona the General's wife?

How long? Why, some weeks, or some months; quarter of a year, half a year, a year.

A most satisfactory answer indeed to a simple question. How long have I been Commander of the Forces at Cladich?

Tents pitched on the 14th May 1849—This is the 24th of June Ditto. You, like Michael Cassio, are "a great arithmetician"—and can calculate the Days.

That's precise. Let's have some small attempt at precision with respect to the time at Cyprus.

Well then—a Month—Two Months.

And you are a Student—a Scholar—in Shakspeare!

What the ace do you mean?

Just Two Days.

What the deuce do you mean?The Manhas lost his Senses.

Who? Shakspeare?

Really, sir, you are getting daily more and more paradoxical—and I begin to tremble for your wits.

See that your own have not gone wool-gathering, Talboys. Two Months! For two Months read two Days—I insist on it.

Gentlemen, the case seems serious. What would you propose?

Let's hear the Sage.

Open Shakspeares. Act II.—Scene I.

All ready, sir.

A Sea-port Town in Cyprus—not Nicosia, the capital of the Island, which is inland—thirty miles from the Sea—but Famagusta.

So says in a note Malone—what's that to the purpose?

I wish to be precise. Ship ahoy!

Back to Index Next