that we owe all that mysterious interest which gives the illusion of life to a work of fiction, and fills us with delight or melts with woe, whether in the happiness or the suffering of some imagined being, uniting goodness with beauty, or virtue with plainness, or uncommon purity and intellect even with deformity; for even that may be so overpowered in the prominent harmony of superior intellect and moral worth, as to be virtually neutralized, at least, to become unobtrusive as a discordant force.  Besides, it cannot be expected that complete harmony is ever to be realized in our imperfect state; we should else, perhaps, with such expectation, have no pleasures of the kind we speak of:  nor is this necessary, the imagination being always ready to supply deficiencies, whenever the approximation is sufficiently near to call it forth.  Nay, if the interest felt be nothing more than mere curiosity, we still refer to this presiding Principle; which is no less essential to a simple combination of events, than to the higher demands of Form or Character.  But its presence must be felt, however slightly.  Of this we have the evidence in many cases, and, perhaps, most conclusive where the partial harmony is felt to verge on a powerful discord; or where the effort to unite them produces that singular alternation of what is both revolting and pleasing:  as in the startling union of evil passions with some noble quality, or with a master intellect.  And here we have a solution of that paradoxical feeling of interest and abhorrence, which we experience in such a character as King Richard.

And may it not be that we are permitted this interest for a deeper purpose than we are wont to suppose; because Sin is best seen in the light of Virtue,—­and then most fearfully when she holds the torch to herself?  Be this as it may, with pure, unintellectual, brutal evil it is very different.  We cannot look upon it undismayed:  we take no interest in it, nor can we.  In Richard there is scarce a glimmer of his better nature; yet we do not despise him, for his intellect and courage command our respect.  But the fiend Iago,—­who ever followed him through the weaving of his spider-like web, without perpetual recurrence to its venomous source,—­his devilish heart?  Even the intellect he shows seems actually animalized, and we shudder at its subtlety, as at the cunning of a reptile.  Whatever interest may have been imputed to him should be placed to the account of his hapless victim; to the first striving with distrust of a generous nature; to the vague sense of misery, then its gradual developement, then the final overthrow of absolute faith; and, last of all, to the throes of agony of the noble Moor, as he writhes and gasps in his accursed toils.