pointing to the greater extent of sufferings and of crimes to which they have led others.  Tragedy creates a balance of the affections.  It makes us thoughtful spectators in the lists of life.  It is the refiner of the species; a discipline of humanity.  The habitual study of poetry and works of imagination is one chief part of a well-grounded education.  A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is hard and mechanical.  It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests.—­Othello furnishes an illustration of these remarks.  It excites our sympathy in an extraordinary degree.  The moral it conveys has a closer application to the concerns of human life than that of any other of Shakespeare’s plays.  ’It comes directly home to the bosoms and business of men.’  The pathos in Lear is indeed more dreadful and overpowering:  but it is less natural, and less of every day’s occurrence.  We have not the same degree of sympathy with the passions described in Macbeth.  The interest in Hamlet is more remote and reflex.  That of Othello is at once equally profound and affecting.

The picturesque contrasts of character in this play are almost as remarkable as the depth of the passion.  The Moor Othello, the gentle Desdemona, the villain Iago, the good-natured Cassio, the fool Roderigo, present a range and variety of character as striking and palpable as that produced by the opposition of costume in a picture.  Their distinguishing qualities stand out to the mind’s eye, so that even when we are not thinking of their actions or sentiments, the idea of their persons is still as present to us as ever.  These characters and the images they stamp upon the mind are the farthest asunder possible, the distance between them is immense:  yet the compass of knowledge and invention which the poet has shown in embodying these extreme creations of his genius is only greater than the truth and felicity with which he has identified each character with itself, or blended their different qualities together in the same story.  What a contrast the character of Othello forms to that of Iago:  at the same time, the force of conception with which these two figures are opposed to each other is rendered still more intense by the complete consistency with which the traits of each character are brought out in a state of the highest finishing.  The making one black and the other white, the one unprincipled, the other unfortunate in the extreme, would have answered the common purposes of effect, and satisfied the ambition of an ordinary painter of character.  Shakespeare has laboured the finer shades of difference in both with as much care and skill as if he had had to depend on the execution alone for the success of his design.  On the other hand, Desdemona and Aemilia are not meant to be opposed with anything like strong contrast to each other.  Both are, to outward appearance, characters of common life, not more distinguished than women usually are, by difference of rank and situation.  The difference of their thoughts and sentiments is, however, laid as open, their minds are separated from each other by signs as plain and as little to be mistaken as the complexions of their husbands.