They seem to forget that she is spoken of as of "high and plenteous wit and invention,"-that on the very night of her marriage, she speaks before the Senate boldly, though modestly, to her father of the change in her relation,--that she says to the Duke, who asks her if she will go with Othello,

"That I did love the Moor to live with him,
My downright violence and storm of fortunes
May trumpet to the world."

They forget that Cassio says she has "an inviting eye," though "right modest," and that she herself told Othellonot yet her declared lover-that "she wished that heaven had made her such a man," and bade him if he had a friend who loved her, to "teach him how to tell his story, and that would woo her." Is this indicative of a timorous girl? Is there not here calm self-reliance, deep emotion, and an earnest nature? And are these at all inconsistent with youth, modesty, a quiet spirit and indifference to all suitors save one? It seems to me that the careful observer would look for these in the gentlest, most reserved of those who have attained to the full development of a complete feminine organization. Why, the very fact that Desdemona gave her love, unasked, to a mature man, a famous captain, one "rude in speech, and little blessed with the soft phrase of peace," shows why she shunned "the wealthy, curled dearlings."

Shakespeare's Desdemona is a girl of vivid imagination, quiet self-reliance, much tenderness, and unbounded devotion, who had attained to early womanhood without the influence of a mother's counsel-for we hear nowhere of her mother. Being such a one, she becomes, as such women ever do, "subdued to the very quality of her lord." She shows herself, in her conduct to him, almost the very oppo

site of what she was to all others, and gives up for him her station, her father's love, her happiness, and finally her very life itself, almost without a question or a murmur.

But Hildebrandt's Desdemona is found too magnificent, too stately, for her whom the "house affairs" would draw from the company of her father and Othello. Surely this objection is founded on a misconception. Desdemona's

house affairs were not affairs of pots and pans. In those times, all ladies under queenly rank overlooked their households; and Desdemona was the mistress of her father's house; for, as we have seen, her mother was dead, and in superintending the establishment of a man of his degree, she would find quite enough to occupy her, without being called upon to soil the tips of her fingers, or hold up the train of her robe. Desdemona, too magnificent! She who was the daughter of a Venetian magnifico, a Senator! who had the wife of a man of Iago's rank for her waiting woman! a noble lady of that queenly city, of which Byron says,

"Her daughters had their dowers

From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers,
In purple was she robed, and of her feast

Monarchs partook and deemed their dignity increased!"

Childe Harold, Canto IV. 2.

How could a painter make such a woman other than magnificent? There is no fault in Hildebrandt's conception, except that great, grinning blackamoor.

ACT II. SCENE 1.

"2 Gent. The chidden Billow seems to pelt the ClowdsThe wind-shak'd-Surge, with high and monstrous Maine Seemes to cast water on the burning Beare."

Thus the authentic folio. The quarto of 1622 reads "chiding billow," which has been almost universally followed by the editors, who also read "monstrous main." But does it need argument to show the higher poetry of "the chidden billow," and its apposition with "the windshaked surge?" And what is a "high and monstrous main?" Is it not plain that Shakespeare's idea was identically the same with Byron's?

"For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here."

Childe Harold, Canto IV. 184.

This expression of Byron's is no unconscious plagiarism; for at the time when it was written there was no edition of Shakespeare in which the word was not printed main.

"Cas. The gutter'd rocks, and congregated sands, Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel."

That "ensteep'd" is a misprint, there cannot be a doubt Mr. Knight's explanation that the rocks were "steeped in the water"-like tea, is perhaps his most unfortunate effort at sustaining the manifest mistakes of the first folio. The quarto of 1622 reads enscerp'd, "of which," says Mr. Steevens, "every reader may make what he pleases." Surely it requires no very great ingenuity to discover that "enscerp'd" was a misprint for enscarp'd. The scarp of a fortification is the shelving slope on that side next the ditch. It was used in that sense in Shakespeare's day; and he could not have chosen a better word to picture to us the position and appearance of "the gut

ter'd rocks and congregated sands" that "clog the guiltless keel."

&c.

SCENE 3.

“Iago. Our general cast us thus early for the love of his Desdemona,”

Read the dialogue which follows this, and mark the open and respectful admiration of Cassio for Desdemona. The gross remarks of Iago fail to draw any thing from him which either Othello or Desdemona would be unwilling to hear. An exquisite touch of Shakespeare's genius, thus to show Iago's brutality, Cassio's gentlemanly propriety of thought and speech, and-by the effect of her conduct on Cassio-Desdemona's modesty, with all her warmth of disposition. Cassio, too (Act III. Sc. 1), says,

He, however, neglects to call her "very virtuous." that because she was less pure than Isabella?

Was

"Oth.

Enter Othello and Attendants.

What is the matter here?

Mon. I bleed still, I am hurt to the death;-he dies.
Oth. Hold, for your lives.

Iago. Hold, hold, lieutenant, sir, Montano,-gentlemen,

lave you forgot all sense of place and duty?

fold, hold! the general speaks to you; hold, for shame!
Oth. Why, how now, ho! from whence ariseth this?
re we turn'd Turks?"

This natural and dignified entrance of Othello is not seen on the stage. There, his first speech and those following by Montano and Iago are cut out, in order that the Moor may rush in with a stride and a glare, and bellow forth "Hold for your lives! Why, how now, ho!" And this is called 'making a point!'

ACT III. SCENE 1.

"Clown. Why, masters, have your instruments been in Naples, that they speak i' the nose thus?"

Is not this knowledge of a minute provincial peculiarity an evidence that Shakespeare knew more of Italy than by books or hearsay? Apropos, it is strange that Mr. Collier's folio corrector did not change "speak" to squeak.

Though I, perchance, am vicious in my guess,
As, I confess, it it my nature's plague
Το spy into abuses: and, oft, my jealousy
Shapes faults that are not,-I entreat you, then,
From one that so imperfectly conjects,

You'd take no notice; nor build yourself a trouble
Out of his scattering and unsure observance: "

Thus this passage stands befogged, and with a text patched up from quarto and folio, in all editions, except Mr. Knight's. He retains the text of the folio, which is:

"I do beseech you,

Though I, perchance, am vicious in my guess