whose presence he has always observed, implies that the "air is delicate." In the whole of that quiet little conversation, we feel sympathy for the good old man, we shudder for what is coming and are sensible of the piteous wrong in things. When Macbeth crosses swords with Macduff, he remembers the last words of the witches' prophecy, which he believes to be favourable to himself; but when it becomes suddenly evident that Macduff it is, who shall slay him, he shudders and bursts out as before, with: "I will not fight with thee." This ejaculation reveals the violence of the shock and an instinctive movement of the will to live, which would elude its destiny. And we can pause at any part of _Othello,_ for instance, at the moment when Desdemona intercedes for Cassio, with the gentleness and coquetry of a woman in love, who knows that she is loved, and talks like a child, who knows it has the right to be a little spoilt; or at the moment when Desdemona is in the act of being slain, when she does not break into the complaints of innocence calumniated, nor assumes the attitude of a victim unjustly sacrificed, but like a poor creature of flesh and blood that loves life, loves love, and with childish egoism has abandoned her father for love, and now breaks out into childish supplications, trying to postpone and to retard death, at least for a few moments. "O, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!... Kill me to-morrow; let me live to-night!... But half an hour!... But while I say one prayer!" We could in like manner enable anyone to understand the fabulous-human character of _King Lear,_ who did not at once understand it for himself, by analysing the great initial scene between Lear and his three daughters, where, at the poet's touch, the story and the fabulous personages assume at one stroke a reality that is the very strength of our abhorrence of dry egoism cloaking itself in affectionate words and also the very strength of our tender admiration for the true goodness, which conceals itself and does not speak ("What shall Cordelia do? Love and be silent").