Ay, Willy forgets himself. He is not withheld by the chain of time he is linking, for he has lost sight of the previous links. Put yourself into the transport of composition, and answer. But besides, every past scene—or to speak more suitably to the technical distribution of the Scenes, in our Editions—every past _changed occupation of the Stage by one coming in or one going out_, (which different occupation, according to the technicality of the French Stage, of the Italian, of the Attic, of Plautus, of Terence, constitutes a Scene)—every such past marked moment in the progress of the Play has the effect for the Poet, as well as for you, of protracting the time in retrospect—throwing everything that has passed further back. As if, in travelling fifty miles, you passed fifty Castles, fifty Churches, fifty Villages, fifty Towns, fifty Mountains, fifty Valleys, and fifty Cataracts—fifty Camels, fifty Elephants, fifty Caravans, fifty Processions, and fifty Armies—the said fifty miles would seem a good stretch larger to your recollection, and the five hours of travelling a pretty considerable deal longer, than another fifty miles and another five hours in which you had passed only three Old Women. TALBOYS. My persuasion is, sir, that nobody alive knows—of the auditors—that the first suggestion of doubt and the conclusion to kill are in one Scene of the Play. I do, indeed, believe, with you, sir, that the goings-out and re-enterings of Othello have a strangely deluding effect—that they disconnect the time more than you can think—and that all the changes of persons on the stage—all shiftings of scenes and droppings of curtains, break and dislocate and dilate the time to your imagination, till you do not in the least know where you are. In this laxity of your conception, all hints of extended time sink in and spring up, like that fungus which, on an apt soil, in a night grows to a foot diameter. NORTH.