Perhaps. Poetry shaping out an action, distinguishes herself, amongst other points of distinction herein, from History, that while she shows lucidly, and of her own clear knowledge, the concatenation of Cause and Effect, yet passion and imagination require the indefinite. There is then a conflict of claims and powers; and the part of logic is hence imperfectly rendered. You see the river sweeping by you, without knowing all the springs that have fed it. TALBOYS. Say that again, sir. NORTH. _There_ IS the hatred--a tragical power, which the Poet is principally concerned to use--less to explain. TALBOYS. You said, sir, the noble Moor must have been much disennobled ere he could have cried to Iago, "Now thou art my lieutenant." NORTH. I did, and you think so too. TALBOYS. I do. Othello and Iago, are joint conspirators to two double murders. Can you conspire to a murder--a private assassination--without lowering yourself--even on the Stage? Othello takes on himself the murder of Desdemona--act, responsibility, consequences; but does he not seem to hire Iago to assassinate Cassio? NORTH. What did Othello intend to do--after all was accomplished? Consequences indeed! He was stone-blind to the future. What does he expect? that when he has killed his wife, everything is to go on as smoothly as before? That no notice will be taken of it? or that he will have to make another speech to the Senate? He has told them how he married her--the counterpart will be to relate "a plain unvarnished tale of my whole course" of smothering and stabbing her with bolster and dagger. "Now thou art my lieutenant"--shows--if not stone-blindness--a singular confidence in the future. TALBOYS. The Personages who come in at the End look at the matter contrariwise. Othello exalts the killing of his wife into a sacrifice to Justice. But Cassio? That is mere--pure Revenge. "O that the slave had forty thousand lives,--one is too poor, too weak for my revenge." NORTH. Upon what pedestal does Othello stand _now_--engaging another to kill Cassio in the dark, for his own revenge? I repeat it, surely the Noble Moor is now very much disennobled. TALBOYS. I rejoice, my dear sir, that you have so completely got rid of that nasty cough--your voice is as clear as a bell. Lungs sound-- NORTH. As those of a prize bagpiper. Talboys, I cannot help thinking that Shakspeare shows up in Othello, foul passions--that you see in him two natures conjoined--the moral Caucasian White, and the animal tropical Black. In the Caucasian, the spiritual or angelical in us attains its manifestation. In the offspring of the tropics, amongst the sands, and under the suns of Africa, the animal nature takes domination. The sands and suns that breed Lions, breed Men with Lion's hearts in them. The Lion is for himself noble, but blood of the Irrational in the veins of the Rational is a contradiction. The noblest moral nature and the hot blind rage of animal blood! TALBOYS.