One of Lord Lytton's Two Travellers is pictured

"struggling forward, maim'd

In every feeling, saved, not all, indeed,

But all mere life hath left when love is dead,

And dead, with love, life's sense of lovely things."

For there had been a crisis in his career when, with tears, he had torn

"His tortured spirit from love's control,

But thus left for ever behind him, lost,
The finest and fairest parts of his soul,
Saving the rest of himself at their cost.”"

Almost as applicable to the Moor of Venice as to the very different hero of whom it was written, is a fine critic's remark that through all the storm of his anger, sarcasm, contempt, denunciation, there sounds a note of unutterable tenderness which gives to the whole movement a prevailing character of pain and anguish, of moral desolation, rather than of wrath and vengeance: not only is his love uprooted,-his hope, his faith in the world have perished in that lightning flash. Or, in the Moor's instance, if his love be not uprooted, it is because he is still alive; and living on, yet a little span, he must love on, till that little be all gone.

The more intensely Othello felt that in Desdemona's love and life he must live, and move, and have his being, or else have no life at all, the more bitterly he accused himself, when it was too late, for the blinded, besotted fatuity with which, believing her false, he had with his own hands choked out the life that alone he could live in. Be the reference what it may, to Indian or Judæan, or any other varied reading of a disputed text, at least his meaning stands forth clear in the main when he speaks of himself, and asks to be spoken of, as "one, whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe."

Coleridge fairly lost patience with Warburton's suggested emendation of Judæan, as referring to Herod and Mariamne -this it was, he cried, for no-poets to comment on the greatest of poets. "O, how many beauties, in this one line, were

impenetrable to the ever thought-swarming but idealess Warburton !" Othello wishes to excuse himself on the score of ignorance, and yet not to excuse himself,-to excuse himself by accusing. This struggle of feeling, Coleridge takes to be finely conveyed in the word "base," which is applied to the rude Indian, not in his own character, but as the momentary representative of Othello's; Indian meaning American, a savage in genere. Mr. Dyce quotes from Drayton's Legend of Matilda, "The wretched Indian spurns the golden Ore;" and another commentator cites a passage from Habington, in which "the unskilfull Indian" scatters bright gems among the waves, and one from Howard, in which "Indians cast away" a pearl. Nevertheless, the preponderance, both of arguments and disputants, is alleged to be largely in favour of Judæan, or "Iudean," which is the folio reading, as Indian is the quarto. Mr. Grant White is entirely satisfied that the folio is right, and that Othello is meant to allude to the murder of Mariamne by Herod, the story of which was well known to the public of that day, and was made the subject of a tragedy (published in 1613) by Lady Elizabeth Carew. Mr. Lunt lays stress on the use of the word "tribe" in Shakspeare, as one peculiarly appropriate to the Jewish people, (and very familiar in Shylock's mouth,) and so too the epithet "base," which, at that time of day, as well as long before and long after, would be popularly held to fit any Jew or all Jews. "Then, as to any special story of an individual Indian throwing a pearl away,' and of such a feat being popularly known, or known at all-where is it?" The same critic suggests that "Judean" in reality means something more than Jew: a Judean is, in fact, an inhabitant of Judea; and thus, in correspondence with Shakspeare's common mode of expression, the word might naturally, and with more force would refer to Herod, King of Judea, as "the Judean," par excellence,-as representing the state. Backing this view of the case, Shakspeare's Scholar insists that the phraseology absolutely requires an allusion to a particular story: the Moor likens himself not to the Indian who "throws" a pearl away, but to "the base Judean who

“threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe"-the reference being to some particular story, specific and unmistakable. Now the American Indians, who alone had tribes, had no pearls; but the story of Herod had marked affinities with Othello's position,-the base Judean Herod, who says of Mariamne, in the old play,

"I had but one inestimable jewel

Yet I in suddaine choler cast it downe
And dasht it all to pieces."

In fine, there is a good deal to be said on both sides; but let any more of it remain unsaid. We revert from the phrase to the sentiment involved or suggested.

Praising what is lost, makes the remembrance dear, the King of France says, when Lafeu describes how reckless, blinded Bertram, in his treatment of Helen, did to himself the greatest wrong of all; for

"he lost a wife

Whose beauty did astonish the survey

Of richest eyes; whose words all ears took captive;
Whose dear perfection, hearts that scorn'd to serve,
Humbly called mistress."

But oh, the pity of it, que de méconnaître et de perdre le bien inestimable d'être uniquement aimé. "Fool! to fling away,"

with Mrs. Gore's Duke of Lisborough, "the possession of a jewel he so little deserved, and which will never be vouchsafed him from any other quarter." In another of her multitudinous fictions we have an embittered husband the more embittered against his wife because he has come to perceive, too late, the superiority of the "gentle, unassuming Blanche he had madly thrown over for her sake--the pearl, who was proving herself a pearl of price." Reversing the position of the sexes, we have one of Colonel Whyte Melville's heroines

Commenting on a couplet of Sheffield's,

"Thus precious jewels among Indians grow,

Who not their use nor wondrous value know,"

Hartley Coleridge regards it as a parallel passage to the disputed one in Othello, and, like his father, scouts the notion of a reference in the latter to Herod and Mariamne as utterly absurd.

disquieting herself, not in vain, with the highly plausible apprehension, "What if he should cast me off now? What if I should find that I had all my life been neglecting the gem which I was too ignorant to appreciate; and now, when I knew its real value, and would give my life for it, it was beyond my grasp?" Neglecting the gem :-and Seneca tells us that turpissima est jactura quæ fit per negligentiam. But whatever the baseness, the agony is likely to be less than where hotter blood is concerned. Pride may be the fault, on the part of some too dear Lady Disdain:

"A life's libation lifted up, from her proud life she dash'd untasted : There trampled lay love's costly cup, and in the dust the wine was

wasted.

She knew I could not pour such wine again at any other shrine." Clarendon, in the Wedding Gown, ruefully confesses, "I knew not then your worth. I was as a poor man's child, who in his play-hours finds a priceless diamond; who, careless, loses it, and only learns from after-knowledge that the loss has beggared him." The Lothario of Cervantes bids Anselmo beware how he tampers with such a superlatively rare diamond as he possesses in Camilla-lest, losing her, he lose all, and pass for an egregious fool. The unappreciative father of Florence Dombey is at length awakened to the consciousness that he had a happy home within his reach, has had a household spirit bending at his feet, but has overlooked it in his stiffnecked sullen arrogance, and wandered away and lost himself. The piteous plaint of Raby, in the tragedy of Percy, is,

"I had but one little casket, where I lodged

My precious hoard of wealth, and, like an idiot,

I gave my treasure to another's keeping,
Who threw away the gem, nor knew its value,
But left the plunder'd owner quite a beggar."

Compare the remorseful lament of Leicester in Schiller :

"Do I live still? Can I still bear to live?....

Oh, what a pearl have I not cast away!

What bliss celestial madly dash'd aside!

She's gone, a spirit purged from mortal stain,
And the despair of hell remains for me!"

S VII.

PUTTING OUT THE light of life.

Othello, Act v., Sc. 2.

THERE is a light burning in Desdemona's chamber when the Moor enters, on murderous thoughts intent. As easy to put out the light of Desdemona's life, as that of the poor flame that flickers while she is sleeping. Easy enough, too, he bethinks him, to rekindle that bedroom light, as soon as needed or wished for again. But how with that other light, the light of a human life? The putting out

of this were but as the putting out of that; done in an instant. But the re-lighting?

"Put out the light, and then put out the light;

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

I can again thy former light restore,

If I repent me ;-but once put out thine,
Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume."

Shakspeare's Moor has more compunctious visitings than Shakspeare's Cardinal, who, making use of a like figure of speech, and for a like purpose, but in a most unlike spirit, exclaims-meaning deadly mischief to Anne Bullen,—

"This candle burns not clear: 'tis I must snuff it;
Then out it goes."

Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster, speaks of his "oil-dried lamp, and time-bewasted light," his "inch of taper" nearly burnt and done; and he tells the king, his nephew,

But, dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath." The harlequin says to his lamp, in a French parody of Otello: "Si j'éteins ta flamme, j'ai mon briquet, mais on n'allume pas une femme comme une guinguette." Hood