SONNETS. 1. THE breast that would not feel this calm profound, With food for living thought, and few would crave A holier refuge from the loud world's strife. II. But, ah! no scene of loveliness may last! Of mood and passion seems her lot below; III. Yet well and wisely hath the poet said, This moving world were as a dreamless bed- Held in its base enthralment Nature's realm, And man's unslumbering soul. Though storms o'erwhelm Life's scene awhile, eternal stillness dead Were heavier fate for human heart to bear. We know not what we ask; but, blind and weak, And hidden evils ignorantly seek. Oh! if his own fixed fate could man bespeak How oft for change would rise the impatient prayer! STANZAS WRITTEN AT SEA. LIKE blossoms pale the vernal orchard strewing Through the stiff shrouds the gale is loudly singing, But here no human foes with fierce commotion * Pope. SONNET. TO A YOUNG LADY ON HER BIRTH-DAY. THIS is the holiest day of all the year To thy fond mother's heart. Thy natal morn The guileless and the true. Undimmed by care or crime, may drink sweet hues A radiance of their own, the dreariest sky SONNET-SUN-RISE. How gloriously yon mighty monarch rears, A bliss-reviving smile.-The glittering tears, Shed by the pensive spirits of the night OTHELLO AND IAGO. Let Jealousy Distill her bane to taint their growing loves! This jealousy Is for a precious creature; as she's rare, In that be made more bitter.- Winter's Tale. COLERIDGE gave it out as a discovery, that Othello was not jealous. This is either an idle truism or an outrageous paradox. If he meant that the Moor was not naturally suspicious, he merely echoed the general judgment; but if he really thought that the cunning insinuations of Iago instilled no jealousy into Othello's mind, and that it was not Shakespeare's intention to exhibit the progress and effects of that passion, his opinion is equally new and strange*. It is true that the jealousy of the Moor is not of that despicable character which always anticipates evil, and is ever on the watch. He is not one of those sly and greedy listeners who, according to Dr. Lowth observes, "that the passion of jealousy, its causes, circumstances, progress, and effects, are more accurately, more copiously, more satisfactorily described in this one drama of Shakespeare, than in all the disputations of philosophy." the vulgar proverb, never hear any good of themselves. He is not a Paul Pry. His is the jealousy of a fiery and impassioned nature that cannot brook a taint of dishonour either in love or war. "A savage jealousy that sometimes savours nobly." Twelfth-Night. If his jealousy had been of that cast which characterizes mean and suspicious minds, instead of sympathizing with him in his afflictions, we should have regarded him with mingled hatred and contempt. His distress would have seemed a fitting punishment. Even if his jealousy had spontaneously arisen in his own heart, instead of its being forced upon him, as it was, by the circumvention of a fiend in human form, it would have greatly lessened our sympathy and respect. It is almost unnecessary to observe that it was not Shakespeare's desire to render him repulsive or contemptible, but on the contrary to compel us to love and honor him even while he is writhing with a passion which would have rendered a meaner nature intolerably hateful. Though he becomes the murderer of his spotless wife, he only deepens our pity. The more pure and precious was that angelic being, the heavier was his misfortune, We forget his guilt in his agony. Who does not sympathize with that terrible straining of the heartstrings, when the sense of his wife's death comes suddenly home to his apprehension, while Amelia is knocking at the chamberdoor? "If she come in, she'll sure speak to my wife: We never cease to remember, that it was the intensity of his love and the boundless confidence of his friendship that exposed him to the subtle treachery of Iago. We could not despise him for his credulity without insulting virtue. It is not the credulity of weakness like that of Roderigo, who by the dark-lantern |