A wee bit dew-wat gowany, as it maks a scarcely perceptible sound and stir, which it often does, amang the grass that loves to shelter but not hide the bonny earth-born star, glintin up sae kindly wi' its face into mine, while by good fortune my feet touched it not, has hundreds o' times affected me as profoundly as ever did the Sun himsel setting in a' his glory -as profoundly--and, oh! far mair tenderly, for a thing that grows and grows, and becomes every hour mair and mair beautifu', and then hangs fixed for a season in the perfection o' its lovely delicht, and then-wae is me-begins to be a little dim - and then dimmer and dimmer, till we feel that it is indeed-in very truth, there's nae denyin't-fading-fading -faded-gone-dead-buried. Oh, sir! sic an existence as that has an overwhelmin analogy to our ain life and that I hae felt nor doubt I that you, my dear sir, hae felt it too— when on some saft, sweet, silent incense-breathing morning o' spring-far awa, perhaps, frae the smoke o' ony human dwellin, and walkin ye cared na, kent na whither-sae early that the ground-bees were but beginnin to hum out o' their bikes' -when, I say, some flower suddenly attracted the licht within your ee, wi' a power like that o' the loadstone, and though, perhaps, the commonest o' the flowers that beautify the braes o' Scotland-only, as I said, a bit ordinary gowan-yet, what a sudden rush o' thochts and feelings overflowed your soul at the simple sicht! while a' nature becam for a moment owerspread wi' a tender haze belongin not to hersel, for there was naething there to bedim her brightness, but existin only in your ain twa silly een, sheddin in the solitude a few holy

tears!

North. James, I will trouble you for the red-herrings. Shepherd. There. Mr North, I coud write twunty vollumms about the weather. Wad they sell?

North. I fear they might be deficient in incident.

Shepherd. Naething I write 's ever deficient in incident. Between us three, what think ye o' my Shepherd's Calendar? North. Admirable, my dear James-admirable. To tell you the truth, I never read it in the Magazine; but I was told the papers were universally liked there-and now, as Vols., they are beyond-above-all praise.

Shepherd. But wull you say that in black and white in the

VOL. II.

1 Bikes-nests.

P

226

JEALOUSY.-NORTH ON OTHELLO.

Magazine? What's the use o' rousin a body to their face, and abusin them ahint their backs? Setting them upon a pedestal in private, and in public layin them a' their length on the floor? You're jealous o' me, sir, that's the real truth, -and you wush that I was dead.

North. Pardon me, James, I merely wish that you never had been born.

Shepherd. That's far mair wicked. Oh! but jealousy and envy's twa delusive passions, and they pu' you doun frae your aerial altitude, sir, like twa ravens ruggin an eagle frae the sky.

North. From literary jealousy, James, even of you, my soul is free as the stone-shaded well in your garden from the ditch water that flows around it on a rainy day. I but flirt with the Muses, and when they are faithless, I whistle the haggards down the wind, and puff all care away with a cigar. But I have felt the jealousy, James, and of all passions it alone springs from seed wafted into the human heart from the Upas Tree of Hell.

Shepherd. Wheesht! Wheesht!

North. Shakespeare has but feebly painted that passion in Othello. A complete failure. I never was married, that I recollect neither am I a black man,-therefore, I do not pretend to be a judge of Othello's conduct and character. But, in the first place, Shakespeare ought to have been above taking an anomalous case of jealousy. How could a black husband escape being jealous of a white wife? There was a cause of jealousy given in his very fate.

Shepherd. Eh? What? What? Eh? Faith there's something in that observation.

North. Besides, had Desdemona lived, she would have produced a mulatto. Could she have seen their "visages in their minds"? Othello and she going to church, with a brood of tawnies

Shepherd. I dinna like to hear you speakin that way. Dinna profane poetry.

North. Let not poetry profane nature. I am serious, James. That which in real life would be fulsome, cannot breathe sweetly in fiction; for fiction is still a reflection of truth, and truth is sacred.

Shepherd. I agree wi' you sae far, that the Passion o' Jeal

SHEPHERD ON DESDEMONA.

227

ousy in Luve can only be painted wi' perfect natur in a man that stands towards a woman in a perfectly natural relation. Otherwise, the picture may be well painted, but it is still but a picture of a particular and singular exhibition o' the passion -in short, as you say, o' an anomaly. I like a word I dinna weel understan'.

North. Mr Wordsworth calls Desdemona, "the gentle lady married to the Moor," and the line has been often quoted and admired. It simply asserts two facts-that she was a gentle lady, and that she was married to the Moor. What then?

Shepherd. I forgie her-I pity her-but I can wi' difficulty respeck her I confess. It was a curious kind o' hankerin after an opposite colour.

North. Change the character and condition of the parties -Can you imagine a white hero falling in love with a black heroine, in a country where there were plenty of white women? Marrying and murdering her in an agony of rage and love?

Shepherd. I can only answer for mysel-I never could bring mysel to marry a Blackainoor.

North. Yet they are often sweet, gentle, affectionate, meek, mild, humble, and devoted creatures-Desdemonas.

Shepherd. But men and women, sir, I verily believe, are different in mony things respectin the passion o' luve. I've kent bonny, young, bloomin lassies fa' in luve wi' auld, wizened, disgustin fallows,-I hae indeed, sir. It was their fancy. But I never heard tell o' a young, handsome, healthy chiel gettin impassioned on an auld, wrunkled, skranky hag, without a tocher. Now, sir, Othello was

North. Well-well—let it pass

Shepherd. Ay-that's the way o' you the instant you begin to see the argument gaun against you, you turn the conversation, either by main force, or by a quirk or a sophism, and sae escape frae the net that was about to be flung ower you, and like a bird, awa up into the air or invisible ower the edge of the horizon.

North. Well, then, James, what say you to Iago?

Shepherd. What about him?

North. Is his character in nature?

Shepherd. I dinna ken. But what for no?

North. What was his motive? Pure love of mischief?

228

Shepherd. Aiblins.1

NORTH ON IAGO.

North. Pride in power, and in skill to work mischief?
Shepherd. Aiblins.

North. Did he hate the Moor even to the death?

Shepherd. Aiblins.

North. Did he resolve to work his ruin, let the consequences to himself be what they might?

Shepherd. It would seem sae.

North. Did he know that his own ruin-his own death

must follow the success of this scheme?

Shepherd. Hoo can I tell that?

North. Was he blinded utterly to such result by his wickedness directed against Othello?

Shepherd. Perhaps he was. Hoo can I tell?

North. Or did he foresee his own doom-and still go on unappalled?

Shepherd. It micht be sae, for onything I ken to the contrary. He was ower cool and calculatin to be blinded. North. Is he, then, an intelligible or an unintelligible character?

Shepherd. An unintelligible.

North. Therefore not a natural character. I say, James, that his conduct from first to last cannot be accounted for by any view that can be taken of his character. The whole is a riddle of which Shakespeare has not given the solution. Now, all human nature is full of riddles; but it is the business of dramatic poets to solve them-and this one Shakespeare has left unsolved. But having himself proposed it, he was bound either to have solved it, or to have set such a riddle as the wit of man could have solved in two centuries. Therefore

Shepherd. "Othello" is a bad play?

North. Not bad, but not good-that is, not greatly goodnot in the first order of harmonious and mysterious creations -not a work worthy of Shakespeare.

Shepherd. Confound me if I can tell whether you're speakin sense or nonsense-truth or havers; or whether you be serious, or only playin aff upon me some o' your Mephistophiles tricks. I aften think you're an evil speerit in disguise, and that your greatest delight is in confounding truth and falsehood.

1 Aiblins-perhaps.

IDOLATRY OF GENIUS.

229

North. My dear James, every word I have now uttered may be mere nonsense. -I cannot tell. But do you see

my

drift?

Shepherd. Na. I see you like a veshel tryin to beat up against a strong wund and a strong tide, and driftin awa to leeward, till it's close in upon the shore, and about to gang stern foremost in amang the rocks and the breakers. Sae far I see your drift, and nae farther. You'll soon fa' ower on your beam ends, and become a total wreck.

North. Well, then, mark my drift, James. We idolise Genius, to the neglect of the worship of Virtue. To our thoughts, Genius is all in all-Virtue absolutely nothing. Human nature seems to be glorified in Shakespeare, because his intellect was various and vast, and because it comprehended a knowledge of all the workings, perhaps, of human being. But if there be truth in that faith to which the Christian world is bound, how dare we, on that ground, to look on Shakespeare as almost greater and better than Man? Why, to criticise one of his works poorly, or badly, or insolently, is it held to be blasphemy? Why? Is Genius so sacred, so holy a thing, per se, and apart from Virtue? Folly all! One truly good action performed is worth all that ever Shakespeare wrote. Who is the Swan of Avon in comparison to the humblest being that ever purified his spirit in the waters of eternal life?

Shepherd. Speak awa! I'll no interrupt you-but whether I agree wi' you or no's anither question.

North. Only listen, James, to our eulogies on genius. How virtue must veil her radiant forehead before that idol! How the whole world speaks out her ceaseless sympathy with the woes of Genius! How silent as frost, when Virtue pines! Let a young poet poison himself in wrathful despair—and all the muses weep over his unhallowed bier. Let a young

Christian die under the visitation of God, who weeps? No eye but his mother's. We know that such deaths are every day every hour,-but the thought affects us not-we have no thought and heap after heap is added, unbewailed, to city or country churchyard. But let a poet, forsooth, die in youth— pay the debt of nature early-and Nature herself, throughout her elements, must in her turn pay tribute to his shade.

Shepherd. Dinna mak me unhappy, sir-dinna mak me sae