Here is the passage as in the Folio. Iago is speaking of Othello:

"Three Great-ones of the Cittie,

(In personall suite to make me his Lieutenant)
Off-capt to him: and by the faith of man

I know my price, I am worth no worsse a place.

But he (as loving his own owne pride, and purposes)
Evades them, with a bumbast circumstance,
Horribly stufft with Epithites of warre,

Non-suites my Mediators. For certes, saies he,

I have already chose my Officer. And what was he?
For-sooth, a great Arithmatician,

One Michaell Cassio, a Florentine.

(A Fellow almost damn'd in a faire wife)

That never set a Squadron in the Field,

Nor the deuision of a Battaile knowes
More than a Spinster.

Vnlesse the Bookish Theoricke:
Wherein the Tongued Consuls can propose

As Masterly as he. Meere pratle (without practise)
Is all his Souldiership. But he (Sir) had th' election;
And I (of whom his eies had seene the proofe

At Rhodes, at Ciprus, and on others grounds
Christen'd and Heathen) must be be-leed, and calm'd
By Debitor and Creditor. This Counter-caster,

He (in good time) must his Lieutenant be."

The certain facts are that the shrewd, scheming, intellectual, experienced Iago deserved the position far more than Cassio, and his friendship with the Moor must have led him to expect it. But Michael Cassio was an old friend of Desdemona's the one who deserved most from both Othello and his wife, and as messenger "went between them very oft" and " came a-wooing" with Othello. If Cassio hinted to Desdemona that he would like to be a Lieutenant what would be the result? The third scene of the third act shows us. After Cassio's unworthiness has been proved and he is in disgrace, and at a time when a good lieutenant should not be selected hap-hazard, Desdemona's entreaty that he be restored to his position is answered with "I will deny thee nothing." But when Cassio was first appointed, since Othello had been living a life of peace "for some nine moons," and anticipated a continuation of such life, as his marriage shows, it would not seem such a great risk if "in good time" Cassio should be given the easy posi

tion.

Now from Iago's point of view when speaking above,

Othello's "occupation" was everything to him. So he should have the best officers obtainable. If at Desdemona's request he is persuaded to risk everything with such a lieutenant, surely he is a fellow almost damned by his fair wife's influence over him. The line then may well be a parenthetical comment on Othello. As we are treating nothing but the impression Iago seeks to give, we have nothing to do with actual reasons for Cassio's appointment. The best editors cannot understand the line as referring to Iago or Cassio. As no explanation like the above has ever been offered we humbly submit it for the consideration of the next Variorum editor.

In Othello's account of his courtship before the senators I iii. 181, the Folio reads:

"My Storie being done,

She gave me for my paines a world of kisses."

In Elizabethan script the words "sighs" and "kisses" with the long double s (f) resembled one another. The notes on the passage are:

now.

POPE: Sighs is evidently the true reading. The lady had been forward indeed, to give him a world of kisses upon the bare recital of his story, nor does it agree with the following lines. [And yet we must remember that kissing in Elizabeth's time was not as significant as it is See the openness with which in II. i. Cassio kisses Emilia.-ED.] Apparently the editor would offer some defence for retention of the Folio reading here, but for once his defence does not seem a good one, as a reference to the passage in II. i. shows.

There Cassio meets Desdemona and Emilia who have just landed after a long voyage. Pretty certainly Cassio was more intimately acquainted with Desdemona than with Emilia, and Desdemona is most friendly to him on all occasions. Then, in defence of the Folio, he should greet her as he does Emilia, with a kiss. But there is most marked difference in his manner toward the one and the other. Coleridge asks us to "note the exquisite circumstance of Cassio's kissing Iago's wife, as if it ought to be impossible that the dullest auditor should not feel Cassio's religious love of Desdemona's purity." And Cassio's kissing Emilia once is very different from Desdemona's giving "a world of kisses" to a new acquaintance in payment for some interesting stories.

In a note on II: i, 182, the editor asks:

"Ought not Roderigo to be disguised? Did not Iago tell him to defeat his favor with a usurped beard? It seems almost impossible to suppose that Cassio had never met in Venice, Desdemona's assiduous wooer Roderigo, and yet see line 297 of this scene, where Iago tells Roderigo that Cassio does not know him. Can this refer to anything else than to his defeated favour'?"

6

Apparently it does, for Cassio himself declares in V: i, 129, in answer to the, question what malice was between him and Roderigo. "None in the world, nor do I know the man." And the dialogue immediately preceding this speech is of such a nature that, had he known Roderigo in Venice, there could be no misunderstanding now The fact that Roderigo was Desdemona's assiduous wooer does not seem important here, for the manner of his wooing, by proxy, indicates an absence of intimacy at her father's house, where he might meet Cassio. And, too, Brabantio's behavior shows that his welcome there was worn out before the beginning of Cassio's intimacy. Furthermore Roderigo was not the kind of man Desdemona would meet oftener than was absolutely necessary.

There is difficulty in determining the place of the second scene of the fourth act. It seems to be an apartment in Othello's castle; there is only one objection to this. In Malone's words:

"Roderigo enters and discourses with Iago, which decisively ascertains the scene not to be in Othello's house; for Roderigo, who had given the first intelligence to Brabantio of his daughter's flight, and had shortly afterward drawn his sword on Othello and his partisans, certainly would not take the liberty of walking into his house at pleasure.”

But this is just what Roderigo came to Cyprus for, we might say; and his presence in Othello's house is pretty well explained by lines 228, 229, of the same scene. Plainly he has come with a firm determination to "to make himself known to Desdemona," and it is with difficulty that Iago changes this purpose. Roderigo was not like other men. Moreover if there was something desperate in his actions at this point it would not be strange.

From the notes on IV: 1, 259, one first gets the impression that we are to believe that Othello is called home because of

insufficiency. A little farther on, in line 295, Lodovico, the bearer of the recall, speaks of him as "the noble Moor whom our full senate call all in all sufficient." It seems as though the chief value of these words was in their contradiction of the idea of insufficiency. May not Othello's own misgiving fall shrewdly to the purpose? In IV: 2, 53 Desdemona says:

"If haply you my father do suspect

An instrument in this your calling back,

Lay not your blame on me."

In the critical extracts in the appendix the villainy of Iago of course receives much attention. There is one feature of it however, which is not noted and which has been missed or slighted by every commentator. The singular influence which Roderigo unconsciously exerts upon Iago, has never been shown. Having once began to dupe Roderigo, he can not get rid of him when he would, and so must continue to "expend time with such a snipe," even after "sport and profit" are no longer his rewards. So Roderigo unwittingly now leads and now pushes him into deeper villainy and more desperate and bloody action. There is material for an interesting essay in a study of this.

In fact one cannot read long in a volume of the New Variorium without seeing opportunities for many an essay of pleasing power and originality, so frequent are the undeveloped. suggestions. And if any amateur Shakesperian club wishes to start well, in spite of Richard Grant White's advice to ignore all notes at first, we advise it to begin with Dr. Furness's "Othello." Then any unwarranted attack of the cacoethes scribendi will pass away agreeably and harmlessly in the discussions at the club meetings.

ERNEST WHITNEY.

ARTICLE IV. -PERKINS'S FRANCE UNDER MAZARIN.

France under Mazarin; with a Review of the Administration of Richelieu. By JAMES BRECK PERKINS. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1886. 1886. 12 vols. 8vo.

To review a grave and solid work of historical literature at a time when it is passing into its third edition is to invite the reproach of the "Edinburgh" critic, of having disqualified one's self from impartial judgment by first reading the book. To this charge, if it be alleged against us, we must simply plead guilty. We have read every word of these handsome volumes, even with something like the studious diligence which they deserve. The public verdict already rendered by the somewhat unusual sale which the work has so soon commanded, we do not presume either to confirm or to overrule. attempt, however, to give to those readers of The New-Englander, who have not yet acquainted themselves with the book, some reasons why it should be commended to their immediate attention as a contribution to French history in the English language of permanent and substantial value.

We shall

Perhaps, however, we may be permitted in doing this to reverse a course of comment which we have heretofore observed as so ordinary in book reviews as to have become normal if not obligatory. It is usual, and perhaps logical, to begin at the inside and move thence outwardly; to give some account first of the matter of the book, then to describe the manner of it, and at last commend or condemn the external material form with which the printer and binder have clothed it. What we have to say in disparagement of these volumes concerns so little the substantial character of the work that, if we are to show ourselves ill natured at all, we prefer to have done with it at the outset, and pass speedily to considering the merits, both solid and brilliant, which some conspicuous external defects disfigure or obscure.

In the interest then, of pure æsthetics, as well as of the eye