4. The comparison is much abridged by these preliminary explanations. In the intellectual aspect, Iago fits exactly. He is void of all reasoning, nay, reflection in the proper sense; the passage quoted is among the highest efforts in both kinds, and it is seen to be in keeping with the gentilitial compass. He is spoken of by Schlegel, in his lectures on the drama, as a man of information, and even a thinker But what this way was, the German critic had in his way." but 66 : very loose notions of, and seems to do no more than take the word of Othello. Iago, in even his plotting, is merely pragmatic and perspicacious. He proceeds always upon habits, not on principles of conduct. His course is commonly determined ex re nata or incidentally; but yet is done adroitly, because he remains cool and this Italian quality of self-possession or self-suppression is a result, not of will, as is imagined, but of temperament, permitted by the feebleness of ratiocinative circumspection. Hence in all men the increased daring from dementing drink or passion, and the dexterity of the sleep-walker from a curtailment of his powers of intellect. The mental compass of Iago is painted admirably by Othello" He knows all qualities of human dealings with a learned spirit;" understanding by the "learned spirit" the skill of mere experience. The secondary characters are, too, of the like stamp. Even Brabantio, a grave senator, lacks the reason or reflection to dip beneath the surface, the visibilities, of things, enough to comprehend how it could be that his fair daughter was brought to love a black man by any other means than magic. This magic is, moreover, as national as the mind. It forms, with religion, the etiology of the race. The one explains the outer, the other the inner world. It has been seen that from the Roman days of Pliny or Lucretius, all their speculative efforts, not entirely theological, have turned, like the race itself, upon the ground of physical nature. But the infancy of natural philosophy is magic; it continues to be treated in this character by even Bacon. The earliest of Italian philosophers, Bruno, held that tellurem totam habitabilem esse intus et extra, et innumerabilia animantium complecti tum nobis sensibilium tum occultorum genera. From this queer theory arose the Paracelsian sylphs and gnomes. The race is as notoriously conformable in practice. The Italians are the worthy descendants of Canidia, the modern confectioners of potions and poisons. It is remarkable that the earliest and first transgression upon record, as committed by the famous Roman matrons against their lords, had been the wholesale poisoning of a large number of the senators. Their descendants of the middle ages had not lost the art or use. This disposition made also great physicians as well as mountebanks. It is, in sum, that the Italian conceives power in all its mysteries to lurk in the interior of physical bodies and the earth, as with the Teuton this fount of magic or of miracle is within man. So systematically is this view of the Italians held by Shakespeare, that a member is called in for all such ends throughout his plays. An Italian was the maker of the potion for Imogen; and she herself exclaims expressly That drug-damned Italy hath out-craftied him, So Juliet is killed by the potion of Friar Laurence. But the appearance of this personage himself upon the stage, monolo guizing to the earth, and with his herb-basket in hand, is the most perfect and profound impersonation of the race. I must up hill this ozier cage of ours, With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. O! mickle is the powerful grace that lies Poison hath residence and medicine power, etc. Iago, as a soldier, is not much in the line of magic. He presents anything of this kind but indirectly in his images. These all turn on the modes of operation of physical nature. When he sees that his hints begin to tell upon Othello, his notion of the moral process is revealed in the exclamation, "work on my medicine." He also describes the jealousy, attained to its height, by saying that "it burns like the mines of sulphur." The very "thought" of his own jealousy "gnaws his inwards like a poisonous mineral." Thus every abstract operation is presented to his mind, but in the guise of a laborious percolation through a mass of matter-this slow and subtle penetration being the mode of action of the national intellect. His "invention comes from his pate, as bird-lime does from frize." Again, Iago, in a set simile, compares the body to a "garden," where the virtues and the vices may be planted like cabbages; the will (not reason), which he calls the "gardener," being complete arbiter of the crop. This comparison is probably not borrowed from the novel; and yet nothing could be possibly profounder in its consonance, both psychological and agricultural, with the character of the race. For the point of view of this race immerges man in physical nature, and thus gives him the same laws of cultivation and production. Cicero subjected the body politic to the like processes; he sighed for a restorer of the tottering republic, in the shape of a good husbandman, to cultivate it like a field. The other personages of the play betray the same physicality. Brabantio specifies the "charms" that seduced his daughter as "drugs that weaken motion;" mixtures powerful o'er the blood." No doubt this crass materialism will be questioned by the artists, who are wont to think the Italians the most spiritual of nations. Yet the same critics would reproach the same Italians, in the same breath, with being materializers of the Christian spiritualities. And this they were, in fact; but for the cause that they are artists. 66 Thus not merely is the mental range material and practical, but further, Iago shows directly and expressly the Romano-Italian contempt for theory. His slur upon the "bookish theoric" is passed into a byword with a people who confine on the Italian in this trait. With him all knowledge of this order is but "prattle without practice." To Cassio, of whose military science he is speaking, he gives also the sneering title of a "great arithmetician"-this infant science being, with astrology (to which Iago refers as seriously), in the same vogue with the Italians that Horace bantered in the Romans.1 And he explains the sneer accordingly in calling 1 Epist. ad Pisones.— To her own Greeks the Muse benignant gave D Cassio a 66 counter-caster." The prepossessions of that day as to Italian science considered, there are few things more profoundly observed by Shakespeare than this trait. It may be fancied to have meant the rude contempt of a soldier, and thus to be descriptive of a class or rather calling. But then it would be utterly unsuited to Iago, who really betrays nothing of the soldier but the title; it might be so conceived in the mouth of Othello. Moreover, the derogations were addressed to a civilian, and for an end implying the general assent to their spirit. Besides, on the other hand, the spirit is Italian. An example may be witnessed down to even the present day, in the notorious aversion of the thinking class of Italy alike for French science and for German metaphysics. The latter they regard as little better than insanity, and the method of the French revolts by what appears conceit. Their long resistance to both the pests, they vaunt, themselves, as distinct judgment. Foreign writers rather set it to jealous pride of their ancient glories, or to political resentment towards the particular countries. But the fundamental cause is intellectual insufficiency, a merely Their tuneful tongue to loftiest strains to raise- Come, son of Albion,1 say, if from a crown I put a cypher to the Debit side. Well done, my lad, you'll be your country's pride. 1 A slight metrical liberty has been taken with the text, the Latin being filius ALBINI. |