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A better example of the kind of cunning which Bacon describes cannot be found in all literature than the one given above from the play of 'Othello.' Iago first incites the feeling of jealousy in his victim, and then, as if surprised and grieved to discover it, utters his warning against it. Mr. Wigston, to whom we owe this splendid parallelism, thus comments upon it: "If we study the whole of this scene

where Iago first begins working upon Othello's mind, we find this exactly illustrated. This caution against jealousy, uttered by Iago, reads as if Othello, and not Iago, had first started the subject, and places the latter in the position of a friend endeavoring to disabuse a suspicious mind of jealous fancies."

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Troilus and Cressida, ii. 3 (1609). of the devil."— Essay of Envy

(1625).

Bacon calls envy the "vilest affection and the most depraved." Shake-speare wrote a play to show its effect, when exerted from without, even upon a mind wholly free from it. Dante has pictured the result: the tempter and his victim (Cassius and Brutus) both being eternally crunched between the jaws of the Devil.

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Alcibiades, a sycophant, had praised Timon "to his hurt.”

195

SELF-CONTEMPT

66 Apemantus. Heavens, that I were

a lord!

"Let pride go a step higher, and from contempt of others rise to con⚫

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where Iago first begins working upon Othello's mind, we find this exactly illustrated. This caution against jealousy, uttered by Iago, reads as if Othello, and not Iago, had first started the subject, and places the latter in the position of a friend endeavoring to disabuse a suspicious mind of jealous fancies."

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