no brooding over the awful
mysteries of the universe, nor any of that corroding, haunted gloom that
comes of an over-spiritualised state of suffering, longing, questioning,
doubting humanity. Above all things else Othello and Lear are human; and
the human heart, above all things else, was the domain of that actor.

The character of Coriolanus, though high and noble, is quite as likely
to inspire resentment as to awaken sympathy. It contains many elements
and all of them are good; but chiefly it typifies the pride of
intellect. This, in itself a natural feeling and a virtuous quality,
practically becomes a vice when it is not tempered with charity for
ignorance, weakness, and the lower orders of mind. In the character of
Coriolanus it is not so tempered, and therefore it vitiates his
greatness and leads to his destruction. Much, of course, can be urged in
his defence. He is a man of spotless honour, unswerving integrity,
dauntless courage, simple mind, straightforward conduct, and magnanimous
disposition. He is always ready to brave the perils of battle for the
service of his country. He constantly does great deeds--and would
continue constantly to do them--for their own sake and in a spirit of
total indifference alike to praises and rewards. He exists in the
consciousness of being great and has no life in the opinions of other
persons. He dwells in "the cedar's top" and "dallies with the wind and
scorns the sun." He knows and he despises with active and immitigable
contempt the shallowness and fickleness of the multitude. He is of an
icy purity, physical as well as mental, and his nerves tingle with
disgust of the personal uncleanliness of the mob. "Bid them wash their
faces," he says--when urged to ask the suffrages of the people--"and
keep their teeth clean." "He rewards his deeds with doing them," says
his fellow-soldier Cominius, "and looks upon things precious as the
common muck of the world." His aristocracy does not sit in a corner,
deedless and meritless, brooding over a transmitted name and sucking the
orange of empty self-conceit: it is the aristocracy of achievement and
of nature--the solid superiority of having done the brightest and best
deeds that could be done in his time and of being the greatest man of
his generation. It is as if a Washington, having made and saved a
nation, were to spurn it from him with his foot, in lofty and by no
means groundless contempt for the ignorance, pettiness, meanness, and