or object of nature in startling review before us; and in the
rapid whirl of events, lifts us from the depths of woe to the highest
contemplations on human life. When Lear says of Edgar, "Nothing but his
unkind daughters could have brought him to this;" what a bewildered
amazement, what a wrench of the imagination, that cannot be brought to
conceive of any other cause of misery than that which has bowed it down,
and absorbs all other sorrow in its own! His sorrow, like a flood,
supplies the sources of all other sorrow. Again, when he exclaims in the
mad scene, "The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see,
they bark at me!" it is passion lending occasion to imagination to make
every creature in league against him, conjuring up ingratitude and
insult in their least looked-for and most galling shapes, searching
every thread and fibre of his heart, and finding out the last remaining
image of respect or attachment in the bottom of his breast, only to
torture and kill it! In like manner, the "So I am" of Cordelia gushes
from her heart like a torrent of tears, relieving it of a weight of love
and of supposed ingratitude, which had pressed upon it for years. What a
fine return of the passion upon itself is that in Othello--with what a
mingled agony of regret and despair he clings to the last traces of
departed happiness--when he exclaims,

------"Oh now, for ever
Farewel the tranquil mind. Farewel content;
Farewel the plumed troops and the big war,
That make ambition virtue! Oh farewel!
Farewel the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war:
And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewel! Othello's occupation's gone!"

How his passion lashes itself up and swells and rages like a tide in
its sounding course, when in answer to the doubts expressed of his
returning love, he says,

"Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont:
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up."--

The climax