Admirable is the preparation, so truly and peculiarly Shakespearian, in the introduction of Roderigo, as the dupe on whom Iago shall first exercise his art, and in so doing display his own character.—Roderigo, already fitted and predisposed by his own passions—without any fixed principle or strength of character (the want of character and power of the passion, like the wind loudest in empty houses, forms his character), but yet not without the moral notions and sympathies with honour, which his rank and connections had hung upon him. The first three lines happily state the nature and foundation of the friendship between him and Iago,—the purse,—as well as the contrast of Roderigo's intemperance of mind with Iago's coolness,—the coolness of a preconceiving Experimenter. The mere language of protestation—

which fixing the associative link that determines Roderigo's continuation of complaint—

elicits at length a true feeling of Iago's, the dread of contempt fatal to those who encourage in themselves, and have their keenest pleasure in the feeling and expression of contempt for others. His high self-opinion, and how a wicked man employs his real feelings as well as assumes those most alien from his own, as instruments of his purposes:—

the true one, as fitting to Iago's contempt for whatever did not display power, and that intellectual power. In what follows, let the reader feel—how by and through the glass of two passions, disappointed Passion and Envy, the very vices he is complaining of are made to act upon him as if they were so many excellences,—and the more appropriately, because cunning is always admired and wished for by minds conscious of inward weakness;—and yet it is but half, it acts like music on an inattentive auditor, swelling the thoughts which prevented him from listening to it.