George Morley. " With all respect for minnows and houseflies, if we found another Shakspeare, he might be better employed, like his predecessor, in selecting individualities from the classifications of man."
Waife. "Being yourself a man, you think so—a house-fly might be of a different opinion. But permit me, at least, to doubt whether such an investigator would be better employed in reference to his own happiness, though I grant that he would be so in reference to your intellectual amusement and social interests. Poor Shakspeare! How much he must have suffered!"
{{sc|George Morley}. " You mean that he must have been racked by the passions he describes—bruised by collision with the hearts he dissects. That is not necessary to genius. The judge on his bench, summing up evidence, and charging the jury, has no need to have shared the temptations, or been privy to the acts, of the prisoner at the bar. Yet how consummate may be his analysis!"
"No," cried Waife, roughly. " No. Your illustration destroys your argument. The judge knows nothing of the prisoner! There are the circumstances—there is the law. By these he generalizes—by these he judges—right or wrong. But of the individual at the bar—of the world—the tremendous world within that individual heart—I repeat—he knows nothing. Did he know, law and circumstance might vanish—human justice would be paralyzed. Ho, there! place that swart-visaged, ill-looking foreigner in the dock, and let counsel open the case—hear the witnesses depose! Oh, horrible wretch!—a murderer—un- manly murderer!—a defenceless woman smothered by caitiff hands! Hang him up—hang him up! ' Softly,' whispers the Poet; and lifts the veil from the Assassin's heart. ' Lo! it is Othello the Moor! What jury now dare find that criminal guilty? —what judge now will put on the black cap?—who now says, ' Hang him up—hang him up? '"
With such lifelike force did the Comedian vent his passionate outburst that he thrilled his listener with an awe akin to that which the convicted Moor gathers round himself at the close of the sublime drama. Even Sir Isaac was startled; and, leaving his hopeless pursuit of the water-rat, uttered a low bark, came to his master, and looked into his face with solemn curiosity.
Waif (relapsing into colloquial accents). " Why do we sympathize with those above us more than with those below?' why with the sorrows of a king rather than those of a beggar? why does Sir Isaac sympathize with me more than (let that water-rat vex him ever so much) I can possibly sympathize with him?
