Chaos is come again.] When my love is for a moment suspended by suspicion, I have nothing in my mind but discord, tumult, perturbation, and confusion. JOHNSON.

There is another meaning possible. When I cease to love thee, the world is at an end; i. e. there remains nothing valuable or important. The first explanation may be more elegant, the second is perhaps more easy. Shakspere has the same thought in his Venus and Adonis :

"For he being dead, with him his beauty slain, "And, beauty dead, black Chaos comes again.” STEEVENS.

The passage does not strike me in the same light in which it appeared to Dr. Johnson; as Othello hath not at this time the smallest doubt of his wife's fidelity. He means, I think, to say-ere I cease to love thee, the world itself shall be reduced to its primitive chaos. Shakspere probably preferred-" Chaos is come again," to "Chaos shall come again,' -as more bold and expressive. Muretus, a poet of the sixteenth century,

has exactly the same thought:

"Tunc meo elabi possis de pectore, Lacci,

"Aut ego, dum vivam, non meminisse tui? “Ante vel istius mundi compage soluta

"Tetras in antiquum sit reditura Chaos.” The meaning of Shakspere appears very clearly from the following passage in the Winter's Tale, where the same thought is more fully expressed;

"" -It cannot fail

"But by the violation of my faith-and then

"Let nature crush the sides of the earth together, "And mar the seeds within."

179.

her.] So all the old copies.

the word to it.

189.

By heaven he echoes me,

MALONE. Rowe altered

MALONE.

As if there were some monster in his thought, &c.] Thus the eldest quarto. The second quarto reads: Why dost thou echo me,

As if there were some monster in thy thought, &c. The folio reads:

-Alas! thou echo'st me,

As if, &c.. STEEVENS. 207. They are cold dilations working from the heart, That passion cannot rule.] The old copies uniformly give, close dilations, except that the earlier quarto has close denotements; which was the author's first expression, afterwards changed by him, not to cold dilations, for cold is read in no ancient copy: nor, I believe, to close dilations, but to close delations; to occult and secret accusations, working involuntarily from the heart, which, though resolved to conceal the fault, cannot rule its passion of resentment. JOHNSON.

This reading is so much more elegant than the former, that one cannot help wishing it to be right. But delations sounds to me too classical to have been used by Shakspere.

The old reading-close dilations (in the sense of Secret expositions of the mind) is authorized by a book

of

of that age, which our author is known to have read: "After all this foul weather follows a calm dilatement of others' too forward harmfulness."-Rosalynde or Euphues golden Legacie, by Thomas Lodge, 1592. MALONE.

Cold delations is the reading of the three latter folios. REMARKS.

213. Or, those that be not, 'would they might seem none !] I believe the meaning is, 'would they might no longer seem, or bear the shape of men. JOHNSON. Perhaps the meaning is, 'would they might not seem MALONE.

honest!

227. Keep leets and law-days-] Leets, and law-days, are synonymous terms. "Leet (says Jacob, in his Law Dictionary) is otherwise called a law-day." They are there explained to be courts, or meetings of the hundred, "to certify the king of the good manners and government of the inhabitants," and to inquire of all offences that are not capital. The poet's meaning will now be plain.-Who has a breast so little apt to form ill opinions of others, but that foul suspicions will sometimes mix with his fairest and most candid thoughts, and erect a court in his mind, to inquire of the offences apprehended. STEEVENS.

233. Though I, perchance, am vicious in my guess,] Not to mention that, in this reading, the sentence is abrupt and broken, it is likewise highly absurd. I beseech you give yourself no uneasiness from my unsure observance, though I am vicious in my guess. For his being an ill guesser was a reason why Othello should

Giij

should not be uneasy: in propriety, therefore, it should either have been, though I am not vicious, or because I am vicious. It appears then we should read: I do beseech

you,

Think, I, perchance, am vicious in my guess. Which makes the sense pertinent and perfect. WARBURTON.

Though I—perchance, am vicious in my guess,] That abruptness in the speech which Dr. Warburton complains of, and would alter, may be easily accounted for. Iago seems desirous by this ambiguous hint, Though I-to inflame the jealousy of Othello, which he knew would be more effectually done in this manner, than by any expression that bore a determinate meaning. The jealous Othello would fill up the pause in the speech, which Iago turns off at last to another purpose, and find a more certain cause of discontent, and a greater degree of torture arising from the doubtful consideration how it might have concluded, than he could have experienced had the whole of what he inquired after been reported to him with every cir cumstance of aggravation.

We may suppose him imagining to himself, that Iago mentally continued the thought thus, Though I— know more than I choose to speak of.

I believe nothing is here wanting, but to regulate the punctuation:

lago. I do beseech you

Though I, perchance, am vicious in my guess,
As, I confess, it is my nature's plague

To spy into abuses; and, oft, my jealousy
Shapes faults that are not—that your, &c.

HENLEY.

Vicious in my guess does not mean that he is an illguesser, but that he is apt to put the worst construction on every thing he attempts to account for.

STEEVENS. 236. that your wisdom yet,] Thus the folio. The quarto thus:

—I intreat you then,

From one that so imperfectly conjects,

You'd take no notice

To conject, i. e. to conjecture, is a verb used by other writers. So, in Acolastus, a comedy, 1540:

"Now reason I, or conject with myself."

Again,

"I cannot forget thy saying, or thy conjecting

words."

256. —which doth mock

STEEVENS.

The meat it feeds on— -] i. e. loathes that which nourishes and sustains it. This being a miserable state, Iago bids him beware of it. The Oxford Editor reads:

-which doth make

The meat it feeds on.

Implying that its suspicions are unreal and groundless, which is the very contrary to what he would here make his general think, as appears from what follows:

That cuckold lives in bliss, &c.