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RV 364 (Rh) Yet it is never complete. To the end he never totally loses our sympathy; we never feel towards him as we do to those who appear the born children of darkness. There remains something sublime in the defiance with which, even when cheated of his last hope, he faces earth and hell and heaven. Nor would any soul to whom evil was congenial be capable of that heart-sickness which overcomes him when he thinks of the ‘honour, love, obedience, troops of friends’ which ‘he must not look to have’ (and which Iago would never have cared to have), and contrasts with them

(and which Iago would have accepted with indifference). Neither can I agree with those who find in his reception of the news of his wife’s death proof of alienation or utter carelessness. There is no proof of these in the words,

spoken as they are by a man already in some measure prepared for such news, and now transported by the frenzy of his last fight for life. He has no time now to feel. Only, as he thinks of the morrow when time to feel will come—if anything comes, the vanity of all hopes and forward