better thing than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea
in a microscope; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise
for his ingenuity, and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. His
gaiety, such as it is, arises from the success of his treachery; his
ease from the torture he has inflicted on others. He is an amateur
of tragedy in real life; and instead of employing his invention on
imaginary characters, or long-forgotten incidents, he takes the
bolder and more desperate course of getting up his plot at home,
casts the principal parts among his nearest friends and connexions,
and rehearses it in downright earnest, with steady nerves and
unabated resolution. We will just give an illustration or two.

One of his most characteristic speeches is that immediately after
the marriage of Othello.

Roderigo. What a full fortune does the thick lips owe,
If he can carry her thus!

Iago. Call up her father:
Rouse him [Othello], make after him, poison his delight,
Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen,
And tho' he in a fertile climate dwell,
Plague him with flies: Tho' that his joy be joy,
Yet throw such changes of vexation on it,
As it may lose some colour.

In the next passage, his imagination runs riot in the mischief he is
plotting, and breaks out into the wildness and impetuosity of real
enthusiasm.