Carlyle in apologetic
illustration of a royal hero's peculiar system of levying recruits for
his colossal brigade. He has within him a sense or conscience of power
incomparable: and this power shall not be left, in Hamlet's phrase, "to
fust in him unused." A genuine and thorough capacity for human lust or
hate would diminish and degrade the supremacy of his evil. He is almost
as far above or beyond vice as he is beneath or beyond virtue. And this
it is that makes him impregnable and invulnerable. When once he has said
it, we know as well as he that thenceforth he never will speak word. We
could smile almost as we can see him to have smiled at Gratiano's most
ignorant and empty threat, being well assured that torments will in no
wise ope his lips: that as surely and as truthfully as ever did the
tortured philosopher before him, he might have told his tormentors that
they did but bruise the coating, batter the crust, or break the shell of
Iago. Could we imagine a far other lost spirit than Farinata degli
Uberti's endowed with Farinata's might of will, and transferred from the
sepulchres of fire to the dykes of Malebolge, we might conceive something
of Iago's attitude in hell--of his unalterable and indomitable posture
for all eternity.
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