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a judgment sentencing them to heaven or hell. His characters prosper or suffer, not in proportion to their merits, but as good and bad fortune decides or as may be most dramatically effective. It does not, indeed, follow that Shakespeare was without moral sympathies or ideals. It would be as erroneous as to infer that a physician who describes a disease accurately is indifferent to the value of health. Shakespeare no doubt held that Iago was a hateful person, and meant him to excite the aversion of his hearers. Only he did not infer, as inferior writers are apt to do, that Iago ought to be misrepresented. The devil ought to be painted just as black as he is and not a shade blacker. A perfectly impartial analysis of character is, surely, the true method of showing what is lovable in the virtuous and hateful in the vicious, and the man who gets angry with his own creatures, and denounces instead of explaining, is really perverting the true moral. When Cervantes makes us love Don Quixote in spite of the crack in his intellect and the absurdity of his career, he is really setting forth in the most effective way the beauty of the chivalrous character. That, I take it, is the true artistic method. It simply displays the facts and leaves the reader to be attracted or