text:  It is not the Venetian merchant the princely Antonio with his argosies spice and silk laden that Pope regards as letting down the dignity of the sock; nor we hope the Jew and usurer Shylock; the sublime in indignation when he vindicates to his down-spurned race the parity of the human tempering in body and soul; the sublime in hate when he fastens like a devil his fangs--or prepares to fasten--in the quivering living flesh of his Christian debtor