four years before the Birth of Christ, and in the fifty-sixth year of Cæsar's age.

In Shakspeare's tragedy of JULIUS CESAR, the assassination of that great man is the turning point of the drama. For though the latter Acts are supposed to be describing events which happened long after his death, yet the battle of Philippi, which is the most remarkable of them, is only one of the many occurrences which Cæsar's ambitious career, terminated by his murder, produced. Antony and Octavius are following in his footsteps, and are avenging him, by persisting in the endeavour to set up that empire which cost him his life. Brutus and Cassius are still the defenders of the ancient liberties of Rome, and are seeking to avoid that punishment which the avengers of Cæsar would inflict on them.

This makes the title of JULIUS CESAR no unfit one for this tragedy, though in it Cæsar is certainly not the chief personage, nor the favourite hero of the author. According to approved commentators, Brutus must be regarded as the principal character, and it is to the unfolding of his motives and his actions, and their results, that the greater part of the drama is appropriated. Cæsar is, indeed, the centre around which all revolves, and we feel an interest for him even to the end: but the poet seems to leave him alone, comparatively, to his silent grandeur, and to busy himself in portraying one far less. Cæsar is the sun; Brutus a star: but the astronomer, after naming the sun, from which the lesser luminary borrows its light, turns aside to describe minutely the star, to depict its beauties, to enumerate its benefits, to speak of its rise, to draw its course, to describe its setting. Brutus is the favourite of the author; he is brought forward, adorned with all the virtues which historians attribute to him; and, moreover, that a deeper interest still may be excited in his favour, Shakspeare, by recounting his sweetness and gentleness of disposition, his sympathy with the suffering, his unwillingness to give pain except when urged by the strongest necessity, would make us perceive that it is a sincere love of his country, and not ambition, or jealousy, or revenge, which is the mainspring of his actions. And to enforce all this the more strongly upon our minds, he makes even Marc Antony, the bitter enemy of Brutus, and the avenger of Cæsar, assert that it was even so, when he speaks of him, and says,

"This was the noblest Roman of them all;

All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar;
He only, in a general honest thought,

And common good to all, made one of them.

His life was gentle; and the elements

So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, This was a man !'"

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Shakspeare takes every opportunity to make us perceive this excellence of his favourite Roman. What can be more beautiful than the description of the love he bears for Portia, his wife—

"As dear to me, as are the ruddy drops

That visit my sad heart."

What can be more heroic, more Roman, than the way in which, when he hears of her death, he smothers his grief, his heart's sorrow, because his country demands all his affections? Can anything be more touching than the way in which, as a good master, amidst all his afflictions, he speaks kindly, and soothingly, and feelingly, to his servants, without the least irritation or moroseness?

Plutarch's "Life of Brutus" gave Shakspeare the materials for this play; but whilst following closely those details, he does not fail to evince his own originality and merit in the great skill with which he manages the different characters and events; and with which, without departing at all from the veracity of history, he forms all his several incidents, varied as they are, and far removed from one another (for from the opening of the play to the end, no less than two years are supposed to pass by) into one perfect and satisfactory whole. The discontent of the conspirators, the formation of the plot, the murder of Cæsar, Antony declaiming over his body, and thus exciting the populace to avenge him, Brutus and Cassius obliged to fly, their raising an army, their quarrel and their reconciliation, the glorious opposition, which, for their country's sake, they make against Antony and his associates, their noble fall in the cause which they have taken up,-all this is linked together with a master's hand, and managed with a master's mind. An inferior writer would have allowed our interest to cease with the death of the dictator, but Shakspeare has so awakened our interests and sympathy for Brutus and Cassius, that our minds are more and more wrought upon by their fate, till the scene closes with the fall of them both.

JULIUS CÆSAR.

АСТ І.

SCENE I.-Rome. A Street.

Enter FLAVIUS, MARULLUS, and a rabble of Citizens.

Flav. HENCE; home, you idle creatures, get you home; Is this a holiday? What, know you not,

Being mechanical, you ought not walk,

Upon a labouring day, without the sign

Of your profession?-Speak, what trade art thou? 1 Cit. Why, sir, a carpenter.

Mar. Where is thy leather apron, and thy rule? What dost thou with thy best apparel on?—

You, sir; what trade are you?

2 Cit. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler.

Mar. But what trade art thou? Answer me directly.

2 Cit. A trade, sir, that I hope I may use with a safe conscience; which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.

Flav. What trade, thou knave? thou naughty knave, what trade?

2 Cit. Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me; yet if you be out, sir, I can mend you.

Mar. What meanest thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow?

2 Cit. Why, sir, cobble you.

Fla. Thou art a cobbler, art thou?

2 Cit. Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl: I meddle with no tradesman's matters, nor women's matters, but with all. I am, indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in great danger, I recover them. As proper men as ever trod upon neat's-leather have gone upon my handiwork.

Flav. But wherefore art not in thy shop to-day?

Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?

2 Cit. Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into

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more work. But, indeed, sir, we make holiday, to see Cæsar, and to rejoice in his triumph.

Mar. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome,

To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels?

up

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O, you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have climb'd
you
to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The livelong day, with patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome :
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,
To hear the replication of your sounds,
Made in her concave shores?

And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out a holiday?
And do you now strew flowers in his way,
That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?
Be gone!

Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude.

[Ex. Citizens.

Flav. Go, go, good countrymen, and, for this fault,
Assemble all the poor men of your sort;
Draw them to Tiber banks, and weep your tears
Into the channel, till the lowest stream
Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.
See, whe'r their basest metal be not mov'd;
They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness.
Go you down that way towards the Capitol ;
This way will I: Disrobe the images,
If you do find them deck'd with ceremonies.
Mar. May we do so?

You know it is the feast of Lupercal.1
Flav. It is no matter; let no images
Be hung with Cæsar's trophies. I'll about,
And drive away the vulgar from the streets:
So do you too, where you perceive them thick.
These growing feathers pluck'd from Cæsar's wing

(1) The Lupercalia was a festival celebrated at Rome, on the 15th of February in honour of the god Pan, and of the she-wolf (lupa) who nursed Romulus and Remus.