The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

by Delia Salter Bacon

PART II.

JULIUS CAESAR;

OR,

THE EMPIRICAL TREATMENT IN DISEASES OF THE COMMON-WEAL EXPLAINED.

Good does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, and a worse, as it happened with Caesar's killers, who brought the republic to such a pass that they had reason to repent their meddling with it…. It must be examined in what condition THE ASSAILANT is.—Michael de Montaigne.

Citizen. I fear there will a worse one come in his place. Cassius. He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.

CHAPTER I.

THE DEATH OF TYRANNY; OR, THE QUESTION OF THE PREROGATIVE.

Casca. 'Tis Caesar that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?
Cassius. Let it be WHO IT is, for Romans now
Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.

We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar.
Julius Caesar.

Yes, when that Royal Injunction, which rested alike upon the Play-house, the Press, the Pulpit, and Parliament itself, was still throttling everywhere the free voice of the nation—when a single individual could still assume to himself, or to herself, the exclusive privilege of deliberating on all those questions which men are most concerned in—questions which involve all their welfare, for this life and the life to come, certainly 'the Play, the Play was the thing.' It was a vehicle of expression which offered incalculable facilities for evading these restrictions. It was the only one then invented which offered then any facilities whatever for the discussion of that question in particular—which was already for that age the question. And to the genius of that age, with its new historical, experimental, practical, determination—with its transcendant poetic power, nothing could be easier than to get possession of this instrument, and to exhaust its capabilities.

For instance, if a Roman Play were to be brought out at all,—and with that mania for classical subjects which then prevailed, what could be more natural?—how could one object to that which, by the supposition, was involved in it? And what but the most boundless freedoms and audacities, on this very question, could one look for here? What, by the supposition, could it be but one mine of poetic treason? If Brutus and Cassius were to be allowed to come upon the stage, and discuss their views of government, deliberately and confidentially, in the presence of an English audience, certainly no one could ask to hear from their lips the political doctrine then predominant in England. It would have been a flat anachronism, to request them to keep an eye upon the Tower in their remarks, inasmuch as all the world knew that the corner-stone of that ancient and venerable institution had only then just been laid by the same distinguished individual whom these patriots were about to call to an account for his military usurpation of a constitutional government at home.

And yet, one less versed than the author in the mystery of theatrical effects, and their combinations—one who did not know fully what kind of criticism a mere Play, composed by a professional play-wright, in the way of his profession, for the entertainment of the spectators, and for the sake of the pecuniary result, was likely to meet with;—or one who did not know what kind of criticism a work, addressed so strongly to the imagination and the feelings in any form, is likely to meet with, might have fancied beforehand that the author was venturing upon a somewhat delicate experiment, in producing a play like this upon the English stage at such a crisis. One would have said beforehand, that 'there were things in this comedy of Julius Caesar that would never please.' It is difficult, indeed, to understand how such a Play as this could ever have been produced in the presence of either of those two monarchs who occupied the English throne at that crisis in its history, already secretly conscious that its foundations were moving, and ferociously on guard over their prerogative.

And, indeed, unless a little of that same sagacity, which was employed so successfully in reducing the play of Pyramus and Thisbe to the tragical capacities of Duke Theseus' court, had been put in requisition here, instead of that dead historical silence, which the world complains of so much, we might have been treated to some very lively historical details in this case, corresponding to other details which the literary history of the time exhibits, in the case of authors who came out in an evil hour in their own names, with precisely the same doctrines, which are taught here word for word, with impunity; and the question as to whether this Literary Shadow, this Name, this Veiled Prophet in the World of Letters, ever had any flesh and blood belonging to him anywhere, (and from the tenor of his works, one might almost fancy sometimes that that might have been the case), this question would have come down to us experimentally and historically settled. For most unmistakeably, the claws of the young British lion are here, under these old Roman togas; and it became the 'masters' to consider with themselves, for there is, indeed, 'no more fearful wild fowl living' than your lion in such circumstances; and if he should happen to forget his part in any case, and 'roar too loud,' it would to a dead certainty 'hang them all.'

But it was only the faint-hearted tailor who proposed to 'leave out the killing part.' Pyramus sets aside this cowardly proposition. He has named the obstacles to be encountered only for the sake of magnifying the fertility of his invention in overcoming them. He has a device to make all even. 'Write me a prologue,' he says, 'and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords; and for the more assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom, the Weaver; that will put them out of fear.' And as to the lion, there must not only be 'another prologue, to tell that he is not a lion,' but 'you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion's neck, and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect, Ladies, or fair ladies, my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life.'

To such devices, in good earnest, were those compelled to resort who ventured upon the ticklish experiment of presenting heroic entertainments for king's palaces, where 'hanging was the word' in case of a fright; but, with a genius like this behind the scenes, so fertile in invention, so various in gifts, who could aggravate his voice so effectually, giving you one moment the pitch of 'the sucking dove,' or 'roaring you like any nightingale,' and the next, 'the Hercle's vein,'—with a genius who knew how to play, not 'the tyrant's part only,' but 'the lover's, which is more condoling,' and whose suggestion that the audience should look to their eyes in that case, was by no means a superfluous one; with a genius who had all passions at his command, who could drown, at his pleasure, the sharp critic's eye, or blind it with showers of pity, or 'make it water with the merriest tears, that the passion of loud laughter ever shed,' with such resources, prince's edicts could be laughed to scorn. It was vain to forbid such an one, to meddle with anything that was, or had been, or could be.

But does any one say—'To what purpose,' if the end were concealed so effectually? And does any one suppose, because no faintest suspicion of the true purpose of this play, and of all these plays, has from that hour to this, apparently ever crossed the English mind, at home or abroad, though no suspicion of the existence of any purpose in them beyond that of putting the author in easy circumstances, appears as yet to have occurred to any one,—does any one suppose that this play, and all these plays, have on that account, failed of their purpose; and that they have not been all this time, steadily accomplishing it? Who will undertake to estimate, for instance, the philosophical, educational influence of this single Play, on every boy who has spouted extracts from it, from the author's time to ours, from the palaces of England, to the log school-house in the back-woods of America?

But suppose now, instead of being the aimless, spontaneous, miraculous product of a stupid, 'rude mechanical' bent on producing something which should please the eye, and flatter the prejudices of royalty, and perfectly ignorant of the nature of that which he had produced;—suppose that instead of appearing as the work of Starveling, and Snout, and Nick Bottom, the Weaver, or any person of that grade and calibre, that this play had appeared at the time, as the work of an English scholar, as most assuredly it was, profoundly versed in the history of states in general, as well as in the history of the English state in particular, profoundly versed in the history of nature in general, as well as in the history of human nature in particular. Suppose, for instance, it had appeared as the work of an English statesman, already suspected of liberal opinions, but stedfastly bent for some reason or other, on advancement at court, with his eye still intently fixed, however secretly, on those insidious changes that were then in progress in the state, who knew perfectly well what crisis that ship of state was steering for; query, whether some of the passages here quoted would have tended to that 'advancement' he 'lacked.' Suppose that instead of Julius Caesar, 'looking through the lion's neck,' and gracefully rejecting the offered prostrations, it had been the English courtier, condemned to these degrading personal submissions, who 'roared you out,' on his own account, after this fashion. Imagine a good sturdy English audience returning the sentiment, thundering their applause at this and other passages here quoted, in the presence of a Tudor or a Stuart.

One might safely conclude, even if the date had not been otherwise settled, that anything so offensive as this never was produced in the presence of Queen Elizabeth. King James might be flattered into swallowing even such treasonable stuff as this; but in her time, the poor lion was compelled to aggravate his voice after another fashion. Nothing much above the sucking-dove pitch, could be ventured on when her quick ears were present. He 'roared you' indeed, all through her part of the Elizabethan time; but it was like any nightingale. The clash and clang of these Roman Plays were for the less sensitive and more learned Stuart.

Metellus Cimber. Most high, most mighty,
And most puissant Caesar;
Metellus Cimber throws before thy seat
An humble heart:—[Kneeling.]

Caesar. I must prevent thee, Cimber.
These couchings and these lowly courtesies:
Might fire the blood of ordinary men;
AND TURN PRE-ORDINANCE, and FIRST DECREE,
INTO THE LAW OF CHILDREN.
Be not fond
To think that CAESAR bears such REBEL blood,
That will be thawed from the true quality,
With that which melteth FOOLS. (?) I mean, sweet words,
Low, crooked curtsies, and base spaniel fawning.
Thy brother by decree is banished;
If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him,
I spurn thee like a cur, out of my way.
Know CAESAR DOTH NOT WRONG.

To appreciate this, one must recall not merely the humiliating personal prostrations which the ceremonial of the English Court required then, but that base prostration of truth and duty and honour, under the feet of vanity and will and passion, which they symbolized.

Thus far Caesar, but the subject's views on this point, as here set forth, are scarcely less explicit, but then it is a Roman subject who speaks, and the Roman costume and features, look savingly through the lion's neck.

One of the radical technicalities of that new philosophy of the human nature which permeates all this historical exhibition, comes in here, however; and it is one which must be mastered before any of these plays can be really read. The radical point in the new philosophy, as it applies to the human nature in particular, is the pivot on which all turns here,—here as elsewhere in the writings of this school,—the distinction of 'the double self,' the distinction between the particular and private nature, with its unenlightened instincts of passion, humour, will, caprice,—that self which is changeful, at war with itself, self-inconsistent, and, therefore, truly, no SELF,—since the true self is the principle of identity and immutability,—the distinction between that 'private' nature when it is developed instinctively as 'selfishness,' and that rational immutable self which is constitutionally present though latent, in all men, and one in them all; that noble special human form which embraces and reconciles in its intention, the private good with the good of that worthier whole whereof we are individually parts and members; 'this is the distinction on which all turns here.' For this philosophy refuses, on philosophical grounds, to accept this low, instinctive private nature, in any dressing up of accidental power as the god of its idolatry, in place of that 'divine or angelical nature, which is the perfection of the human form,' and the true sovereignty. Obedience to that nature,—'the approach to, or assumption of,' that makes, in this philosophy, the end of the human endeavour, 'and the error and false imitation of that good, is that which is the tempest of the human life.'

But let us hear the passionate Cassius, who is full of individualities himself, and ready to tyrannize with them, but somehow, as it would seem, not fond of submitting to the 'single self' in others.

'Well, honour is the subject of my story.—
I can not tell what you, and other men,
Think of this life; but for my single self,
I had as lief not BE, as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
I was born free as Caesar; so were you.
We both have fed as well: and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he.'—

And the proof of this personal equality is then given; and it is precisely the one which Lear produces, 'When the wind made me chatter, there I found them,—there I smelt them out.'—

'For once upon a raw and gusty day,
The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores, etc.
* * * * *
—Caesar cried, Help me, Cassius, or I sink.
—And this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature, and must bend his body,
If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.
He had a fever when he was in Spain,
And when the fit was on him—I did mark
How he did shake: 'tis true, this god did shake.'

[This was a pretty fellow to have about a king's privacy taking notes of this sort on his tablets. Among 'those saw and forms and pressures past, which youth and observatior copied there,' all that part reserved for Caesar and his history, appears to have escaped the sponge in some way.

'They told me I was every thing, 'tis a lie! I am not ague
proof.'—Lear.

His coward lips did from their colour fly.
'And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world,
Did lose his lustre!—Julius Caesar.

'—When I do stare see how the subject quakes.—'Lear.]

I did hear him groan:
Aye, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans
Mark him, and write his speeches in their books.
Alas! it cried, 'Give me some drink, Titinius,'
As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me,
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone.

Brutus. Another general shout!
I do believe that these applauses are
For some new honours that are heap'd on Caesar.

Cassius. Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world,
Like a Colossus: and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs; and peep about
To find ourselves DISHONOURABLE GRAVES.
Men, at some time, are masters of their fates,
The fault, dear Brutus, IS NOT in our STARS,
But in ourselves that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: What should be in that Caesar?
* * * * *
Now in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great? AGE, thou art shamed:
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with One man?
When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but One man?
Now is it Home indeed, and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
[When there is in it (truly) but One only,—MAN].
O! you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once, that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome,
As easily as a king.

Brutus. What you have said,
I will consider;—what you have to say
I will with patience hear: and find a time
Both meet to hear, and answer such high things.
Till then, my noble friend, CHEW UPON THIS;—
Brutus had rather be a villager,
Than to repute himself a SON of ROME.
Under these hard conditions, as this time
Is like to lay upon us. [Chew upon this].

Cassius. I am glad that my weak words
Have struck but thus much show of fire from Brutus.
[Re-enter Caesar and his train.]

Brutus. The games are done, and Caesar is returning.

Cassius. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve; And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you What hath proceeded worthy note to-day.

Brutus. I will do so:—But look you, Cassius, The angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow. And all the rest look like a chidden train: Calphurnia's cheek is pale; and Cicero Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes, As we have seen him in the Capitol, Being crossed in conference by some senators.

Cassius. Casca will tell us what the matter is.

Caesar. Antonius.

Antony. Caesar.

Caesar. Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights: Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

Antony. Fear him not, Caesar; he's not dangerous:
He is a noble Roman, and well given.

Caesar. Would he were fatter:—But I fear him not;
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much:
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,
As thou dost Antony; he hears no music:
Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort,
As if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit
That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Such men as he are never at heart's ease,
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves;
And therefore are they very dangerous,
I rather tell thee what is to be feared,
Than what I fear, FOR ALWAYS I AM CAESAR.
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,
And tell me truly what thou think'st of him.

[Exeunt Caesar and his train. Casca stays behind.]

Casca. You pulled me by the cloak: would you speak with me?

Brutus. Ay, Casca, tell us what hath chanced to-day, That Caesar looks so sad.

Casca. Why you were with him. Were you not?

Brutus. I should not then ask Casca what hath chanced.

Casca. Why there was a crown offered him: and, being offered, he put it by with the back of his hand, thus; and then the people fell a shouting.

Brutus. What was the second noise for?

Casca. Why for that too.

Brutus. They shouted thrice. What was the last cry for?

Casca. Why for that too.

Brutus. Was the crown offered him thrice?

Casca. Ay marry was't. And he put it by thrice, every time gentler than the other; and at every putting by, mine honest neighbours shouted.

Cassius. Who offered him the crown?

Casca. Why, Antony.

Brutus. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

Casca. I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it. It was mere foolery. I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown; yet 't was not a crown;—neither 't was one of these coronets;—and, as I told you, he put it by once; but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was very both to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it the third time by; and still, as he refused it, the rabblement hooted, and clapped their chapped hands, and threw up their sweaty night caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath, because Caesar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Caesar; for he swooned and fell down at it: and, for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.

Cassius. But soft, I pray you: WHAT? DID CAESAR SWOON?

Casca. He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, and was speechless.

Brutus. 'Tis very like; he hath the falling sickness.

Cassius. No, Caesar hath it not; but you, and I, And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.

Casca. I know not what you mean by that: but I am sure, Caesar fell down. If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the Players in the theatre, I am no true man.

Brutus. What said he, when he came unto himself.

Casca. Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the common herd was glad when he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet, and offered them his throat to cut.—An I had been a man of any occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word; I would I might go to hell among the rogues: and so he fell. When he came to himself again, he said, if he had done or said anything amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity. Three or four wenches, where I stood, cried, 'Alas, good soul!'—and forgave him with all their hearts: But there's no heed to be taken of them; if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less.

Brutus. And after that, he came thus sad away?

Casca. Ay.

Cassius. Did Cicero say anything?

Casca. Ay, he spoke Greek.

Cassius. To what effect?

Casca. Nay, an I tell you that, I'll ne'er look you i' the face again. But those that understood him, smiled at one another, and shook their heads: but for mine own part, it was Greek to me. I could tell you more news, too: Marullus and Flavius, for pulling scarfs off Caesar's images, are put to silence. Fare you well. There was more foolery yet, if I could remember it.

Brutus says of Casca, when he is gone, 'He was quick mettle when he went to school'; and Cassius replies, 'So he is now—however he puts on this tardy form. This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit, which gives men stomach to digest his words with better appetite.' 'And so it is,' Brutus returns;—and so it is, indeed, as any one may perceive, who will take the pains to bestow upon these passages the attention which the author's own criticism bespeaks for them.

To the ear of such an one, the roar of the blank verse of Cassius is still here, subdued, indeed, but continued, through all the humour of this comic prose.

But it is Brutus who must lend to the Poet the sanction of his name and popularity, when he would strike home at last to the heart of his subject. Brutus, however, is not yet fully won: and, in order to secure him, Cassius will this night throw in at his window, 'in several hands—as if they came from several citizens—writings, in which, OBSCURELY, CAESAR'S AMBITION SHALL BE GLANCED AT.' And, 'After this,' he says,—

'Let Caesar seat him sure,
For we will shake him, or worse days endure.'

But in the interval, that night of wild tragic splendour must come, with its thunder-bolts and showers of fire, and unnatural horror. For these elements have a true part to perform here, as in Lear and other plays; they come in, not merely as subsidiary to the 'artistic effect'—not merely because their wild Titanic play forms an imposing harmonious accompaniment to the play of the human passions and their 'wildness'—but as a grand scientific exhibition of the element which the Poet is pursuing under all its Protean forms—as a most palpable and effective exhibition to the sense of that identical thing against which he has raised his eternal standard of revolt, refusing to own, under any name, its mastery.

But one can hear, in that wild lurid night, in the streets of Rome, amid the cross blue lightnings, what could not have been whispered in the streets of England then, or spoken in the ear in closets.

Cicero. [Encountering Casca in the street, with his sword drawn.]
Good-even, Casca; brought you Caesar home?
Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?

Casca. Are you not moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks; and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell, and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds;
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven;
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.

But the night has had other spectacles, it seems, which, to his eye, appeared to have some relation to the coming struggle; in answer to Cicero's 'Why, saw you anything more wonderful?' Thus he describes them.

'A common slave,—you know him, well by sight, Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn Like twenty torches join'd. Against the Capitol I met a lion, Who glared upon me, and went surly by.'

[And he had seen, 'drawn on a head,']

'A hundred ghastly women,
Transformed with their fears; who swore they saw
Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets.
And, yesterday, the bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the market-place,
Hooting, and shrieking.'

An ominous circumstance,—that last. A portent sure as fate. When such things begin to appear, 'men need not go to heaven to predict imminent changes.'

Cicero concedes that 'it is indeed a strange disposed time?' and inserts the statement that 'men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves.' But this is too disturbed a sky for him to walk in, so exit Cicero, and enter one of another kind of mettle, who thinks 'the night a very pleasant one to honest men;' who boasts that he has been walking about the streets 'unbraced, baring his bosom to the thunder stone,' and playing with 'the cross blue lightning;' and when Casca reproves him for this temerity, he replies,

'You are dull, Casca, and those sparks of life
That should be in a Roman, you do want,
Or else you use not.'

For as to these extraordinary phenomena in nature, he says, 'If you would consider the true cause

Why all these things change, from their ordinance,
Their natures and fore-formed faculties,
To monstrous quality; why, you shall find,
That heaven hath infused them with these spirits,
To make them instruments of fear, and warning,
Unto some MONSTROUS STATE.
Now could I, Casca,
Name to thee a man most like this dreadful night;
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
As doth the lion in the Capitol:
A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
In personal action; yet prodigious grown,
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.

Casca. 'Tis Caesar that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?

Cassius. LET IT BE WHO IT is: for Romans now
Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors;
But, woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead,
And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits;
Our yoke and sufferance shows us womanish.

Casca. Indeed, they say, the senators to-morrow
Mean to establish Caesar as a king.
And he shall wear his crown by sea, and land,
In every place, save here in Italy.

Cassius. I know where I will wear this dagger then;
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius:
Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat:
Nor STONY TOWER, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit.
If I know this, know all the world besides,
That part of tyranny, that I do bear,
I can shake off at pleasure.

Casca. So can I;
So every bondman in his own hand bears
The power to cancel his captivity.

Cassius. And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?
Poor man! I know, he would not be a wolf,
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will make a mighty fire,
Begin it with weak straws: What trash is Rome,
What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves
for the base matter to illuminate
So vile a thing as Caesar? But, O grief!
Where hast thou led me? I perhaps, speak this
BEFORE A WILLING BONDMAN: But I am arm'd
And dangers are to me indifferent.

Casca. You speak to Casca; and to such a man, That is no fleering tell-tale. Hold my hand: Be factious for redress of all these griefs: And I will set this foot of mine as far, As who goes farthest.

Cassius. There's a bargain made.

This is sufficiently explicit, an unprejudiced listener would be inclined to say—indeed, it is difficult to conceive how any more positively instructive exhibition of the subject, could well have been made. Certainly no one can deny that this fact of the personal helplessness, the physical weakness of those in whom this arbitrary power over the liberties and lives of others is vested, seems for some reason or other to have taken strong possession of the Poet's imagination. For how else, otherwise should he reproduce it so often, so elaborately under such a variety of forms?—with such a stedfastness and pertinacity of purpose?

The fact that the power which makes these personalities so 'prodigious,' so 'monstrous,' overshadowing the world, 'shaming the Age' with their 'colossal' individualities, no matter what new light, what new gifts of healing for its ills, that age has been endowed with, levelling all to their will, contracting all to the limit of their stinted nature, making of all its glories but 'rubbish, offal to illuminate their vileness,'—the fact that the power which enables creatures like these, to convulse nations with their whims, and deluge them with blood, at their pleasure,—which puts the lives and liberties of the noblest, always most obnoxious to them, under their heel—the fact that this power resides after all, not in these persons themselves,—that they are utterly helpless, pitiful, contemptible, in themselves; but that it exists in the 'thewes and limbs' of those who are content to be absorbed in their personality, who are content to make muscles for them, in those who are content to he mere machines for the 'only one man's' will and passion to operate with,—the fact that this so fearful power lies all in the consent of those who suffer from it, is the fact which this Poet wishes to be permitted to communicate, and which he will communicate in one form or another, to those whom it concerns to know it.

It is a fact, which he is not content merely to state, however, in so many words, and so have done with it. He will impress it on the imagination with all kinds of vivid representation. He will exhaust the splendours of his Art in uttering it. He will leave a statement on this subject, profoundly philosophical, but one that all the world will be able to comprehend eventually, one that the world will never be able to unlearn.

The single individual helplessness of the man whom the multitude, in this case, were ready to arm with unlimited power over their own welfare—that physical weakness, already so strenuously insisted on by Cassius, at last attains its climax in the representation, when, in the midst of his haughtiest display of will and personal authority, stricken by the hands of the men he scorned, by the hand of one 'he had just spurned like a cur out of his path,' he falls at the foot of Pompey's statue—or, rather, 'when at the base of Pompey's statue he lies along'—amid all the noise, and tumult, and rushing action of the scene that follows—through all its protracted arrangements, its speeches, and ceremonials—not unmarked, indeed,—the centre of all eyes,—but, mute, motionless, a thing of pity, 'A PIECE OF BLEEDING EARTH.'

That helpless cry in the Tiber, 'Save me, Cassius, or I sink!'—that feeble cry from the sick man's bed in Spain, 'Give me some drink, Titinius!'—and all that pitiful display of weakness, moral and physical, at the would-be coronation, which Casca's report conveys so unsparingly—the falling down in the street speechless, which Cassius emphasises with his scornful 'What? did CAESAR SWOON?'—all this makes but a part of the exhibition, which the lamentations of Mark Antony complete:—

'O mighty Caesar, dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure?'

This? and 'the eye' of the spectator, more learned than 'his ear,' follows the speaker's eye, and measures it.

'Fare thee well.
But yesterday the word of Caesar might
Have stood against the world: now lies he there.
And none so poor, to do him reverence.'

The Poet's tone breaks through Mark Antony's; the Poet's finger points, 'now lies he there'—there!

That form which 'lies there,' with its mute eloquence speaking this Poet's word, is what he calls 'a Transient Hieroglyphic,' which makes, he says, 'a deeper impression on minds of a certain order, than the language of arbitrary signs;' and his 'delivery' on the most important questions will be found, upon examination, to derive its principal emphasis from a running text in this hand. 'For, in such business,' he says, 'action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant more learned than the ears.'

Or, as he puts it in another place: 'What is sensible always strikes the memory more strongly, and sooner impresses itself, than what is intellectual. Thus the memory of brutes is excited by sensible, but not by intellectual things. And therefore it is easier to retain the image of a sportsman hunting, than of the corresponding notion of invention—of an apothecary ranging his boxes, than of the corresponding notion of disposition—of an orator making a speech, than of the term Eloquence—or a boy repeating verses, than the term Memory—or of A PLAYER acting his part, than the corresponding notion of—ACTION.'

So, also, 'Tom o' Bedlam' was a better word for 'houseless misery,' than all the king's prayer, good as it was, about 'houseless heads, and unfed sides,' in general, and 'looped, and windowed raggedness.'

'We construct,' says this author, in another place—rejecting the ordinary history as not suitable for scientific purposes, because it is 'varied, and diffusive, and confounds and disturbs the understanding, unless it be fixed and exhibited in due order'—we construct 'tables and combinations of instances, upon such a plan and in such order, that the understanding be enabled to act upon them.'