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.'
CHAPTER II.
CAESAR'S SPIRIT.
I'll meet thee at Phillippi.
In Julius Caesar, the most splendid and magnanimous representative of arbitrary power is selected—'the foremost man of all the world,'—even by the concession of those who condemn him to death; so that here it is the mere abstract question as to the expediency and propriety of permitting any one man to impose his individual will on the nation. Whatever personalities are involved in the question here—with Brutus, at least—tend to bias the decision in his favour. For so he tells us, as with agitated step he walks his orchard on that wild night which succeeds his conference with Cassius, revolving his part, and reading, by the light of the exhalations whizzing in the air, the papers that have been found thrown in at his study window.
'It must be by his death: and, for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
BUT FOR THE GENERAL. He would be crown'd:—
How that might change his nature, there's the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder;
And that craves wary walking. Crown him? That;—
And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
Remorse from power: And, to speak truth of Caesar,
I have not known when his affections sway'd
More than his reason. But 't is a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face:
But when he once attains the utmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend: So Caesar may;
Then, lest he may, PREVENT. And, since the quarrel,
Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these, and these extremities:
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg,
Which, hatch'd, would, AS HIS KIND, grow mischievous;
AND KILL HIM IN THE SHELL.'