Casca. Tis Caesar that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?
[I paint him in character.]
Cassius. Let it be—WHO IT IS: For Romans now Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.'
CHAPTER IV.
POLITICAL RETROSPECT.
'I think he'll be to Rome
As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature.'
FLOWER OF WARRIORS
The poet finds, indeed, this monstrosity full-blown in his time. He finds it 'in the civil streets,' 'talking plain cannon', 'humming batteries' in the most unmistakeable manner, with no particular account of its origin to give, without, indeed, appearing to recollect exactly how it came there, retaining only a general impression, that a descent from the celestial regions had, in some way, been effected during some undated period of human history, under circumstances which the memory of man was not expected to be able to recall in detail, and a certificate to that effect, divinely subscribed, was understood to be included among its properties, though it does not appear to have been, on the face of it, so absolutely conclusive as to render a little logical demonstration, on the part of royalty itself, superfluous.
It was not very far from this time, that a very able and loyal servant of the crown undertook, openly, to assist the royal memory on this delicate point; and, though the details of that historical representation, and the manner of it, are, of course, quite different from those of the Play, it will be found, upon careful examination, not so dissimilar in purport as the exterior would have seemed to imply. The philosopher does not feel called upon, in either case, to begin by contradicting flatly, in so many words, the theory which he finds the received one on that point. Even the poet, with all his freedom, is compelled to go to work after another fashion.
'And thus do we, of wisdom, and of reach,
With windlasses, and with ASSAYS of BIAS,
By indirections find directions out.'