[I.115] bade Theobald | bad Ff.
[I.116] temper: temperament, constitution. "The lean and wrinkled Cassius" venting his spite at Cæsar, by ridiculing his liability to sickness and death, is charmingly characteristic. The mighty Cæsar, with all his electric energy of mind and will, was of a rather fragile and delicate make; and his countenance, as we have it in authentic busts, is of almost feminine beauty. Cicero, who did not love him at all, in one of his Letters applies to him the Greek word that is used for 'miracle' or 'wonder' in the New Testament; the English of the passage being, "This miracle (monster?) is a thing of terrible energy, swiftness, diligence."
[I.117] Observe the force of 'narrow' here; as if Cæsar were grown so enormously big that even the world seemed a little thing under him. Some while before this, the Senate had erected a bronze statue of Cæsar, standing on a globe, and inscribed to "Cæsar the Demigod," but this inscription Cæsar erased.
[I.118] It is only a legend that the bronze Colossus of Rhodes bestrode the entrance to the famous harbor. The story probably arose from the statement that the figure, which represented Helios, the national deity of the Rhodians, was so high that a ship might sail between its legs.
[I.119] In Shakespeare are many such allusions to the tenets of the old astrology and the belief in planetary influence upon the fortunes and characters of men which Scott describes in the Introduction to Guy Mannering and makes the atmosphere of the story.
[I.120] should be: can be. So in The Tempest, I, ii, 387: "Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth?"
[I.121] The allusion is to the old custom of muttering certain names, supposed to have in them "the might of magic spells," in raising or conjuring up spirits.
[I.122] the great flood. By this an ancient Roman would understand the universal deluge of classical mythology, from which only Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha escaped alive. The story is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, I. Shakespeare mentions Deucalion twice.
[I.123] walks F4 | Walkes F1F2F3 | walls Rowe.
[I.124] walks. The reasons why Rowe's emendation, 'walls,' is almost universally accepted, are that 'walls' would be easily corrupted into 'walks' from the nearness of 'talk'd,' and that there is a disagreeable assonance in 'talk'd' and 'walks' in successive lines. But 'walks' is picturesque and poetical; compared with it, 'walls' is commonplace and obvious. Cf. Paradise Lost, IV, 586.