you had your eyes, you might fail of the knowing me ;" and A. Y. L. i. 2. 185: "If you saw yourself with your eyes, or knew yourself with your judgment," etc.

I had as lief not be as live to be (i. 2. 91). The quibble illustrates the old pronunciation of lief, which was often printed lieve. See A. Y. L. p.

139, note on 133.

For once upon a raw and gusty day, etc. (i. 2. 96). Cæsar was famous as a swimmer. Wr. quotes Suetonius (7. C. 64): "At Alexandria being busie about the assault and winning of a bridge where by a sodaine sallie of the enemies he was driven, to take a boat, & many besides made hast to get into the same, he lept into the sea, and by swimming almost a quarter of a mile recouered cleare the next ship: bearing up his left hand all the while, for feare the writings which he held therein should take wet, and drawing his rich coate armour after him by the teeth, because the enemie should not have it as a spoyle." Plutarch's account makes the feat still more difficult: "The third danger was in the battel by sea, that was fought by the tower of Phar: where meaning to helpe his men that fought by sea, he leapt from the peere into a boate. Then the Ægyptians made towards him with their oares on euery side: but he leaping into the sea, with great hazard saued himselfe by swimming. It is said, that then holding diuers books in his hand, he did neuer let them go, but kept them always vpon his head aboue water, and swam with the other hand, notwithstanding that they shot maruellously at him, and was driuen somtime to ducke into the water; howbeit ye boate was drowned presently."

The eternal devil (p. 133). Wr. believes that eternal was probably used "to avoid coming under the operation of the Act of James I. ' to restrain the abuses of players' in the use of profane language." He notes that

while we find infernal in Much Ado, 2 Hen. IV., and T. A., all of which were printed in 1600, eternal is used as the equivalent for that word in Hamlet, Othello, and J. C., which were probably produced after 1600. As Weever alludes to 7. C. in 1601 (see p. 8 above), the play must have been brought out that very year, if this inference is a sound one.

He should not humour me (p. 136). Wr. is inclined to agree with Warburton, because "Cassius is all along speaking of his own influence over Brutus, notwithstanding the difference of their characters, which made Cæsar dislike the one and love the other." The chief objection to Warburton's explanation, in our opinion, is that it seems to leave the mention of Cæsar unconnected with what follows. We fancy that this occurred to Wr., and that what we have just quoted is an attempt to meet the objection; but, to our thinking, it is far from successful. If we accept Johnson's interpretation, he should not humour me naturally follows what precedes, and is naturally followed by what comes after: Cæsar should not cajole me as he does Brutus; and I am going to take measures to counteract the influence Cæsar has over him.

Remorse (p. 142). Wr. explains this as "tender feeling, pity; not necessarily compunction for what has been done;" and this, we think, is the meaning. H. defines remorse as conscience, or conscientiousness;" and reason in 21 is “used in the same sense," the conscience be

This seems to us

ing, "in a philosophical sense, the moral reason."
"reading into" the passage a meaning that is not there. Brutus simply
says that power is liable to become arbitrary and merciless; in its am-
bition to rise yet higher, it thinks only of itself and forgets the claims of
others. Cf. what Prospero says to Antonio in Temp. v. 1. 76:

"You, brother mine, that entertain'd ambition,
Expell'd remorse and nature;"

that is, pity and natural feeling. Remorse is the mercy of Portia's famous
plea (M. of V. iv. 1. 184 fol.), which is "enthroned in the hearts of kings"
and " seasons,"
or tempers, even "justice." Brutus goes on to say that,
to speak truth of Cæsar, he has not yet allowed his passions to prevail
over his reason, and to lead him to abuse his greatness. His ambition is
still under the control of his better judgment; it has not yet expelled re-
morse and nature. Craik paraphrases the passage very well: "The abuse
to which greatness is most subject is when it deadens in its possessor
the natural sense of humanity, or of that which binds us to our kind;
and this I do not say that it has yet done in the case of Cæsar; I have
never known that in him selfish affection, or mere passion, has carried
it over reason."

Coleridge was perplexed by what follows, and asks, "What character did Shakespeare mean his Brutus to be?" H. thinks that "the poet must have regarded him simply as a well-meaning, but conceited and shallow idealist." As an idealist, indeed, but not as "conceited and shallow." That was not Shakespeare's conception of "the noblest Roman of them all." He was one of the types of "the scholar in politics." As Dowden says in his Primer: "Brutus . . . acts as an idealizer and theorizer might, with no eye for the actual bearing of facts, and no sense of the true importance of persons. Intellectual doctrines and moral ideals rule the life of Brutus; and his life is most noble, high, and stainless, but his public action is a series of mistakes. Yet even while he errs we admire him, for all his errors are those of a pure and lofty spirit. ... All the practical gifts, insight, and tact, which Brutus lacks, are possessed by Cassius; but of Brutus's moral purity, veneration of ideals, disinterestedness, and freedom from unworthy personal motive, Cassius possesses little."

Coleridge asks, "How could Brutus say that he found no personal cause-none in Cæsar's past history as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror?" etc. But by personal cause, as Bishop Wordsworth replies, S. evidently meant "what concerned himself (Brutus) personally." The acts to which Coleridge refers all come under the exception which Brutus had named-but for the general.

Paul Stapfer remarks: "The death of Brutus was not merely the penalty he paid for a series of imprudent and mistaken actions, but was also the expiation of a great crime. He would have tried by suppressing present evil to assure the well-being of the future. But what did he know, and what certitude could he have that he was making no mistake? He was not in the secret of the universe; for who has known the thought of the Lord, or been the counsellor of the Most High?"

High-sighted tyranny (ii. 1. 118). Wr. remarks: "There seems to be an implied comparison of tyranny to an eagle or bird of prey, whose keen eye discovers its victim from the highest pitch of its flight. We have the same figure in the first scene of the play (1. 73, etc.), and although the primary meaning of high-sighted may be 'proud, supercilious,' there is a secondary meaning in keeping with the comparison of tyranny to a bird of prey. That this comparison is intended, appears to me to be confirmed by the occurrence of the word range which is technically used of hawks and falcons flying in search of game. Turbervile (The Booke of Falconrie, p. 23) says of eagles: "In like sort they take other beastes, and sundry times doe roue and range abroad to beat and seaze on Goates, Kiddes, and Fawnes.""

O name him not, etc. (ii. 1. 150-153). As Wr. says, "S. had read Cicero's character with consummate ability;" and he quotes Merivale, Hist. of the Romans under the Empire, iíi. 187: “All men and all parties agreed that he could not be relied upon to lead, to co-operate, or to follow. In all the great enterprises of his party, he was left behind, except that which the nobles undertook against Catilina, in which they rather thrust him before them than engaged with him on terms of mutual support. When we read the vehement claims which Cicero put forth to the honour of association, however tardy, with the glories and dangers of Cæsar's assassins, we should deem the conspirators guilty of a monstrous oversight in having neglected to enlist him in their design, were we not assured that he was not to be trusted as a confederate either for good or evil."

For he is superstitious grown of late (ii. 1. 195). Here again Wr. quotes Merivale, ii. 446: "Cæsar himself professed without reserve the principles of the unbelievers. The supreme pontiff of the commonwealth, the head of the college whence issued the decrees which declared the will of the gods, as inferred from the signs of the heavens, the flight of birds and the entrails of victims, he made no scruple of asserting in the assembled senate that the immortality of the soul, the recognized foundation of all religion, was a vain chimera. Nor did he hesitate to defy the omens which the priests were especially appointed to observe. He decided to give battle at Munda in despite of the most adverse auspices, when the sacrificers assured him that no heart was found in the victim. 'I will have better omens when I choose,' was the scornful saying with which he reassured his veterans on another similar occasion. He was not deterred from engaging in his African campaign either by the fortunate name of his opponent Scipio, or by the unfavourable auspices which were studiously reported to him. Yet Cæsar, freethinker as he was, could not escape from the universal thraldom of superstition in which his contemporaries were held. We have seen him crawling on his knees up the steps of the Capitoline temple to appease the Nemesis which frowns upon human prosperity. When he stumbled at landing on the coast of Africa, he averted the evil omen with happy presence of mind, looking at the handful of soil he had grasped in his fall, and exclaiming, 'Africa, thou art mine!' In a man who was consistent in his incredulity this might be deemed a trick to impose on the soldiers' imagination; but

it assumes another meaning in the mouth of one who never mounted a carriage without muttering a private charm. Before the battle of Pharsalia Cæsar had addressed a prayer to the gods whom he denied in the senate, and derided in the company of his literary friends. He appealed to the divine omens when he was about to pass the Rubicon. He carried about with him in Africa a certain Cornelius Salutio, a man of no personal distinction, to neutralize, as he hoped, the good fortune of the Cornelii in the opposite ranks."

The watch (ii. 2. 16). "S. was thinking of his own London, not of ancient Rome, where the night watchmen were not established before the time of Augustus" (Wr.).

Know Casar doth not wrong, etc. (p. 157). H. adopts the reading suggested by Tyrwhitt:

"Metellus. Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.

Cæsar. Know, Cæsar doth not wrong, but with just cause,
Nor without cause will he be satisfied.

Wr. says: "I am not convinced that any change is necessary. Cæsar
claims infallibility in his judgments, and a firmness of temper in resisting
appeals to his vanity. Metellus bending low before him begins a flatter-
ing speech. Cæsar, knowing that his object was to obtain a reversal of
the decree of banishment which had been pronounced against his brother,
abruptly interrupts him. To appeal against the decree implied that the
decree was unjust; to demand his brother's recall without assigning a
cause was to impute to Cæsar that fickleness of purpose which he dis-
dains in such strong terms. If it had not been for Ben Jonson's story,
no one would have suspected any corruption in the passage.
The ques-
tion is whether his authority is sufficient to warrant a change. Gifford
thinks that he gave Shakespeare's genuine words, and that what appears
in the text is the players' 'botchery.' If the lines stood as Jonson quotes
them, we must suppose one of two things: either that, in consequence
of the ridicule they excited, Shakespeare himself altered them; or that
they were altered by the players who edited the first folio, as Gifford be-
lieved. The former supposition is not probable, because if Jonson's re-
marks are hypercritical and the lines yield a tolerable sense, Shakespeare
would have been aware of this as well as any of his commentators, and
is not likely to have made a change which is confessedly unnecessary.
On the other hand, if the players introduced the alteration, it is not easy
to see why they should have left out the words which Jonson puts into the
mouth of Metellus,' Cæsar, thou dost me wrong;' nor why they should
have written,‘Know, Cæsar doth not wrong' instead of 'Cæsar did never
wrong. The argument that the passage is obviously corrupt because it
ends with an imperfect line is of no weight, because it would apply equal-
ly to the proposed restoration, in which another imperfect line is intro-
duced. On the whole, I am disposed to believe that Ben Jonson loved
his jest better than his friend, and repeated a distorted version of the
passage without troubling himself about its accuracy, because it afforded
him an opportunity of giving a hit at Shakespeare. It is worth while to
remark that for Metellus to interrupt Cæsar with the petulant exclama-

tion 'Cæsar, thou dost me wrong,' is out of character with the tone of his speeches before and after, which is that of abject flattery.”

Mr. Fleay, who believes that 7. C. in its present form is a play of Shakespeare's revised by Ben Jonson, takes this to be one of Ben's "corrections;" but Mr. Hales (quoted by Furnivall in Trans. of New Shaks. Soc. 1874, p. 504) remarks that "if Ben Jonson had really revised Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar, he would certainly have told us that he, the great Ben, had set his friend's 'ridiculous' passages all right. Jonson was not the man to hide his light under a bushel.”

Our arms, in strength of malice, etc. (p. 159). Wr. adds: "The same apparently contradictory figure is used by S. in Polonius's advice to Laertes, Ham. i. 3. 63:

"The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel ;'

where grapple naturally describes a hostile and not a friendly act. There is something of the same idea in the speech of Aufidius to Coriolanus (Cor. iv. 5. 112):

'Let me twine

Mine arms about that body, where against

My grained ash an hundred times hath broke,
And scarr'd the moon with splinters: here I clip

The anvil of my sword, and do contest

As hotly and as nobly with thy love
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against thy valour.'

Singer reads 'In strength of amity;' which, if any change be necessary, is the best that has been proposed, malice and amitie being words which might be confounded by a printer. But it gives a rather feeble sense, and I prefer to leave the text as it stands, although the figure may be a violent one. It is singular that one of the passages which has been quoted in support of Singer's emendation is really in favour of the text as it is. In A. and C. iii. 2. 61, Antony, taking leave of Cæsar, says:

'I'll wrestle with you in my strength of love;'

the vehemence of his embrace had a hostile character; his strength of love was employed in an act of malice. Here the figure is reversed, and the strength of malice is employed in an act of love."

Beholding (p. 164). Wr. states that "beholden" is found in the 5th and 6th quartos of Rich. III. in iii. 1. 107. It is also the form in Baret's Alvearie (1573) and Cotgrave's Fr. Dict. (1611).

You know not what you do (iii. 1. 233). "Brutus's plan, if he had one, was of such an abstract and Utopian nature, that it was equivalent to having none at all, and was based upon a complete misconception of the circumstances and needs of the time. It was the plan of an idealist, who fancied himself living in the Republic of Cato, instead of being in all the tumult of a town in revolution. This plainly shows itself after Cæsar's death, when Brutus commits the enormous imprudence of allowing Antony to speak at Cæsar's funeral. Cassius at once measured the consequences of this error, and says to Brutus You know not what you do" (Paul Stapfer).