Imatges de pàgina
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When, Lucius, when? awake, I fay: what, Lu

cius !

Enter Lucius.

Luc. Call'd you, my lord?

Bru. Get me a taper in my study, Lucius: When it is lighted, come and call me here.

Luc. I will, my lord.

[Exit.

Bru. It must be by his death: and, for my part,

I know no perfonal caufe to fpurn at him,

But for the general. He would be crown'd :How that might change his nature, there's the quef tion.

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 fting in him,

That at his will he may do danger with.
The abuse of greatnefs is, when it disjoins
'Remorfe from power: and, to speak truth of Cæfar,
I have not known when his affections sway'd
More than his reafon. But 'tis a 7 common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face:
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back;
Looks in the clouds, fcorning the base degrees
By which he did afcend. So Cæfar may:

Then, left he may, prevent. And, fince the quarrel
Will bear no colour, for the thing he is,

Remorse from power:] Remorse, for mercy.

WARB.

Remorfe (fays the Author of the Revifal) fignifies the conscious uneafinefs arifing from a fenfe of having done wrong; to extinguish which feeling, nothing hath fo great a tendency as abfolute uncontrouled power.

I think Warburton right.

1-common proof,] Common experiment. -bafe degrees] Low fteps.

JOHNSON.

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Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,
Would run to thefe, and thefe extremities:
And therefore think him as a ferpent's egg,
Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mif-
chievous;

And kill him in the fhell.

Enter Lucius.

Luc. The taper burneth in your closet, Sir. Searching the window for a flint, I found This paper, thus feal'd up: and, I am fure, It did not lie there, when I went to bed.

[Gives him the letter.
Bru. Get you to bed again, it is not day.
Is not to-morrow, boy, the Ides of March?
Luc. I know not, Sir.

Bru. Look in the kalendar, and bring me word.
Luc. I will, Sir.

Bru. The exhalations, whizzing in the air,
Give fo much light, that I may read by them.

[Exit.

[Opens the letter, and reads.

Brutus, thou fleep'ft; awake, and fee thyself:

Shall Rome-fpeak, ftrike, redress!

Brutus, thou fleep'ft: awake,

Such inftigations have been often dropt,
Where I have took them up:

Shall Rome-Thus muft I piece it out;

-as his kind,-] According to his nature.

JOHNSON.

Is not to-morrow, boy, the FIRST of March ?] We should read IDES: for we can never suppose the speaker to have loft fourteen days in his account. He is here plainly ruminating on what the foothfayer told Cæfar [A&t I. Scene 2.] in his prefence. [-Beware the Ides of March.] The boy comes back and fays, Sir, March is wafted fourteen days. So that the morrow was the Ides of March, as he fuppofed. For March, May, July, and October, had fix nones each, fo that the fifteenth of March was the Ides of that month. WARBURTON.

"Shall

"Shall Rome ftand under one man's awe? what! "Rome?

"My ancestors did from the streets of Rome "The Tarquin drive, when he was call'd a King." Speak, ftrike, redrefs!Am I entreated

To speak and ftrike? ORome! I make thee promise, If the redress will follow, thou receivest

Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus !

2

Enter Lucius.

Luc. Sir, March is wafted fourteen days.

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2 In former editions,

Sir, March is wafted fifteen days.

And

The editors are flightly mistaken: it was wafted but fourteen days; this was the dawn of the 15th, when the boy makes his report. THEOBALD.

3 Between the acting of a dreadful thing,

And the firft motion, &c.] That nice critic, Dionyfius of Halicarnaffus, complains, that of all kind of beauties, thofe great strokes, which he calls the terrible graces, and which are fo frequent in Homer, are the rareft to be found in the following writers. Amongst our countrymen, it feems to be as much confined to the British Homer. This defcription of the condition of confpirators, before the execution of their defign, has a pomp and terror in it that perfectly aftonishes. The excellent Mr. Addifon, whofe modesty made him fometimes diffident of his own genius, but whofe true judgment always led him to the fafeft guides (as we may fee by thofe fine ftrokes in his Cato borrowed from the Phillippics of Cicero) has paraphrafed this fine defcription; but we are no longer to expect thofe terrible graces which animate his original.

O think, what anxious moments pass between
The birth of plots, and their laft fatal periods.
Ob, 'tis a dreadful interval of time.
Fill up with horror all, and big with death.

Cato.

I fhall

And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantafma, or a hideous dream:

The

I shall make two remarks on this fine imitation. The firft is, that the fubjects of the two confpiracies being fo very different (the fortunes of Cæfar and the Roman empire being concerned in the one; and that of a few auxilliary troops only in the other) Mr. Addifon could not, with propriety, bring in that magnificent circumftance which gives one of the terrible graces of Shakespeare's defcription;

The genius and the mortal inft, uments

Are then in council

For kingdoms, in the Pagan Theology, befides their good, had their evil genius's, likewife, reprefented here, with the most daring ftretch of fancy, as fitting in confultation with the confpirators, whom he calls their mortal inftruments. But this, as we fay, would have been too pompous an apparatus to the rape and desertion of Syphax and Sempronius. The other thing obfervable is, that Mr. Addison was fo ftruck and affected with these terrible graces in his original, that inftead of imitating his author's fentiments, he hath, before he was aware, given us only the copy of his own impreffions made by them. For,

Oh, 'tis a dreadful interval of time,

Fill'd up with horror al, and big with death,

are but the affections raifed by fuch forcible images as these, Al the int'rim is

Like a phantafma, or a hideous dream.

-the fate of man,

Like to a little kingdom, fuffers then

The nature of an infurrection.

Comparing the troubled mind of a confpirator to a state of anarchy, is just and beautiful; but the intrim, or interval, to an bideous vifion, or a frightful dream, holds fomething fo wonderfully of truth, and lays the foul fo open, that one can hardly think it poffible for any man, who had not fome time or other been engaged in a confpiracy, to give fuch force of colouring to nature. WARB.

The vor of the Greek critics does not, I think, mean fentiments which raife fear, more than wonder, or any other of the tu. multuous paffions; To dor is that which frikes, which aflonifhs, with the idea either of fome great fubject, or of the author's abi lities.

Dr. Warburton's pompous criticifm might well have been shortened. The genius is not the geniu. of a kingdom, nor are the inftruments, confpirators. Shakespeare is defcribing what paffes in a fingle bofom, the infurrection which a confpirator feels agitating the little

The genius, and the mortal inftruments
Are then in council; and the ftate of man,
Like to a little kingdom, fuffers then
The nature of an infurrection.

Enter Lucius.

Luc. Sir, 'tis your brother 4 Caffius at the door, Who doth defire to fee you.

Bru. Is he alone?

Luc. No, Sir, there are more with him.

Bru. Do you know them?

Luc. No, Sir; their hats are pluckt about their

ears,

And half their faces buried in their cloaks,
That by no means I may discover them
By any mark of favour.

kingdom of his own mind; when the Genius, or power that watches for his protection, and the mortal inftruments, the paffions, which excite him to a deed of honour and danger, are in council and debate; when the defire of action and the care of fafety, keep the mind in continual fluctuation and disturbance. JOHNSON.

Inftead of inftruments, it should, I think, be inftrument, and explained thus.

The genius, i. e. the foul or fpirit, which should govern; and the mortal inftrument. i. e. the man, with all his bodily, that is, earthly paffions, fuch as envy, pride, malice, and ambition, are then in council, i. e. debating upon the horrid action that is to be done, the foul and rational powers diffuading, and the mortal inftrument, man, with his bodily paffions, prompting and pushing on to the horrid deed, whereby the state of man, like to a little kingdom, fuffers then the nature of an infurrection, the inferior powers rifing and rebelling against the fuperior. See this exemplified in Macbeth's foliloquy, and alfo by what King John fays, A& IV. Nay, in the body of this fleshly land,

This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath,
Hoftility and civil tumult reigns

Between my confcience and my cousin's death.

SMITH.

*-your brother Caffius-] Caffius married Junia, Brutus's fifter.

5-of faveur.] Any distinction of countenance.

STEEVEKS.

JOHNSON,

Bru

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