But for the general.

He would be crown'd:

How that might change his nature, there's the queftion.
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 abufe of greatnefs is, when it difjoins
Remorfe from power: And, to fpeak truth of Cæfar,
I have not known when his affections sway'd
More than his reafon. But 'tis a common proof,3
That lowlinefs 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, fcorning the bafe degrees4
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,
Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,

Would run to these, and these extremities;
And therefore think him as a ferpent's egg,

Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind,5 grow mischievous;
And kill him in the shell.

2 Remorfe, for mercy. WARBURTON.

Re-enter

Remorfe (fays Mr. Heath) fignifies the confcious 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. JOHNSON.

Remorfe is pity, tenderness; and has twice occurred in that fenfe in Meafure for Measure. The fame word occurs in Othello, and feveral other of our author's dramas, with the same fignification. STEEVENS.

3 Common experiment. JOHNSON.

Common proof means a matter proved by common experience. With great deference to johnfon, I cannot think that the word experiment will bear that meaning. M. MASON.

4 Low fteps. JOHNSON.

5 According to his nature. JOHNSON.

As bis kind does not mean, according to bis nature, as Johnfon afferts, but like the reft of bis fpecies. M. MASON.

Perhaps rather, as all thofe of his kind, that is, nature. MALONE.
VOL. VII.

C

Re-enter LUCIUS.

Lue. The taper burneth in your clofet, fir. Searching the window for a flint, I found This paper, thus fealed up; and, I am fure, It did not lie there, when I went to bed.

Bru. Get you to bed again, it is not day.
Is not to-morrow, boy, the ides of March?s
Luc. I know not, fir.

Bru. Look in the calendar, and bring me word.
Luc. I will, fir.

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, &c. Speak, ftrike, redress!
Brutus, thou fleep'ft; awake,-

Such inftigations have been often dropp'd
Where I have took them up.

Shall Rome, &c. Thus muft I piece it out;

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, frike, redress!-Am I entreated then

To fpeak, and strike? O Rome! I make thee promise,
If the redrefs will follow, thou receiveft
Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus!

Re-enter

He

5 Old copy-the first of March.] We fhould read ides: for we can never fuppofe the fpeaker to have loft fourteen days in his account. is here plainly ruminating on what the foothfayer told Cæfar (A&t I. fc. ii.] 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.

The correction was made by Mr. Theobald. The error must have been that of a tranfcriber or printer; for our author without any minute calculation might have found the ides, nones, and kalends, oppofite the respective days of the month, in the Almanacks of the time.

In Hop

ton's Concordancie of yeares, 1616, now before me, oppofite to the fifteenth of March is printed Idus. MALONE.

Re-enter LUCIUS.

Luc. Sir, March is wafted fourteen days. [Knack within. Bru. 'Tis good. Go to the gate; fomebody knocks. [Exit LUCIUS.

Since Caffius firft did whet me against Cafar,

I have not flept.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion," all the interim is

Like

6 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 seems 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 astonishes. The excellent Mr. Addison, whofe modesty made him fometimes diffident of his own genius, but whofe true judgement always led him to the safeft guides (as we may fee by thofe fine ftrokes in his Cato borrowed from the Philippics of Cicero) has paraphrafed this fine defcription; but we are no longer to expect those terrible graces which animate his original:

"O think, what anxious moments pass between
"The birth of plots, and their laft fatal periods.

"Oh, 'tis a dreadful interval of time,

«Fill'd up with horror all, and big with death." Cato.

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 auxiliary troops only in the other) Mr. Addifon could not, with propriety, bring in that magnificent circumftance which gives one of the terrible graces of Shakspeare's defcription:

"The genius and the mortal inftruments

"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 fretch 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 defertion of Syphax and Sempronius. The other thing obfervable is, that Mr. Addifon was fo ftruck and affected with thefe 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,

8

Like a phantafma, or a hideous dream:
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.

"Oh, 'tis a dreadful interval of time,

Fill'd up with horror all, and big with death."

are but the affections raised by fuch forcible images as thefe All the interim is

"Like a phantafma, or a hideous dream.

Re-enter

Comparing the troubled mind of a confpirator to a state of anarchy, is juft and beautiful, but the interim 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. WARBURTON.

The Savoy of the Greek criticks does not, I think, mean fentiments which raise fear, more than wonder, or any other of the tumultuous paffions; To devov is that which firikes, which aftonishes with the idea either of fome great fubject, or of the author's abilities.

Dr. Warburton's pompous criticism might well have been fhortened. The genius is not the genius of a kingdom, nor are the inftruments, confpirators. Shakspeare is defcribing what paffes in a single bosom, the infurrection which a confpirator feels agitating the little 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.

Johnfon's explanation of the word inftruments is confirmed by the following paffage in Macbeth, whofe mind was, at the time, in the very state which Brutus is here defcribing:

Each corporal agent to this terrible feat." M. MASON.

The word genius in our author's time, meant either a good angel or a familiar evil fpirit," and is fo defined by Bullokar in his English Expofitor, 1616. MALONE.

8 Suidas maketh a difference between phantafma and phantafia, saying that phantafma is an imagination, or appearance, or fight of a thing which is not, as are thofe fightes whiche men in their fleepe do thinke they fee: but that phantafia is the feeing of that only which is in very deeds. Lavaterus, 1572. HENDERSON.

Re-enter LUCIUS.

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

Bru.

Is he alone?

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

Bru.

Do you know them? Luc. No, fir; their hats are pluck'd about their ears, And half their faces buried in their cloaks,

That by no means I may discover them

By any mark of favour. 2

Bru,

?

Let them enter.

[Exit Lucius.

They are the faction. O confpiracy!

Sham'st thou to fhow thy dangerous brow by night,
When evils are most free? O, then, by day,

Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough

To mark thy monftrous vifage? Seek none, confpiracy;
Hide it in fmiles, and affability:

For if thou path, thy native femblance on, putt ?

Not Erebus itself were dim enough

To hide thee from prevention.

W

Enter CASSIUS, CASCA, DECIUS, CINNA, METELLUS CIMBER, and TREBONIUS.

Caf. I think, we are too bold upon your reft:
Good morrow, Brutus; Do we trouble you ?

Bru. I have been up this hour; awake, all night.
Know I these men, that come along with you?
Caf. Yes, every man of them, and no man here,
But honours you: and every one doth wish,
You had but that opinion of yourself,

Which every noble Roman bears of you.
This is Trebonius.

Bru.

He is welcome hither.

Caf. This Decius Brutus.

9 Caffius married Junia, Brutus' fifter. STEEVENS
2 Any diftinction of countenance. JOHNSON
3. If thou walk in thy true form. JOHNSON.

Brus