The subject of Julius Cæsar was not first dramatized by Shakspeare; perhaps the honour of the dictator's introduction to the stage may be due to the contriver of the "droll," in which his fortunes were exhibited under the auspices of

soldier and a captain be." Publius and Quintus and Censorinus are, also, named as the ancestors of Coriolanus by Shakspeare (Act II. sc. 3.); but they were in fact his descendants; and from the indefinite manner in which Sir Thomas North speaks of them originated Shakspeare's error. In the same play it is stated as absolutely necessary to his election to the consulate, that Coriolanus should " speak to the people." (Act II. sc. 2.) But the senate then, and for more than a century afterwards, chose both the consuls. The anachronism was copied from the old Plutarch: "it was the custom of Rome, at that time, that such as did sue for any office should for certain days before be in the market-place, only with a poor gown on their backs, and without any coat underneath, to pray the people to remember them at the day of election." Life of Coriolanus.— We will confine ourselves to the notice of one other error derived from the same source. In Julius Cæsar, where the scene is in the forum near the capitol, (Act III. sc. 2.) Antony informs the populace that Cæsar had bequeathed to them "all his walks, his private arbours, and new planted orchards on this side Tyber:" now Cæsar's gardens were separated from the main city by the river, and, therefore, on the other side of the Tyber. But Sir Thomas North informed Shakspeare, that Cæsar "bequeathed unto every citizen of Rome seventy-five drachmas a man, and he left his gardens and arbours unto the people, which he had on this side of the river Tyber."

"mammets.” * Stephen Gosson mentions the existence of a play entitled "The History of Cæsar and Pompey," in 1579, and in 1582 a Latin play, by Dr. Richard Eedes, on the subject of Cæsar's murder, was acted in the university of Oxford. It is highly probable, that Shakspeare's play was performed in 1607; and in that year an edition (perhaps the second, for there is another without a date,) of the anonymous tragedy of Cæsar and Pompey, or Cæsar's Revenge, was printed. At the same period Alexander, Earl of Sterline, published his Julius Cæsart, and in 1607, also, Chapman's ‡ Cæsar and Pompey appeared. To none of these sources, as far as we are acquainted with them, does Shakspeare seem to have been at all indebted, whilst every scene of his play proclaims his obligations to Sir Thomas North. It will be the object, therefore, of the following pages to contrast the characters of the drama with their prototypes, in the historical work of Roman annals which Shakspeare adopted as his guide.

Every Woman in her Humour. Malone's Chronol. Vol. II. p. 449.

+ The first act of this play is consumed by a speech of Juno, which consists of 240 lines, and a chorus of 70 lines. His Lordship was a friend to alliteration.

"Great Pompey's pomp is past, his glory gone."
Life of Brutus, 994. ed. 1631.

Plutarch represents the great instigator of the conspiracy against Cæsar to have been Cassius, "a cholericke man, and hating Cæsar privately; he incensed Brutus against him The friends and countrimen of Brutus, both by divers procurements and sundrie rumours of the citie, and by many bils also, did openly call and procure him to do that he did." *- "Now when Cassius felt his friends, and did stirre them up. against Cæsar, they all agreed, and promised to take part with him, so Brutus were the chiefe off their conspiracie. For they told him that so high an enterprise and attempt as that, did not so much require men of manhood and courage to draw their swords, as it stood them upon to have a man of such estimation as Brutus, to make every man boldly thinke, that by his onely presence the fact were holy and just. If he tooke not this course, then that they should go to it with fainter hearts; and when they had done it, they should be more fearefull because every man would thinke that Brutus would not have refused to have made one with them, if the cause had been good and honest. Therefore Cassius, considering this matter with himselfe, did first of all speake to Brutus."+

• Life of Brutus, 994. ed. 1631.

+ Ibid. 995.

A testimony so honourable to Brutus, who was certainly intended for the hero of his play, Shakspeare has carefully preserved :

"O, he sits high, in all the people's hearts:
And that, which would appear offence in us,
His countenance, like richest alchymy,
Will change to virtue, and to worthiness."

The simple fact, that no oath was taken by the conspirators, the poet learnt from Plutarch*; but the argument which demonstrates the inutility of such a ceremony-the succeeding quotation proves to be his own: "Having never

taken oathes together, nor taken or given any caution or assurance, nor binding themselves one to another by any religious othes, they all kept the matter so secret to themselves, and could so cunningly handle it, that notwithstanding the gods did reveale it by manifest signes and tokens from above, and by predictions of sacrifices, yet all this would not be beleeved."+

Shakspeare, like Plutarch, has wished to make public duty a principle of Brutus' conduct. Brutus knows no "personal cause to spurn at Cæsar but for the general;" nor can he tell, "to speak truth of Cæsar," "when his affections sway'd

"No, not an oath: If not the face of men," &c. + Life of Brutus, p. 996.

Act II. sc. 1.

more than his reason." -"The quarrel," he says, "will bear no colour for the thing he is;" but he argues, that if Cæsar should be king, he then will have "a sting in him, that at his will he may do danger with." And this is the wretched hypothesis on which Brutus justifies his conscience in the murder of Cæsar! When Shakspeare deserted his author, and described the rest of Brutus' character from his own imagination, how beautiful is the picture! - his calmness and dignity so well sustained by the abounding maxims of his philosophy; - his considerate regard for Lucius*, in such accordance with the character of gentleness in Brutus. In the struggle of feeling and philosophy, when he tells Cassius of the death of Portia, he can speak with calmness of his misfortune, and is able even to narrate the circumstances of its occurrence without embarrassment; but the strict attention he observes to utter no unnecessary word, his haste to dismiss, and his injunctions against the renewal of the subject, denote, in a manner as deeply impressive as language could have made it, the internal agony of his mind.† This is one of those surprising instances of Shakspeare's power to produce extraordinary