lacks what is best in the other, and the possession of which would make each perfect."-GERVINUS, Shakespeare Commentaries. "I know no part of Shakespeare that more impresses on me the belief of his genius being superhuman than the scene between Brutus and Cassius [act IV. sc. iii]. In the Gnostic heresy it might have been credited with less absurdity than most of their dogmas, that the Supreme had employed him to create, previously to his function of representing, characters."-COLERIDGE, Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton. PORTIA "Portia, as Shakespeare has truly felt and represented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus. In him we see an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a Stoic by profession, and in reality the reverse-acting deeds against his nature by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and timidity held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity, which she thought became a woman 'so fathered and so husbanded.' The fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own fortitude is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch relates that on the day on which Cæsar was assassinated Portia appeared overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her emotion utter a word which could affect the conspirators.. "There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch which could not well be dramatized. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last time in the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she might not shake his fortitude; but afterwards, in passing through a chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length burst into a passion of tears. "If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have been another Lady Russell; but she made a poor Stoic. No factitious or external control was sufficient to restrain such an exuberance of sensibility and fancy; and those who praise the philosophy of Portia and the heroism of her death, certainly mistook the character altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not deliberate self-destruction, ‘after the high Roman fashion,' but took place in a paroxysm of madness, caused by overwrought and suppressed feeling, grief, terror, and suspense."-MRS. JAMESON, Characteristics of Women. ANTONY Antony is a man of genius without moral fibre; a nature of a rich, sensitive, pleasure-loving kind; the prey of good impulses and of bad; looking on life as a game, in which he has a distinguished part to play, and playing that part with magnificent grace and skill. He is capable of personal devotion (though not of devotion to an idea), and has indeed a gift for subordination— subordination to a Julius Cæsar, to a Cleopatra. And as he has enthusiasm about great personalities, so he has a contempt for inefficiency and ineptitude. Lepidus is to him 'a slight, unmeritable man, meet to be sent on errands,' one that is to be talked of not as a person, but as a property. 'Brutus, over whom his ideals dominate, and who is blind to facts which are not in harmony with his theory of the universe, is quite unable to perceive the power for good or for evil that is lodged in Antony, and there is in the great figure of Antony nothing which can engage or interest his imagination; for Brutus's view of life is not imaginative, or pictorial, or dramatic, but wholly ethical. The fact that Antony abandons himself to pleasure, is 'gamesome,' reduces him in the eyes of Brutus to a very ordinary person— one who is silly or stupid enough not to recognize the first principle of human conduct, the need of self-mastery; one against whom the laws of the world must fight, and who is therefore of no importance. And Brutus was right with respect to the ultimate issues for Antony. Sooner or later Antony must fall to ruin. But before the moral defect in Antony's nature destroyed his fortune, much was to happen. Before Actium might come Philippi."-DOWDEN, Shakespeare, His Mind and Art. THE HISTORICAL CÆSAR "In person Cæsar was tall and slight. His features were more refined than was usual in Roman faces; the forehead was wide and high, the nose large and thin, the lips full, the eyes dark gray like an eagle's, the neck extremely thick and sinewy. His complexion was pale. His beard and mustache were kept carefully shaved. His hair was short and naturally scanty, falling off toward the end of his life and leaving him partially bald. His voice, especially when he spoke in public, was high and shrill. His health was uniformly strong until his last year, when he became subject to epileptic fits. He was a great bather, and scrupulously clean in all his habits; abstemious in his food, and careless in what it consisted, rarely or never touching wine, and noting sobriety as the highest of qualities when describing any new people. He was an athlete in early life, admirable in all manly exercises, and especially in riding. In Gaul he rode a remarkable horse, which he had bred himself, and which would let no one but Cæsar mount him. From his boyhood it was observed of him that he was the truest of friends, that he avoided quarrels, and was most easily appeased when offended. In manner he was quiet and gentlemanlike, with the natural courtesy of high breeding. On an occasion when he was dining somewhere, the other guests found the oil too rancid for them; Cæsar took it without remark, to spare his entertainer's feelings. When on a journey through a forest with his friend Oppius, he came one night to a hut where there was a single bed. Oppius being unwell, Cæsar gave it up to him, and slept on the ground. "In his public character he may be regarded under three aspects as a politician, a soldier, and a man of letters. "Like Cicero, Cæsar entered public life at the bar. He belonged by birth to the popular party, but he showed no disposition, like the Gracchi, to plunge into political agitation. His aims were practical. He made war only upon injustice and oppression; and when he commenced as a pleader he was noted for the energy with which he protected a client whom he believed to have been wronged. . . When he rose into the Senate, his powers as a speaker became strikingly remarkable. Cicero, who often heard him, and was not a favorable judge, said that there was a pregnancy in his sentences and a dignity in his manner which no orator in Rome could approach. But he never spoke to court popularity; his aim from first to last was better government, the prevention of bribery and extortion, and the distribution among deserving citizens of some portion of the public land which the rich were stealing. "The practicality which showed itself in his general aims appeared also in his mode of working. Cæsar, it was observed, when anything was to be done, selected the man who was best able to do it, not caring particularly who or what he might be in other respects. To this faculty of discerning and choosing fit persons to execute his orders may be ascribed the extraordinary success of his own provincial administration, the enthusiasm which was felt for him in the north of Italy, and the perfect quiet of Gaul after the completion of the conquest. "It was by accident that Cæsar took up the profession of a soldier; yet perhaps no commander who ever lived showed greater military genius. "The conquest of Gaul was effected by a force numerically insignificant, which was worked with the precision of a machine. The variety of uses to which it was capable of being turned implied, in the first place, extraordinary forethought in the selection of materials. Men whose nominal duty was merely to fight were engineers, architects, mechanics of the highest order. In a few hours they could extemporize an impregnable fortress on an open hillside. They bridged the Rhine in a week. They built a fleet in a month. The legions at Alesia held twice their number pinned within their works, while they kept at bay the whole force of insurgent Gaul, entirely by scientific superiority. . . . ... "He was rash, but with a calculated rashness, which the event never failed to justify. His greatest successes were due to the rapidity of his movements, which brought him on the enemy before they heard of his approach. He traveled sometimes a hundred miles a day, reading or writing in his carriage, through countries without roads, and crossing rivers without bridges. No obstacles stopped him when he had a definite end in view. In battle he sometimes rode; but he was more often on foot, bareheaded, and in a conspicuous dress, that he might be seen and recognized. ... "In discipline he was lenient to ordinary faults, and not careful to make curious inquiries into such things. He liked his men to enjoy themselves. Military mistakes in his officers too he always endeavored to excuse, never blaming them for misfortunes, unless there had been a defect of courage as well as judgment. Mutiny and desertion only he never overlooked. And thus no general was ever more loved by, or had greater power over, the army which served under him. He brought the insurgent tenth legion into submission by a single word. When the civil war began and Labienus left him, he told all his officers who had served under Pompey that they were free to follow if they wished. Not another man forsook him. "His leniency to the Pompeian faction may have been politic, but it arose also from the disposition of the man. Cruelty originates in fear, and Cæsar was too indifferent to death to fear anything. So far as his public action was concerned he betrayed no passion save hatred of injustice; and he moved through life calm and irresistible, like a force of nature. "Cicero has said of Cæsar's oratory that he surpassed those who had practised no other art. His praise of him as a man of letters is yet more delicately and gracefully emphatic. Most of his writings are lost; but there remain seven books of commentaries on the wars in Gaul (the eighth was added by another hand), and three books upon the civil war, containing an account of its causes and history. Of these it was that Cicero said, in an admirable image, that fools might think to improve on them, but that |
