acter, even more than the historian has done, in the sharpest contrast to Brutus, the clever, politic revolutionist opposed to the man of noble soul and moral nature. Roman state-policy and a mode of reasoning peculiar to antiquity are displayed in every feature of this contrast of Cassius to Brutus, as well as in the delineation of the character itself; the nature and spirit of antiquity operated with exquisite freshness and readiness upon the unburdened brain of the poet, unfettered by the schools. ... "According to Plutarch, public opinion distinguished between Brutus and Cassius thus: that it was said that Brutus hated tyranny, Cassius tyrants; yet, adds the historian, the latter was inspired with a universal hatred of tyranny also. Thus has Shakespeare represented him. His Cassius is imbued with a thorough love of freedom and equality; he groans under the prospect of a monarchical time more than the others; he does not bear this burden with thoughtful patience like Brutus, but his ingenious mind strives with natural opposition to throw it off; he seeks for men of the old time; the new, who are like timid sheep before the wolf, are an abhorrence to him. His principles of freedom are not crossed by moral maxims, which might lead him astray in his political attempts; altogether a pure political character, he esteems nothing so highly as his country and its freedom and honor. "With his hatred of tyrants there is mixed the envy of Cæsar belonging to the more meanly endowed man; he remembers that he had once saved the life of the emperor in a swimming match, that he had seen him sick and subject to human infirmities, and now he is to bow before this man as before a god, he is to see him 'bestride the narrow world, like a Colossus,' while 'petty men walk under his huge legs.' He seems inclined to measure rank by bodily strength rather than by power of mind; it amazes him that Cæsar should get the start of the majestic world,' which he would fain award to his own art of swimming; with the disparaging feeling of mediocrity toward real greatness, he weighs only the similar meat on which both feed, and compares their names, not their merits and endowments; and in this disparaging feeling lies the sharpest goad, which generally urges on the most dangerous conspirators. "The difference, therefore, between his nature and the character of Brutus comes out on every occasion: Brutus appears throughout just as humanely noble as Cassius is politically superior; each 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. Scene 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. し 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. 56473 "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 selfdestruction, 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. 6 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. Antony possesses no constancy of selfesteem; he can drop quickly out of favor with himself; and being without reverence for his own type of character, and being endowed with a fine versatility of perception and feeling, he can admire qualities the most remote from his own. It is Antony who utters the éloge over the body of Brutus at Philippi. Antony is not without an æsthetic sense and imagination, though of a somewhat unspiritual kind; he does not judge men by a severe moral code, but he feels in an æsthetic way the grace, the splendor, the piteous interest of the actors in the exciting drama of life, or their impertinence, ineptitude, and comicality; and he feels that the play is poorer by the loss of so noble a figure as that of a Brutus. But 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 |