on, 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 Caesar 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. Shakspeare has
rendered this circumstance literally.

PORTIA.

I pr'ythee, boy, run to the senate house,
Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.
Why dost thou stay?

LUCIUS.

To know my errand, madam.

PORTIA.

I would have had thee there and here again,
Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there.
O constancy! be strong upon my side:
Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!
I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.
... Ah me! how weak a thing
The heart of woman is! O I grow faint, &c.

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.[92]

If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have
been another Lady Russel; 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. Shakspeare has thus represented
it:--

BRUTUS.

O C