honour, and
his death. The latter two so balanced each other, that he could decide for
the first by equipoise; nay--the thought growing--that honour had more
weight than death. That Cassius understood it as Warburton, is the beauty
of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus.

_Ib._ Caesar's speech:--

... "He loves no plays
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music," &c.

"This is not a trivial observation, nor does our poet mean barely
by it, that Cassius was not a merry, sprightly man; but that he
had not a due temperament of harmony in his
disposition."--Theobald's note.

O Theobald! what a commentator wast thou, when thou would'st affect to
understand Shakespeare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the
text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of thine
to fathom.

_Ib._ sc. 3. Caesar's speech:--

"Be _factious_ for redress of all these griefs;
And I will set this foot of mine as far,
As who goes farthest."

I understand it thus: "You have spoken as a conspirator; be so in _fact_,
and I will join you. Act on your principles, and realize them in a fact."

Act ii. sc. 1. Speech of Brutus:--

"It must be by his death; and, for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general. He would be crown'd:
How that might change his nature, there's the question.
... And, to speak truth of Caesar,
I have not known when his affections sway'd
More than his reason.
... So Caesar may;
Then, lest he may, prevent."

This speech is singular;--at least, I do not at present see into
Shakespeare's motive, his _rationale_, or in what point of view he meant
Brutus' character to appear. For surely--(this, I mean, is what I say to
myself, with my present _quantum_ of insight, only modified by my
experience in how many instances I have ripened into a perception of
beauties, where I had before descried faults;) surely, nothing can seem
more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more
lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the
tenets here attributed to him--to him, the stern Roman republican;
namely,--that he would have no objection to a king, or to Caesar, a monarch
in Rome, would Caesar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to
be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal cause--none in
Caesar's past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon? Had he not
en