I'm sure, than ye.

Cassius: Ha, ha! how vilely doth this cynic rhyme!

Brutus: Get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence!

Cassius: Bear with him, Brutus; 'tis his fashion.

Brutus: I'll know his humour when he knows his time:
What should the wars do with these jingling fools?
Companion, hence!

Cassius: Away, away, be gone!

(Exit POET.)

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit a black eye
(_Lawson_). Shakespeare was ever rough on poets--but stay! Consider that
this great world of Rome and all the men and women in it were created by
a "jingling fool" and a master of bad--not to say execrable--rhymes, and
his name was William Shakespeare. You need to sit down and think awhile
after that.

Brutus sends Lucilius and Titinius to bid the commanders lodge their
companies for the night, and then all come to him. Then he gives Cassius
a shock and strikes him to the heart for his share in the quarrel. It is
almost directly after the row, when they have kicked out the "jingling
fool" of a poet. Cassius does not know that Brutus has to-day received
news of the death, in Rome, of his good and true wife Portia, who,
during a fit of insanity, brought on by her grief and anxiety for
Brutus, and in the absence of her attendant, has poisoned herself--or
"swallowed fire," as Shakespeare has it.

Brutus (to Lucius, his servant): Lucius, a bowl of wine!
Cassius: I did not think you could have been so angry.
Brutus: O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.

Cassius: Of your philosophy you make no use,
If you give place to accidental evils.

Brutus: No man bears sorrow better:--Portia is dead.

Cassius: Ha! Portia!

Brutus: She is dead.

Cassius: How 'scaped I killing when I cross'd you so!
O insupportable and touching loss!
Upon what sickness?

Brutus: Impatient of my absence,
And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony
Have made themselves so strong: for with her death
That tidings came; with this she fell distract,
And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.

Cassius: And died so?

Brutus: Even so.

Cassius: O, ye immortal gods!

(Enter Lucius, with a jar of wine, a goblet, and a taper.)

Brutus: Speak no more of her. Give me a bowl of wine:
In this I bur