From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay.]

[Note 138: 'Companion' was often used contemptuously. Cf.
_Coriolanus_, IV, v, 14; V, ii, 65. Cf. the way 'fellow' is
often used to-day.]

[Note 145: In his philosophy, Brutus was a mixture of the
Stoic and the Platonist. What he says of Portia's death is
among the best things in the play, and is in Shakespeare's
noblest style. Profound emotion expresses itself with reserve.
Deep grief loves not many words.]

[Page 133]

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? 150
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, 155
And, her attendants absent, swallow'd fire.

CASSIUS. And died so?

BRUTUS. Even so.

CASSIUS. O ye immortal gods!

[Note 152: Strict harmony of construction would require
'impatience' for 'impatient' here, or 'griev'd' for 'grief' in
the next line. Shakespeare is not very particular in such
niceties. Besides, the broken construction expresses
dramatically the deep emotion of the speaker.]

[Note 155: /distract:/ distracted. So in _Hamlet_, IV, v, 2.
'Distraught' is the form in _Romeo and Juliet_, IV, iii, 49.
For the dropping of the terminal _-ed_ of the participle in
verbs ending in _t_ or _te_, see Abbott, Sect. 342.]

[Note 156: It appears something uncertain whether Portia's
death was before or after her husband's. Plutarch represents
it as occurring before; but Merivale follows those who place
it after. "For Portia, Brutus's wife, Nicolaus the philosopher
and Valerius Maximus do write, that she determining to kill
herself (her parents and friends carefully looking to her to
keep her from it) took hot burning coals, and cast them into
her mouth, and kept her mouth so close that she choked
herself. There was a letter of Brutus found, written to his
friends, complaining of their negligence, that, his wife being
sick, they would not help her, but suffered her to kill
herself, choosing to die rather than to languish in
pain."--Plutarch, _Marcus Brutus_.]

[Page 134]

_Re-enter_ LUCIUS, _with wine and