motive. It is difficult, too, to conceive that a dramatist who turned to Roman history for the groundwork of this theme would have taken the murder of Julius Cæsar rather than the death of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus. The aims and end of the Gracchi illustrate the failure of ideals in public life without any of the difficulties raised by the career of the republican conspirators. No crime has to be explained away; the misdeeds of the Gracchi, if allowed to be misdeeds, are splendid mistakes: they are not against nature. If it is held that the Gracchi justly paid with their lives for aspirations dangerous to the state, still their dreams were noble; if they were true reformers murdered by those who feared the effect of these reforms upon themselves, still more powerfully does their career show forth the failure of ideals in practical politics. Either way the fate of the Gracchi would serve that theme: while the history of the murderers of Cæsar will fit only on a great assumption, with difficulty accepted.

That a dramatic genius should have tried to find such a motive in the murder of Cæsar, while it lay ready to hand, waiting for him, in the death of the Gracchi, is to me incredible. It is true, however, that the theme might be there in the play, whether Shakespeare meant it or not. Probably Shakespeare had no subjective aim, no thesis to illustrate at all: he merely wanted to dramatize an intensely impressive and obviously dramatic episode in history. Either way, what a writer means is usually small evidence as to what he has said; it could not be conclusive evidence even in the case of a genius such as Shakespeare. We must exclude Shakespeare's intention, which for one thing we cannot know, as an illegitimate argument. We must take the words as they are and see what is in them.

It is hard to believe that but for the character of Brutus any other than the nemesis interpretation would ever have been mooted. But Brutus of the play has imposed on Shakespeare's readers and on his actors as did Marcus Brutus of history on Cæsar and on the Roman public. They have taken him at his own description of himself. A great tribute this is to the truthfulness of Shake

only too faithful, as not flattering, to
those who have eyes to see. Brutus is
very fond of bearing testimony to his
own impeccability, the singleness of his
eye, the loftiness of his motives:
The name of honour more than I fear death.
Let the gods so speed me as I love

There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats;
For I am arm'd so strong in honesty,
That they pass by me as the idle wind.
No, Cassius, no: think not, thou noble

Roman,

That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome; He bears too great a mind.

These testimonies to his own nobility, so natural a habit of thought with him that they come out from time to time even to the end on the battle-field, fall on the ear first with a sound of persuasive rotundity; but thought over, they leave an unpleasant impression. There is rather too much protesting. It is perhaps hardly an impression of "swagger," but one does feel very strongly that this man was deeply impressed with his own goodness; he had become an ideal to himself: so much so that anything that jarred on this conception was simply put aside as incredible, a thing not to be considered. Evidently, too, this was the popular conception of Brutus. The man that has unbounded regard for himself, and expresses it often enough and loudly enough, will in the end get the vulgar mind to take him at his own measure. It was, as it were, a settled thing that Brutus was immaculate. That was the character he had to play to-and behind: O, he sits high in all the people's hearts; And that which would appear offence in us, His countenance, like richest alchymy, Will change to virtue, and to worthiness.

This pose of Marcus Brutus, by which I do not mean that he was an intentional deceiver--he really believed that he was supereminently good, and assiduously cherished himself in that capacity,―lets us into the secret of his whole character. It is a character we of this day should find it easy to appreciate; for we have had one or two striking examples of it. Profoundly convinced of his own rectitude, such a man finds a righteous motive for his every desire. What he does he

believes to be right, but he can always persuade himself that that is right which he wants to do. He tests his motives by his own character, and reasons infallibly that such a man cannot wish for anything that is wrong; therefore what he desires is right. Thus he never violates his own conscience, and his conscience in return never stands in his way. Nothing but a very cataclysm of soul can stir this man into seeing himself; hence a magnificent calmness about him. It may be urged that this analysis might dissolve the goodness of an archangel. Truly it might be applied fallaciously; mortals have no magic crucible: but the test of a man's deeds, of the influences that move him, of the impression he leaves on strong men who are his intimates, is a fairly good corrective.

Try Brutus by it. The record of Marcus Brutus is this: he accepts mercy at the hands of his conqueror Cæsar (his Roman soul is not too proud for that), receives from him special favors and marks of love, is willing to bask in Cæsar's sun: then when the opportunity comes, and he is offered the leadership of a conspiracy to assassinate his benefactor, he takes it; he takes part in a bloody and cowardly murder, some twenty armed men setting on one unarmed; and by this means becomes the first man in Rome. These are the unvarnished

facts about Marcus Brutus: these are his

spontaneous acts: to all that follow he is compelled, so they do not help in the understanding of his character.

What did other men think of him? The crowd took him at his word; Antony, the "plain blunt man," necessarily is imposed on, arch-enemy though he was. It would have been strange indeed had the careless soldier seen through such a character: so one is not at all surprised that Antony, with a generosity that does him credit, pronounces Brutus "the noblest Roman of them all," and thinks him entirely different from all the other conspirators. That is precisely the impression such a man as we are taking Brutus to be would leave on a man like Antony, who was so little of a judge of men that he could tell Cæsar there was nothing to fear in Cassius:

He's not dangerous: He is a noble Roman and well given.

365

Not so Cassius himself; he knows his man: he knows Brutus well. Cassius in acumen is right all through the story. He was right about the danger of leaving Antony alive: he was right about Casca; Casca did not fail them: he was right in his counsel of war; Brutus was disastrously wrong: he was right in the quarrel; Brutus was extremely unfair to him: he was probably right about Pella; to be extreme to mark the taking of a present of money by a good friend was in such critical times absurd; Cassius saw that it was just part of Brutus' pose as the impeccable man, and felt the contemptuous impatience for it of the real man of action.

And how does Cassius, who was thus right all through, handle Brutus? He wants to get him over; the plan, the initiative, comes all from Cassius: he plays Brutus like a fish. He begins by praising Brutus to his face in language that hardly falls short of rank flattery:

It is very much lamented, Brutus, That you have no such mirror as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye, That you might see your shadow.

In other words, "you are so good that no one else is good enough to give you an idea of yourself." All through Cassius has no fear of offending Brutus by praising him unblushingly to his

face.

Having thus put Brutus on good terms with himself, Cassius proceeds to appeal to jealousy: “Are not you and I as good as Cæsar? Is not he human like ourselves?" to envy: "And now he is a god and we are nobodies."

Then

He doth bestride the narrow world, Like a Colossus. Brutus and Cæsar: What should be in that "Cæsar"?

Why should that name be minded more than

yours?

Write them together, yours is as fair a

name.

And a last dexterous appeal to ambition: just a suggestion that Brutus by removing Casar should emulate the glory of his ancestor Lucius Junius, who drove out Tarquin.

In the whole of this great piece of advocacy Cassius lays no crime to Cæsar's charge: attempts no case against him ex