Caf. Him, and his worth, and our great need of him, You have right well conceited. Let us go, For it is after midnight; and, ere day, We will awake him, and be fure of him. [Exeunt. ACT II. SCENE I. Enter Brutus, in his Orchard 3. Bru. What, Lucius! ho! I cannot, by the progrefs of the stars, Give guess how near to day.-Lucius, I fay!- Enter Lucius. Luc. Call'd you, my lord? Bru. Get me a taper in my ftudy, Lucius: When it is lighted, come and call me here. Luc. I will, my lord. [Exit. Bru. It must be by his death: and, for my part, 8 in his orchard.] The modern editors read garden, but orchard feems anciently to have had the fame meaning. STEEVENS. That these two words were anciently fynonymous, appears from a line in this play : 66 He hath left you all his walks, "His private arbours, and new-planted orchards "On this fide Tiber." In Sir T. North's Tranflation of Plutarch, the paffage which Shakspeare has here copied, stands thus: "He left his gardens and arbours unto people, which he had on this fide of the river Tyber." MALONE. I know no perfonal cause to spurn at him, It is the bright day, that brings forth the adder; That; And then, I grant, we put a fting in him, Then, left he may, prevent. And, fince the quarrel 9 Remorfe from power:] Remorfe, for mercy. WARBURTON. Remorfe (fays the author of the Revifal) fignifies the conscious uneafinefs arifing from a fenfe of having done wrong; to extinguifh which feeling, nothing hath fo great a tendency as abfo lute uncontrouled power. I think Warburton right. JOHNSON. Remorfe is pity, and has twice occurred in that fenfe in Meafure for Measure. See Vol. II. p. 48. STEEVENS. I -common proof,] Common experiment. JOHNSON. 2 But when he once attains the upmost round, He then unto the ladder turns his back; &c.] So, in Daniel's Civil Wars, 1602: 3 "The afpirer once attain'd unto the top, "Cuts off thofe means by which himself got up: -bafe degrees] Low fteps. JOHNSON. MALONE. Fashion Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented, And kill him in the fhell. 4 Re-enter Lucius. Luc. The taper burneth in your closet, fir. Searching the window for a flint, I found This paper, thus feal'd up; and, I am fure, It did not lie there, when I went to bed. Bru. Get you to bed again, it is not day. 5 Is not to-morrow, boy, the ides of March? Luc. I know not, fir. Bru. Look in the kalendar, and bring me word. Luc. I will, fir. Bru. The exhalations, whizzing in the air, Give fo much light, that I may read by them. [Exit. [Opens the letter, and reads. Brutus, thou fleep'ft; awake, and fee thyself. Shall Rome Brutus, thou fleep'ft; awake, Such inftigations have been often dropp'd Shall Rome-Thus muft I piece it out; Shall Rome stand under one man's awe? What! Rome? My ancestors did from the streets of Rome -as his kind, -] According to his nature. JOHNSON, 5 Is not to-morrow, boy, the firft of March] We should read ides: for we can never fuppofe the fpeaker to have lost fourteen days in his account. He is here plainly ruminating on what the foothfayer told Cæfar [Act I. fc. ii.] in his prefence. [-Beware the ides of March.] The boy comes back and fays, Sir, March is wafted fourteen days. So that the morrow was the ides of March, as he fuppofed. For March, May, July, and October, had fix nones each, fo that the fifteenth of March was the ides of that month. WARBURTON, The The Tarquin drive, when he was call'd a king. To speak, and ftrike? O Rome! I make thee promife, 6 Re-enter Lucius. Luc. Sir, March is wafted fourteen days. Bru. 'Tis good. knocks. [Knocks within. Go to the Go to the gate; fomebody Exit Lucius. Since Caffius firft did whet me against Cæfar, I have not flept. 7 Between the acting of a dreadful thing, And In former editions: Sir, March is wafted fifteen days. The editors are flightly mistaken: it was wafted but fourteen days: this was the dawn of the 15th, when the boy makes his report. THEOBALD. 7 Between the acting of a dreadful thing, And the firft motion, &c.] That nice critic, Dionyfius of Halicarnaffus, complains, that of all kind of beauties, thofe great ftrokes which he calls the terrible graces, and which are so frequent in Homer, are the rareft to be found in the following writers. Among our countrymen, it feems to be as much confined to the British Homer. This defcription of the condition of confpirators, before the execution of their defign, has a pomp and terror in it that perfectly aftonishes. The excellent Mr. Addison, whofe modefty made him fometimes diffident of his own genius, but whofe true judgment always led him to the fafeft guides (as we may fee by thofe fine ftrokes in his Cato borrowed from the Philippics of Cicero) has paraphrafed this fine defcription; but we are no longer to expect thofe terrible graces which animate his original: "O think, what anxious moments pass between "Fill'd up with horror all, and big with death." Cato. I fhall make two remarks on this fine imitation. The firft is, that the fubjects of the two confpiracies being fo very different (the fortunes of Cæfar and the Roman empire being concerned in the one; And the first motion, all the interim is Like one; and that of a few auxiliary troops only in the other) Mr. Addifon could not, with propriety, bring in that magnificent circumftance which gives one of the terrible graces of Shakfpeare's defcription; The genius and the mortal inftruments Are then in council For kingdoms, in the Pagan Theology, befides their good, had their evil genius's, likewife, reprefented here, with the most daring stretch of fancy, as fitting in confultation with the confpirators, whom he calls their mortal inftruments. But this, as we fay, would have been too pompous an apparatus to the rape and defertion of Syphax and Sempronius. The other thing obfervable is, that Mr. Addifon was fo ftruck and affected with these terrible graces in his original, that inftead of imitating his author's fentiments, he hath, before he was aware, given us only the copy of his own impreffions made by them. For, Ob, 'tis a dreadful interval of time, Fill'd up with horror all, and big with death. are but the affections raised by fuch forcible images as these : Like a phantafma, or a hidecus dream. Like to a little kingdom, fuffers then Comparing the troubled mind of a confpirator to a state of anarchy, is just and beautiful; but the int'rim or interval, to an hideous vifion, or a frightful dream, holds fomething fo wonderfully of truth, and lays the foul fo open, that one can hardly think it poffible for any man, who had not fome time or other been engaged in a confpiracy, to give fuch force of colouring to nature. WARBURTON. The davor of the Greek critics does not, I think, mean fentiments which raife fear, more than wonder, or any other of the tumultuous paffions; To devov is that which strikes, which aftonishes with the idea either of fome great fubject, or of the author's abilities. Dr. Warburton's pompous criticism might well have been fhortened. The genius is not the genius of a kingdom, nor are the inftruments, confpirators. Shakspeare is defcribing what paffes in a fingle botom, the infurrection which a confpirator feels agitating the little kingdom of his own mind; when the genius, or power that watches for his protection, and the mortal inftruments, the paffions, which excite him to a deed of honour and danger, are in council and debate; when the defire of action, and the care |