CHAPTER IV
THE EXCELLENCES AND ILLUSIONS OF BRUTUS

Thus Shakespeare has his Act of Oblivion for all that might give an unfavourable impression of Caesar’s past, and presents him very much as the incarnate principle of Empire, with the splendours but also with the disabilities that must attend the individual man who feels himself the vehicle for such an inspiration.

He somewhat similarly screens from view whatever in the career of Brutus might prejudice his claims to affection and respect: and carries much further a process of idealization that Plutarch had already begun. For to Plutarch Brutus is, so to speak, the model republican, the paragon of private and civic virtue. The promise to the soldiers before the second battle at Philippi of two cities to sack, calls forth the comment: “In all Brutus’ life there is but this only fault to be found”: and even this, as the marginal note remarks, is “wisely excused”; on the plea, namely, that after Cassius’ death the difficulties were very great and the best had to be made of a bad state of things. But no other misconduct is laid to his charge: his extortionate usury and his abrupt divorce are passed over in silence. All his doings receive indulgent construction, and the narrative is often pointed with a formal éloge. In the Comparison, where of course such estimates are expected, attention is drawn to his rectitude, “only referring his frendschippe and enmitie unto the consideracion of justice and equitie”; to “the marvelous noble minde of him, that for fear never fainted nor let falle any part of his corage”; to his influence over his associates so that “by his choyce of them he made them good men”; to the honour in which he was held by his “verie enemies.” But already the keynote is struck in the opening page:

This Marcus Brutus ... whose life we presently wryte, having framed his manners of life by the rules of vertue and studie of philosophie, and having employed his wit, which was gentle and constant, in attempting of great things: me thinkes he was rightly made and framed unto vertue.

And the story often deviates from its course into little backwaters of commendation, as when after some censure of Cassius, we are told:

Brutus in contrary manner, for his vertue and valliantnes, was well-beloved of the people and his owne, esteemed of noble men, and hated of no man, not so much as of his enemies: bicause he was a marvelous lowly and gentle person, noble minded, and would never be in any rage, nor caried away with pleasure and covetousness, but had ever an upright mind with him, and would never yeeld to any wronge or injustice, the which was the chiefest cause of his fame, of his rising, and of the good will that every man bare him: for they were all perswaded that his intent was good.

This conception Shakespeare adopts and purifies. He leaves out the shadow of that one fault that Plutarch wisely excused: he leaves out too the unpleasant circumstance, which Plutarch apparently thought needed no excuse, that Brutus was applicant for and recipient of offices at the disposal of the all-powerful dictator. There must be nothing to mar the graciousness and dignity of the picture. Shakespeare wishes to portray a patriotic gentleman of the best Roman or the best English type, such “a gentleman or noble person” as it was the aim of Spenser’s Faerie Queene “to fashion in vertuous and gentle discipline,” such a gentleman or noble person as Shakespeare’s generation had seen in Spenser’s friend, Sir Philip Sidney. So Plutarch’s summaries are expanded and filled in partly with touches that his narrative supplies, partly with others that the summaries themselves suggest.

To the latter class belongs the winning courtesy with which Brutus at his first appearance excuses himself to Cassius for his preoccupation. His inward trouble might well have stirred him to irritability and abruptness; but he only feels that it has made him remiss, and that an explanation is due from him:

So with his friends. Shakespeare invents the character of Lucius to show how attentive and considerate Brutus is as master. He apologises for having blamed his servant without cause.

He notes compassionately that the lad is drowsy and overwatched (iv. iii. 241). At one time he dispenses with his services because he is sleeping sound (ii. i. 229). At another he asks a song from him not as a right but as a favour (iv. iii. 256). And immediately thereafter the master waits, as it were, on the nodding slave, and removes his harp lest it should be broken.

But it is to his wife that he shows the full wealth of his affectionate nature. He would fain keep from her the anxieties that are distracting his own mind: but when she claims to share them as the privilege and pledge of wifehood, with his quick sympathy he sees it at once:

And yielding to her claim as a right, he recognises that it is a claim that comes from an ideally noble and loving soul, and prays to be made worthy of her. What insight Shakespeare shows even in his omissions! This is the prayer of Plutarch’s Brutus too, but he lifts up his hands and beseeches the gods that he may “bring his enterprise to so goode passe that he mighte be founde a husband worthie of so noble a wife as Porcia.” Shakespeare’s Brutus does not view his worthiness as connected with any material success.

And these words are also an evidence of his humble-mindedness. However aggressive and overbearing he may appear in certain relations, we never fail to see his essential modesty. If he interferes, as often enough he does, to bow others to his will, it is not because he is self-conceited, but because he is convinced that a particular course is right; and where right is concerned, a man must come forward to enforce it. But for himself he has no idea of the high estimation in which his character and parts are held. When Cassius insinuates that everyone thinks him the man for the emergency, if he would only realise it, his reply is a disclaimer: he has never supposed, and shrinks from imagining, that he is fit for such a role. Yet such is his personality that, as all of the faction feel, his help is absolutely necessary if the conspiracy is to have a chance of approval. Cinna exhorts Cassius to win him to the party, Casca bears witness to his popular credit and to the value of his sanction in recommending the enterprise, Ligarius is willing to follow any course if Brutus leads, the cynical Cassius admits his worth and their great need of him.

For his amiable and attractive virtues are saved from all taint of weakness by an heroic strain, both high-spirited and public-spirited, both stoical and chivalrous. Challenged by the solicitations of Cassius he for once breaks through his reticence, and discloses his inward temper. We may be sure that even then he speaks less than he feels.

This elevated way of thinking has been fostered and confirmed by study, just as in the case of Sidney, and by study of much the same kind. Plutarch says:

Now touching the Greecian Philosophers, there was no sect nor Philosopher of them, but he heard and liked it: but above all the rest, he loved Platoes sect best, and did not much give himself to the new or meane Academy as they call it, but altogether to the old Academy.

He has striven to direct his life by right reason, and has pondered its problems under the guidance of his chosen masters. His utterance, which Plutarch quotes, on suicide, shows how he has sought Plato’s aid for a standard by which to judge others and himself.[175] His utterance, which Shakespeare invents, on the death of Portia, shows how he has schooled himself to fortitude, and suggests the influence of a different school.

He is essentially a thinker, a reader, a student. Plutarch had told how on the eve of Pharsalia, when his companions were resting, or forecasting the morrow, Brutus “fell to his booke and wrote all day long till night, wryting a breviarie of Polybius.” And in his last campaign:

His heade ever busily occupied to thinke of his affayres, ... after he had slumbered a little after supper, he spent all the rest of the night in dispatching of his waightiest causes, and after he had taken order for them, if he had any leysure left him, he would read some booke till the third watch of the night, at what tyme the Captaines, pety Captaines and Colonells, did use to come unto him.

Shakespeare only visualises this description when he makes him find the book, that in his troubles and griefs he has been “seeking for so,” in the pocket of his gown, with the leaf turned down where he stopped reading.

Does then Shakespeare take over Plutarch’s favourite, merely removing the single stain and accenting all the attractions, to confront him as the embodiment of republican virtue, with Caesar, against whom too no evil is remembered, as the embodiment of imperial majesty? Will he show the inevitable collision between two political principles each worthily represented in its respective champion?

This has been said, and there are not wanting arguments to support it. It is clear that the contrast is not perplexed by side issues. Brutus has no quarrel with Caesar as a man, and no justification is given for the conspiracy in what Caesar has done. On the contrary, his murderer stands sponsor for his character, acknowledges his supreme greatness, and loves him as a dear friend. But neither on the other hand is anything introduced that might divert our sympathies from Brutus by representing him as bound by other than the voluntary ties of affection and respect. And this is the more remarkable that in Plutarch there are two particulars full of personal pathos which Shakespeare cannot have failed to note, and which lend themselves to dramatic purposes, as other dramatists have proved. One of them, employed by Voltaire, would darken the assassination to parricide. In explanation of the indulgence with which Caesar treated Brutus, Plutarch says:

When he was a young man, he had been acquainted with Servilia, who was extreamelie in love with him. And bicause Brutus was borne in that time when their love was hottest, he perswaded him selfe that he begat him.[176]

And then follows what can be alleged in proof. “What of anguish,” says Mr. Wyndham, “does this not add to the sweep of the gesture wherewith the hero covered his face from the pedant’s sword!”

This is a mere casual hint; but the other point finds repeated mention in the Life, and is dwelt upon though explained away in the Comparison. It is the circumstance that Brutus had fought on Pompey’s side, and that thereafter Caesar had spared him, amnestied his friends, and loaded him with favours.

The greatest reproache they could make against Brutus was: that Julius Caesar having saved his life, and pardoned all the prisoners also taken in battell, as many as he made request for, taking him for his frende, and honoring him above all his other frends, Brutus notwithstanding had imbrued his hands in his blood.[177]

Plutarch indeed instances this as the grand proof of Brutus’ superiority to personal considerations; but it looks bad, and certainly introduces a new element into the moral problem. At all events, though it involves in a specially acute form that conflict of duties which the drama loves, and was so used by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, as early as Muretus and as late as Alexander, Shakespeare dismisses it.

Attention is concentrated on the single fact that Brutus felt it his duty to take the life of Caesar, and no obligations of kinship or gratitude are allowed to complicate the one simple case of conscience.

The victim and the sacrificer are thus set before us, each with an unstained record, and in only those personal relations that arise from warm and reverent friendship.

Of their mutual attachment we are left in no doubt, nor are we ever suffered to forget it. Cassius in talk to himself, bears witness that Caesar “loves Brutus” (i. ii. 317). Antony, in his speech to the people, appeals to this as a notorious fact:

But the strongest testimony is Caesar’s own cry, the cry of astonishment and consternation, whether from the betrayed when the beloved is the traitor, or from the condemned when the beloved is the judge:

Nor is less stress laid on Brutus’ feeling. He avows it in the Forum, as before he had assured Antony that “he did love Caesar when he struck him” (iii. i. 182). Cassius tells him:

But here again the most pathetic evidence is to be found in the assassination scene itself. When Brutus stoops in the guise of petitioner, we cannot suppose it is merely with treacherous adroitness:

Knowing the man, do we not feel that this is the last tender farewell?

But though all this is true it cannot be maintained, in view of the soliloquy before the conspirators’ meeting, that Shakespeare makes Brutus the mouthpiece of republicanism, as he makes Caesar the mouthpiece of imperialism. The opposition of principles is present, but it is of principles on a different plane.

Caesar, the spirit of Caesar, is indeed the spirit of Empire, the spirit of practical greatness in the domains of war, policy, organisation: of this he is the exponent, to this he is the martyr. Brutus’ spirit is rather the spirit of loyalty to duty, which finds in him its exponent and martyr too.

He is lavishly endowed by nature with all the inward qualities that go to make the virtuous man, and these he has improved and disciplined by every means in his power. His standard is high, but he is so strenuous and sincere in living up to it, that he is recognised as no less pre-eminent in the sphere of ethics, than Caesar in the sphere of politics. Indeed their different ideals dominate and impel both men in an almost equal degree. And in each case this leads to a kind of pose. It appears even in their speech. The balanced precision of the one tells its own tale as clearly as the overstrained loftiness of the other, and is as closely matched with the part that he needs must play. Obviously Brutus does not like to confess that he has been in the wrong. No more in the σώφρων than in the Emperor is there room for any weakness. After his dispute with Cassius he assumes rather unjustifiably that he has on the whole been in the right, that he has been the provoked party, and that at worst he has shown momentary heat. But even this slight admission, coming from him, fills Cassius with surprise.

The Ideal Wise Man must not yield to anger any more than to other passions, and it costs Brutus something to own that he has done so. But he minimises his confession by accepting Cassius’ apology for his rash humour and promising to overlook any future offences, as though none could be laid to his own door. We like him none the worse for this, his cult of perfection is so genuine: but sometimes the cult of perfection becomes the assumption and obtrusion of it. Read the passage where Messala tells him of Portia’s death.

Now Brutus had received earlier tidings. He may profess ignorance to save himself the pain of explanation, though surely it would have been simpler to say, “I know all.” But the effect is undoubtedly to bring his self-control into fuller relief in presence of Messala and Titinius even than in the presence of Cassius a few minutes before; for then he was announcing what he already knew, here he would seem in the eyes of his informants to be encountering the first shock. Too much must not be made of this, for Cassius who is aware of the circumstances, is no less impressed than the others, and Cassius would have detected any hollow ring. But at the least it savours of a willingness to give a demonstration, so to speak, in Clinical Ethics.

A man like this whose desires are set on building up a virtuous character, but who is not free from the self-consciousness and self-confidence of the specialist in virtue, is exposed to peculiar dangers. His interests and equipment are in the first place for the inward life, and his chief concern is the well-being of his soul. But precisely such an one knows that he cannot save his own soul alone. It is not open to him to disregard the claims of his fellows or the needs of the world, so he is driven to take in hand matters for which he has no inclination or aptitude. He may be quite aware of his unfitness for the work and shrink from investing himself with qualities which he knows he does not possess. All the same, if the call comes, the logic of his nature will force him to essay the ungrateful and impossible task; and he will be apt to imagine a call when there is none. So it is with Brutus. It is true that many of the best respect do look up to him and designate him as their leader: it is none the less true that the unsigned instigations which he takes for the voice of Rome, are the fabrications of a single schemer. He would not be Brutus if he suspected or shirked the summons. This votary of duty cannot acknowledge a merely fugitive and cloistered virtue; this platonic theorist can easily be hood-winked by the practised politician. So Brutus, who is so at home in his study with his book, who is so exemplary in all the private relations of friend, master and husband; predestined, one would say, for the serene labours of philosophic thought and the gracious offices of domestic affection, sweeps from his quiet anchorage to face the storms of political strife, which such as he are not born to master but which they think they must not avoid.

It is a common case; and many have by their very conscientiousness been hurried into a false position where they could not escape from committing blunders and incurring guilt. But generally the blunders are corrigible and the guilt is venial. It is Brutus’ misfortune, that his very greatness, his moral ascendancy with the prestige it bestows, gives him the foremost place, and shifts on his shoulders the main responsibility for all the folly and crime.

For it is inevitable that he should proceed as he does. Yet it is not easy for him. There is a conflict in this sensitive and finely tuned spirit, which, with all his acquired fortitude, bewrays itself in his bearing to Cassius before any foreign suggestion has entered his mind, which afterwards makes him unlike himself in his behaviour to his wife, which drives sleep from his eyes for nights together, which so jars the rare harmony of his nature, in Antony’s view his chief perfection, that he seems to suffer from an insurrection within himself. And it is not hard to understand why this should be. Morality is the guiding principle of Brutus’ character, but what if it should be at variance with itself? Now two sets of moral forces are at strife in his heart. There are the more personal sentiments of love and reverence for Caesar and of detestation for the crime he contemplates. Even after his decision he feels the full horror of conspiracy with its “monstrous visage”; how much more must he feel the horror of assassinating a friend! On the other side are the more traditional ethical obligations to state, class, and house. It is almost as fatal to this visionary to be called Brutus, as it is to the poet to be called Cinna. For a great historic name spares its bearer a narrow margin of liberty. It should be impossible for a Bourbon to be other than a legitimist; it would be impossible for a Romanoff to abandon the Orthodox Church; it is impossible for a Brutus to accept the merest show of royal power. The memory of his stock is about him. Now Cassius reminds him of his namesake who would brook the eternal devil in Rome as easily as a king; now the admonition is affixed with wax upon Old Brutus’ statue; now he himself recalls the share his ancestors had in expelling the Tarquin. If such an one acquiesced in the coronation of Caesar, he must be the basest renegade, or more detached from his antecedents than it is given a mortal man to be. And in Brutus there is no hint of such detachment. The temper that makes him so attentive and loyal to the pieties of life, is the very temper that vibrates to all that is best in the past, and clings to the spirit of use-and-wont. Let it again be repeated that Brutus reveals himself to Shakespeare very much in the form of a cultured and high-souled English nobleman, the heir of great traditions and their responsibilities, which he fulfils to the smallest jot and tittle; the heir also of inevitable preconceptions.

But in Brutus there is more than individual morality and inherited ethos: there is superimposed on these the conscious philosophic theory with which his actions must be squared. He has to determine his conduct not by instinct or usage, but by impersonal, unprejudiced reason. It is to this tribunal that in the last resort he must appeal; and in that strange soliloquy of his he puts aside all private preferences on the one hand, all local considerations on the other, and discusses his difficulty quite as an abstract problem of right and wrong. He sees that if the personal rule of Caesar is to be averted, half measures will not suffice. There are no safeguards or impediments that can prevent the supremacy of so great a man if he is allowed to live. This is his starting point: “It must be by his death.” But then the question arises: is the death of such an one permissible? And in answering it Brutus seems at the first glance to show admirable intellectual candour. He acquits Caesar of all blame; the quarrel “will bear no colour for the thing he is.” What could be more dispassionate and impartial, what more becoming the philosopher? There is no sophistication of the facts in the interest of his party. But immediately there follow the incriminating words:

There is a sophistication of the inference. Surely this line of argument is invented to support a foregone conclusion. Already that hint to his conscience, “Fashion it thus,” betrays the resolve to make out a case. And does the mere future contingency justify the present infliction of death? Brutus is appealing to his philosophy: by his philosophy he is judged: for just about this date he was condemning the suicide of Cato because he found it

But the argument is the same in both cases, and if it does not excuse self-murder, still less does it excuse the murder of others.

The truth is that Brutus, though he personates the philosopher, is less of one than he thinks. It is not his philosophy but his character that gives him strength to bear the grief of Portia’s death; as Cassius says:

At the end he casts his philosophy to the winds rather than go bound to Rome: he “bears too great a mind” (v. i. 113). And just as on these occasions he is independent or regardless of it, so here he tampers with it to get the verdict that is required. For even in his own eyes he has to play the part of the ideally wise and virtuous man; and though the obligations of descent and position, the consideration in which he is held, the urgings of a malcontent, and (as he believes not altogether without reason) the expectations formed of him by his fellow citizens, supply his real motives for the murder, he needs to give it the form of ideal virtue and wisdom before he can proceed to it.

Now, however, he persuades himself that he has the sanction of reason and conscience, and he acts on the persuasion. His hesitations are gone. He can face without wincing the horror of conspiracy. With an impassioned eloquence, which he nowhere else displays, he can lift the others to the level of his own views. No doubts or scruples becloud his enthusiasm now.

His certainty has advanced by leaps and bounds. A few minutes ago there was no complaint against Caesar as he was or had been, but it could be alleged that he might or would change: now his tyranny, lighting by caprice on men, is announced as a positive fact of the future or even of the present. But by this time Brutus is assured that the plot is just and that the confederates are the pick of men, both plot and confederates so noble that for them an ordinary pledge would be an insult:

He carries them away with him. They abandon the oath; they accept all his suggestions; we feel that their thoughts are ennobled by his intervention, that, as Plutarch noted to be the effect of his fellowship, he has made them better men, at least for the time.

Meanwhile it is a devout imagination, an unconscious sophistry that lends him his power; and this brings its own Nemesis at its heels. In the future Brutus will be disillusioned of the merit of the exploit. In the present, persuading his associates of its unparalleled glory, he makes them take their measures to suit. He will not hear of the murder of Antony, for that would be bloody and unnecessary. And his clemency is based on disparagement of Antony’s abilities and contempt for his moral character. Of this “limb of Caesar,” as he calls him, “who can do no more than Caesar’s arm when Caesar’s head is off,” he cries:

It is not so in Plutarch:

Brutus would not agree to it. First for that he sayd it was not honest: secondly, bicause he told them there was hope of chaunge in him. For he did not mistrust, but that Antonius being a noble minded and coragious man (when he should knowe that Caesar was dead) would willingly helpe his contrie to recover her libertie, having them an example unto him to follow their corage and vertue.

In this hope of converting a rusé libertine like Antony, there is no doubt a hint of idealism, but it is not so marked as in the high-pitched magnanimity of Shakespeare’s Brutus, who denies a man’s powers of mischief because his life is loose.

Yet though Antony would always be a source of danger, the conspirators might find compensation in the reputation for leniency they would gain, and the danger might be reduced were effective steps taken to render him innocuous. But this is only the beginning of Brutus’ mistakes. If indeed they had not begun before. With his masterful influence he has dissuaded his friends from applying to Cicero, on the ground that Cicero will not share in any scheme of which he is not the author. It may be so, but one would think it was at least an experiment well worth the trying. Apart from the authority of his years and position, there would have been the spell of his oratory; and of that they were soon to be sorely in need, again through Brutus’ crotchet that their course evinced its own virtue, and that virtue was a sufficient defence.

“The first fault that he did,” says Plutarch, “was, when he would not consent to his fellow conspirators, that Antony should be slayne: and therefore he was justly accused, that thereby he had saved a stronge and grievous enemy of their conspiracy. The second fault was when he agreed that Caesars funeralls should be as Antony would have them: the which in deede marred all.”

This hint Shakespeare works out. He sees clearly that this further blunder marred all, and heightens the folly of it in various ways. For in Plutarch the question is debated in the Senate, after it has been determined that the assassins shall be not only pardoned but honoured and after provinces have been assigned to them, Crete to Brutus, Africa to Cassius, and the like. Only then, when their victory seems complete and assured, do they discuss the obsequies.

Antonius thinking good his testament should be red openly, and also that his body should be honorably buried, and not in hugger mugger, least the people might thereby take occasion to be worse offended if they did otherwise: Cassius stowtly spake against it. But Brutus went with the motion and agreed unto it.

That is the amount of his error: that when all seemed to be going well with the faction, Antony, who had shown himself in seeming and for the time their most influential friend, commended the proposal on opportunist grounds, and Cassius opposed it, but Brutus supported it and voted with the majority. In the Play his responsibility is undivided, and all the explanatory circumstances have disappeared. He is not one member of an approving Senate, who, when the assassination seems once for all a chose jugée, accepts a suggestion, made apparently in the interests of peace and quiet, by the man to whom, more than to anyone else, the settlement of the affair is due. While the position is still critical, without any evidence of Antony’s good will, without any pressure of public opinion or any plea of political expediency, he endows the helpless suppliant with means to undo what has been done and destroy those who have done it. No wonder that Cassius when he hears Brutus giving Antony permission to speak in the market place, interrupts: “Brutus, a word with you,” and continues in the alarmed aside:

But Brutus waves his remonstrance aside. He is now so besotted by his own sophisms that he will listen to no warning. He thinks all risk will be averted by his going into the pulpit first to show the “reason” of Caesar’s death. He has quite forgotten that the one reason that he could allege to himself was merely a hazardous conclusion from doubtful premises; and this forsooth is to satisfy the citizens of Rome. But meanwhile since their deed is so irreproachable and disinterested, the conspirators must act in accordance, and show their freedom from any personal motive by giving Caesar all due rites:

The infatuation is almost incredible, and it springs not only from generosity to Antony and Caesar, but from the fatal assumption of the justice of his cause, and the Quixotic exaltation the assumption brings with it.

For were it ever so just, could this be brought home to the Roman populace? Brutus, who is never an expert in facts, has been misled by the inventions of Cassius, which he mistakes for the general voice of Rome. Here, too, Shakespeare departs from his authority to make the duping of his hero more conspicuous. For in Plutarch these communications are the quite spontaneous incitements of the public, not the contrivances of one dissatisfied aristocrat.

But for Brutus, his frendes and contrie men, both by divers procurementes, and sundrie rumors of the citie, and by many bills also, did openlie call and procure him to doe that he did. For, under the image of his auncestor Junius Brutus, that drave the kinges out of Rome, they wrote: “O, that it had pleased the goddes that thou wert now alive, Brutus: and againe that thou wert with us nowe.” His tribunall (or chaire) where he gave audience during the time he was praetor, was full of such billes: “Brutus, thou art a sleepe, and art not Brutus in deede.”

All these in Plutarch are worth their face value, but in Shakespeare they are not: and it is one of the ironies of Brutus’ career that he takes them as appeals from the people when they are only the juggleries of Cassius. So far from objecting to Imperialism, the citizens when most favourable to Brutus call out, “Let him be Caesar!” “Caesar’s better parts shall be crowned in Brutus” (iii. ii. 56). This is the acme of his success and the prologue to his disillusionment.

But even if the case of the conspirators could be commended to the populace, Brutus is not the man to do it. It is comic and pathetic to hear him reassuring Cassius with the promise to speak first as though he could neutralise in advance the arts of Antony. Compare his oration with that of his rival. First, in the matter of it, there is no appeal to the imagination or passions, but an unvarnished series of arguments addressed exclusively to the logical reason. Such a speech would make little impression on an assembly of those who are called educated men, and to convince an audience like the artisans of Rome (for such was Shakespeare’s conception of the People), it is ridiculously inadequate. But the style is no less out of place. The diction is as different as possible from the free and fluent rhetoric of Antony. Shakespeare had read in Plutarch:

They do note in some of his Epistells, that he counterfeated that briefe compendious maner of speach of the Lacedaemonians. As when the warre was begonne, he wrote unto the Pergamenians in this sorte: “I understand you have geven Dolabella money; if you have done it willingly, you confesse you have offended me: if against your wills, shewe it then by geving me willinglie.” An other time againe unto the Samians: “Your counsels be long, your doinges be slowe, consider the ende.” And in an other Epistell he wrote unto[178] the Patareians: “The Xanthians despising my good wil, have made their contrie a grave of dispaire: and the Patareians that put them selves into my protection, have lost no jot of their libertie. And therefore whilest you have libertie, either choose the judgement of the Patareians, or the fortune of the Xanthians.”

Thus prompted Shakespeare makes Brutus affect the balanced structure of Euphuism. Not only in his oration. Read his words to Cassius at their first interview:

Nothing could be more neat, accurate and artificial than this Euphuistic arrangement of phrases. It at once suggests the academic studious quality of Brutus’ expression whenever he gives thought to it. But it is a style unsuitable to, one might almost say incompatible with, genuine passion. So it is noteworthy that when he lets himself go in answer to Cassius and introduces the personal accent, he abandons his mannerisms. And could the symmetrical clauses of his oration move the popular heart? It has a noble ring about it, because it is sincere, with the reticence and sobriety which the sincere man is careful to observe when he is advocating his own case. But that is not the sort of thing that the Saviour of his Country, as Brutus thought himself to be, will find fit to sway a mob. Nevertheless his eloquence was notorious. Plutarch states that when his mind “was moved to followe any matter, he used a kind of forcible and vehement perswasion that calmed not till he had obteyned his desire.” There is a rush of emotion in his words when he is denouncing the conventional pledge or wanton bloodshed, but if any personal interest is involved, the springs are dry. In the Forum it is characteristic that he speaks with far more warmth—a transition indicated not only by the change of style, but, after Shakespeare’s wont, by the substitution of verse for prose—when he no longer pleads for himself but tries to get a hearing for Mark Antony.

And this is the man with his formal dialectic and professorial oratory, impassioned only on behalf of his enemy, who thinks that by a temperate statement of the course which he has seduced his reason to approve, he can prevent the perils of a speech by Caesar’s friend. He does not even wait to hear it: but if he did, what could he effect against the sophistries and rhetorical tricks, the fervour and regret, the gesticulation and tears of Antony’s headlong improvisation?

Brutus had been doubly duped, by his own subtlety and his own simplicity in league with his conscientiousness; for in this way he was led to idealise his deed as enjoined both by the inward moral code and the demands of his country, and such self-deception avenges itself as surely as any intentional crime. He is soon disabused in regard to the wishes of Rome and its view of the alleged wrongs it has suffered from Caesar. His imagination had dwelt on the time when his ancestors drove out the Tarquin; now he himself must ride “like a madman” through the gates. It is not only the first of his reverses but a step towards his enlightenment, for it helps to show that he has been mistaken in the people. Still, the momentary mood of the populace may not always recognise its best interests and real needs, and may not coincide with the true volonté générale. There is harder than this in store for Brutus. By the time we meet him again at Sardis a worse punishment has overtaken him, and his education in disappointment has advanced, though he does his utmost to treat the punishment as fate and not to learn the lessons it enforces.

This scene has won the applause of the most dissimilar minds and generations. We have seen how Leonard Digges singles it out as the grand attraction of the play, by which, above all others, it transcends the laboured excellences of Catiline or Sejanus. It excited the admiration and rivalry of the greatest genius of the Restoration period. Scott says of the dispute between Antony and Ventidius in All for Love: “Dryden when writing this scene had unquestionably in his recollection the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, which was so justly a favourite in his time, and to which he had referred as inimitable in his prologue to Aureng-Zebe.

In the eighteenth century Dr. Johnson, though he finds Julius Caesar as a whole “somewhat cold and unaffecting,” perhaps because Shakespeare’s “adherence to the real story and to Roman manners” has “impeded the natural vigour of his genius,” excepts particular passages and cites “the contention and reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius” as universally celebrated. And Coleridge goes beyond himself in his praise: “I know no part of Shakespeare that more impresses on me the belief of his being superhuman, than this scene between Brutus and Cassius. In the Gnostic heresy it might have been credited with less absurdity than most of their dogmas, that the Supreme had employed him to create, previously to his function of representing characters.” Yet it is not merely in the revelation of character that the scene is unique. More than any other single episode, more than all the rest together, it lays bare the significance of the story in its tragic pathos and its tragic irony. And the wonder of it is increased rather than lessened when we take note that it is a creation not out of nothing but out of chaos. For there is hardly a suggestion, hardly a detail, that Shakespeare did not find in Plutarch, but here in confused mixture, there in inert isolation, and nowhere with more than the possibilities of being organised. It is Shakespeare, who, to borrow from Milton’s description of the beginning of his Universe, “founded and conglobed like things to like, and vital virtue infused and vital warmth.”

The nucleus of this passage is found just after the account of Brutus’ exploits in Lycia.