However he puts on this tardy form.67

This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,

Which gives men stomach to digest his words
With better appetite.

Bru. And so it is. For this time I will leave you :
To-morrow, if you please to speak with me,

I will come home to you; or, if you will,
Come home to me, and I will wait for you.
Cass. I will do so: till then, think of the

world. —

[Exit BRUTUS.

Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet, I see,
Thy honourable metal may be wrought
From that it is disposed: 68 therefore 'tis meet
That noble minds keep ever with their likes;
For who so firm that cannot be seduced?
Cæsar doth bear me hard,69 but he loves Brutus :

If I were Brutus now, and he were Cassius,
He should not humour me.70 I will this night,

67 However for although, or notwithstanding. Often so.—“Tardy form" is form of tardiness. So the Poet has shady steaith for stealing shadow, and "negligent danger" for danger from negligence.

68 Wrought from what, or from that which it is disposed to. The Poet has divers instances of prepositions thus omitted. Of course Cassius is here chuckling over the effect his talk has had upon Brutus. He evidently regards Brutus as a noble putty-head, and goes on to take order for moulding him accordingly.

69 The phrase to bear one hard occurs three times in this play, but nowhere else in Shakespeare. It seems to have been borrowed from horsemanship, and to mean carries a tight rein, or reins hard, like one who distrusts his horse. So before: "You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand over your friend that loves you"; that is, "You hold me too hard on the bit, like a strange rider, who is doubtful of his steed, and not like one who confides in his faithful horse, and so rides him with an easy rein."— For this note I am indebted to Mr. Joseph Crosby.

70 To humour a man, as the word is here used, is to turn and wind and manage him by watching his moods and crotchets, and touching him ac

In several hands,71 in at his window throw,
As if they came from several citizens,
Writings all tending to the great opinion

That Rome holds of his name;'

72 wherein obscurely

Cæsar's ambition shall be glanced at :
And, after this, let Cæsar seat him sure;

For we will shake him, or worse days endure.73

[Exit.

Thunder and Lightning. Enter, from opposite sides, CASCA, with his sword drawn, and CICERO.

Cic. Good even, Casca: brought you Cæsar home?1 Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?

cordingly. It is somewhat in doubt whether the last he refers to Brutus or to Cæsar. If to Brutus, the meaning of course is," he should not play upon my humours and fancies as I do upon his." And this sense is, I think, fairly required by the context. For the whole speech is occupied with the speaker's success in cajoling Brutus, and with plans for cajoling and shaping him still further.

71 Hands for handwritings, of course. The Poet has it repeatedly so. 72 Now when Cassius felt his friends, and did stir them up against Cæsar, they all agreed, and promised to take part with him, so Brutus were the chief of their conspiracy. For they told him that so high an enterprise and attempt as that did not so much require men of manhood and courage to draw their swords, as it stood them upon to have a man of such estimation as Brutus, to make every man boldly think that by his only presence the fact were holy and just. PLUTARCH.

78 " We will either shake him, or endure worse days in suffering the consequences of our attempt." -The Poet makes Cassius overflow with intense personal spite against Cæsar. This is in accordance with what he read in Plutarch: "Cassius, being a choleric man, and hating Cæsar privately more than he did the tyranny openly, incensed Brutus against him. It is also reported that Brutus could evil away with the tyranny, and that Cassius hated the tyrant." Of course tyranny as here used means royalty.

1 To bring for to escort or go along with was very common.

Casca. Are not you moved, when all the sway of Earth Shakes like a thing unfirm?2 O Cicero !

I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks; and I have seen
Th' ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds :3
But never till to-night, never till now,

Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in Heaven,

Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.4

Cic. Why, saw you any thing more wonderful?5

Casca. A common slave — you'd know him well by sight 6

Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn

Like twenty torches join'd; and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remain'd unscorch'd.

Besides, I ha' not since put up my sword,

Against the Capitol I met a lion,

Who glared upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me: and there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,

2 Sway for constitution or order, probably. In such a raging of the elements, it seems as if the whole world were going to pieces, or as if the Earth's steadfastness were growing unfirm, that is, unsteady.

3 So as, or insomuch as to be exalted with the threatening clouds. The Poet often uses the infinitive mood thus.

4 Either the gods are fighting among themselves, or else they are making war on the world for being too saucy with them.

5 More is here equivalent to else: "Saw you any thing more that was wonderful?"

6" You would recognise him as a common slave, from his looks."

7 Sensible, here, is sensitive, or having sensation. Repeatedly so.

8" Drawn upon a heap" is drawn together in a crowd.

Transformed with their fear; who swore they saw
Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets.

And yesterday the bird of night9 did sit
Even at noon-day upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet,10 let not men say,

These are their reasons; they are natural; 11

9 The old Roman horror of this bird is well shown in a passage of Holland's Pliny, as quoted in the Clarendon edition: The screechowl betokeneth always some heavy news, and is most execrable in the presages of public affairs. In sum, he is the very monster of the night. There fortuned one of them to enter the very sanctuary of the Capitol, in that year when Sextus Papellio Ister and Lucius Pedanius were Consuls; whereupon, at the Nones of March, the city of Rome that year made general processions, to appease the wrath of the gods, and was solemnly purged by sacrifices."

10 Certainly destiny may easier be foreseen than avoided, considering the strange and wonderful signs that were said to be seen before Cæsar's death. For, touching the fires in the element, and spirits running up and down in the night, and also the solitary birds to be seen at noondays sitting in the great market-place, are not all these signs perhaps worth the noting, in such a wonderful chance as happened? But Strabo the philosopher writeth, that divers men were seen going up and down in fire, and furthermore, that there was a slave of the soldiers that did cast a marvellous burning flame out of his hand, insomuch as they that saw it thought he had been burnt; but when the fire was out, it was found he had no hurt. Cæsar self also, doing sacrifice unto the gods, found that one of the beasts which was sacrificed had no heart: and that was a strange thing in nature, how a beast could live without a heart. PLUTARCH.

11 The language is obscure, but the meaning probably is, “These things have their reasons; they proceed from natural causes." Casca refers to the doctrine of the Epicureans, who were slow to believe that such elemental pranks had any moral significance in them, or that moral causes had any thing to do with them; and held that the reasons of them were to be sought for in the simple working of natural laws and forces. The text has a good comment in All's Well that Ends Well, ii. 3: “They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors; ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear."

For I believe they are portentous things
Unto the climate 12 that they point upon.

Cic. Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time:
But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean 13 from the purpose of the things themselves.
Comes Cæsar to the Capitol to-morrow?

Casca. He doth; for he did bid Antonius
Send word to you he would be there to-morrow.
Cic. Good night, then, Casca: this disturbed sky
Is not to walk in.

Casca. Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this ! 14 Cass. A very pleasing night to honest men.

Casca. Who ever knew the Heavens menace so?

Cass. Those that have known the Earth so full of faults.

For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,

Submitting me unto the perilous night;
And, thus umbracèd,15 Casca, as you see,

Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone :

16

12 Climate for region or country. In Hamlet we have climature with the same meaning. Also "Christian climate" in Richard the Second, iv. I.

13 Clean, here, is altogether, entirely, or quite. Repeatedly so. See Richard the Second, page 97, note 2.- -The mild scepticism of Cicero's speech is very graceful and apt.

14 We should say, “What a night is this!" In such exclamative phrases, as also in some others, the Poet omits the article when his verse wants it so. 15 Unbuttoned. Shakespeare gives the Romans his own dressing-gear. 16 Thunder-stone is the old word for thunder-bolt.