CASSIUS. Ha!--Portia? BRUTUS. She is dead. CASSIUS. How 'scap'd I killing when I cross'd you so? O insupportable and touching loss-- Upon what sickness? BRUTUS. Impatient of my absence, And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony Had made themselves so strong--(for with her death These tidings came)--_with this she fell distract_, And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire. So much for woman's philosophy! MARGARET OF ANJOU. Malone has written an essay, to prove from external and internal evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,[93] with considerable improvements and additions of his own. Burke, Porson, Dr. Warburton, and Dr. Farmer, pronounced this piece of criticism convincing and unanswerable; but Dr. Johnson and Steevens would not be convinced, and, moreover, have contrived to answer the _unanswerable_. "Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The only arbiter in such a case is one's own individual taste and judgment. To me it appears that the three parts of Henry VI. have less of poetry and passion, and more of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of Shakspeare's works; that the continual exhibition of treachery, bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action, and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as Shakspeare alone could have written: and this is not denied by the most skeptical.[94]