Had _Shakespear_ read either _Sallust_ or _Cicero_, how could he have made so very little of the first and greatest of Men, as that _Cæsar_ should be but a Fourth-rate Actor in his own Tragedy? How could it have been that, seeing _Cæsar_, we should ask for _Cæsar_? That we should ask, where is his unequall’d Greatness of Mind, his unbounded Thirst of Glory, and that victorious Eloquence, with which he triumph’d over the Souls of both Friends and Enemies, and with which he rivall’d _Cicero_ in Genius as he did _Pompey_ in Power? How fair an Occasion was there to open the Character of _Cæsar_ in the first Scene between _Brutus_ and _Cassius_? For when _Cassius_ tells _Brutus_ that _Cæsar_ was but a Man like them, and had the same natural Imperfections which they had, how natural had it been for _Brutus_ to reply, that _Cæsar_ indeed had their Imperfections of Nature, but neither he nor _Cassius_ had by any means the great Qualities of _Cæsar_: neither his Military Virtue, nor Science, nor his matchless Renown, nor his unparallell’d Victories, his unwearied Bounty to his Friends, nor his Godlike Clemency to his Foes, his Beneficence, his Munificence, his Easiness of Access to the meanest _Roman_, his indefatigable Labours, his incredible Celerity, the Plausibleness if not Justness of his Ambition, that knowing himself to be the greatest of Men, he only sought occasion to make the World confess him such. In short, if _Brutus_, after enumerating all the wonderful Qualities of _Cæsar_, had resolv’d in spight of them all to sacrifice him to publick Liberty, how had such a Proceeding heighten’d the Virtue and the Character of _Brutus_? But then indeed it would have been requisite that _Cæsar_ upon his Appearance should have made all this good. And as we know no Principle of human Action but human Sentiment only, _Cæsar_, who did greater Things, and had greater Designs than the rest of the _Romans_, ought certainly to have outshin’d by many Degrees all the other Characters of his Tragedy. _Cæsar_ ought particularly to have justified his Actions, and to have heighten’d his Character, by shewing that what he had done, he had done by Necessity; that the _Romans_ had lost their _Agrarian_, lost their Rotation of Magistracy, and that consequently nothing but an empty Shadow of publick Liberty remain’d; that the _Gracchi_ had made the last noble but unsuccessful Efforts for the restoring the Commonwealth, that they had fail’d for want of arbitrary irresistible Power, the Restoration of the _Agrarian_ requiring too vast a Retrospect to be done without it; that the Government, when _Cæsar_ came to publick Affairs, was got into the Hands of a few, and that those few were factious, and were contending among themselves, and, if you will pardon so mean an Expression, scrambling as it were for Power; that _Cæsar_ was reduc’d to the Necessity of ruling, or himself obeying a Master; and that apprehending that another would