He introduces his Country and his Progenitors urging him in a noble Prosopopeia, by all the mighty Benefits which they had conferr’d upon him, with so little Pains of his own, not to deny them that just and easy Request of the Restoration of Liberty. He adjures him by those Furies which will eternally haunt his Soul upon his impious Refusal: He implores him by the foresight of those dismal Calamities, that horrible Slaughter, those endless Wars, and that unbounded Devastation, which will certainly fall upon Mankind, if the Restoration of Liberty is prevented by his Death, or his incurable Sickness: And lastly, he entreats him by his Thirst of immortal Glory, that Glory in which he now has Rivals, if he has not Equals; but which, if he re-establishes Liberty, will be acknowledg’d by consenting Nations to have neither Equal nor Second. I am apt to believe that if _Shakespear_ had been acquainted with all this, we had had from him quite another Character of _Cæsar_ than that which we now find in him. He might then have given us a Scene something like that which _Corneille_ has so happily us’d in his Cinna; something like that which really happen’d between _Augustus_, _Mecænas_, and _Agrippa_. He might then have introduc’d _Cæsar_ consulting _Cicero_ on the one side, and on the other _Anthony_, whether he should retain that absolute Sovereignty which he had acquir’d by his Victory, or whether he should re-establish and immortalize Liberty. That would have been a Scene which might have employ’d the finest Art and the utmost force of a Writer. That had been a Scene in which all the great Qualities of _Cæsar_ might have been display’d. I will not pretend to determine here how that Scene might have been turn’d; and what I have already said on this Subject, has been spoke with the utmost Caution and Diffidence. But this I will venture to say, that if that Scene had been manag’d so, as, by the powerful Motives employ’d in it, to have shaken the Soul of _Cæsar_, and to have left room for the least Hope, for the least Doubt, that _Cæsar_ would have re-establish’d Liberty, after his _Parthian_ Expedition; and if this Conversation had been kept secret till the Death of _Cæsar_, and then had been discover’d by _Anthony_; then had _Cæsar_ fall’n, so belov’d and lamented by the _Roman_ People, so pitied and so bewail’d even by the Conspirators themselves, as never Man fell. Then there would have been a Catastrophe the most dreadful and the most deplorable that ever was beheld upon the Tragick Stage. Then had we seen the noblest of the Conspirators cursing their temerarious Act, and the most apprehensive of them in dreadful expectation of those horrible Calamities which fell upon the _Romans_ after the Death of _Cæsar_. But, Sir, when I write this to you, I write it with the utmost Deference to the extraordinary Judgment of that great Man who some Years ago, I hear, alter’d the _Julius Cæsar_. And I