And therefore, it is not only honest but due unto me, that without compulsion I should obtain my so just and reasonable request of thee. But since by reason I cannot persuade thee to it, to what purpose do I defer my last hope.” And with these words, herself, his wife and children, fell down upon their knees before him: Martius seeing that, could refrain no longer, but went straight and lifted her up, crying out, “Oh mother, what have you done to me?” And holding her hard by the hand, “Oh mother,” said he, “you have won a happy victory for your country, but mortal and unhappy for your son: for I see myself vanquished by you alone.” These words being spoken openly, he spake a little apart with his mother and wife, and then let them return again to Rome, for so they did request him; and so remaining in the camp that night, the next morning he dislodged, and marched homeward unto the Volces’ country again.’ Shakespear has, in giving a dramatic form to this passage, adhered very closely and properly to the text. He did not think it necessary to improve upon the truth of nature. Several of the scenes in _Julius Cæsar_, particularly Portia’s appeal to the confidence of her husband by shewing him the wound she had given herself, and the appearance of the ghost of Cæsar to Brutus, are in like manner, taken from the history. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA This is one of the most loose and desultory of our author’s plays: it rambles on just as it happens, but it overtakes, together with some indifferent matter, a prodigious number of fine things in its way. Troilus himself is no character: he is merely a common lover: but Cressida and her uncle Pandarus are hit off with proverbial truth. By the speeches given to the leaders of the Grecian host, Nestor, Ulysses, Agamemnon, Achilles, Shakespear seems to have known them as well as if he had been a spy sent by the Trojans into the enemy’s camp—to say nothing of their affording very lofty examples of didactic eloquence. The following is a very stately and spirited declamation: ‘_Ulysses._ Troy, yet upon her basis, had been down, And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master, But for these instances. The specialty of rule hath been neglected. . . . . .