This speech is singular;--at least, I do not at present see into Shakspeare's motive, his _rationale_, or in what point of view he meant Brutus' character to appear. For surely--(this I mean is what I say to myself, with my present _quantum_ of insight, only modified by my experience in how many instances I have ripened into a perception of beauties, where I had before descried faults;) surely, nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him--to him, the stern Roman republican; namely,--that he would have no objection to a king, or to Cæsar, a monarch in Rome, would Cæsar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal cause--none in Cæsar's past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his Gauls in the Senate?--Shakspeare, it may be said, has not brought these things forwards.--True;--and this is just the ground of my perplexity. What character did Shakspeare mean his Brutus to be? Ib. Speech of Brutus:-- For if thou _path_, thy native semblance on-- Surely, there need be no scruple in treating this 'path' as a mere misprint or mis-script for 'put.' In what place does Shakspeare,--where does any other writer of the same age--use 'path' as a verb for 'walk?' Ib. sc. 2. Caesar's speech:-- She dreamt last night, she saw my _statue_-- No doubt, it should be _statua_, as in the same age, they more often pronounced 'heroes' as a trisyllable than dissyllable. A modern tragic poet would have written,-- Last night she dreamt, that she my statue saw-- But Shakspeare never avails himself of the supposed license of transposition, merely for the metre. There is always some logic either of thought or passion to justify it. Act iii. sc. 1. Antony's speech:-- Pardon me, Julius--here wast thou bay'd, brave hart; Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy death. _O world! thou wast the forest to this hart, And this, indeed, O world! the heart of thee._