Chapter II: Caesar's Spirit

_I'll_ meet thee at Phillippi.

In Julius Caesar, the most splendid and magnanimous representative of arbitrary power is selected--'the foremost man of all the world,'--even by the concession of those who condemn him to death; so that here it is the mere abstract question as to the expediency and propriety of permitting _any one man_ to impose his individual will on the nation. Whatever personalities are involved in the question _here_--with Brutus, at least--tend to bias the decision in his favour. For so he tells us, as with agitated step he walks his orchard on that wild night which succeeds his conference with Cassius, revolving his part, and reading, by the light of the exhalations whizzing in the air, the papers that have been found thrown in at his study window.

'It must be by his death: and, _for my part_,
I know _no personal cause_ to spurn at him,
BUT FOR THE GENERAL. He would be crown'd:--
How _that might change his nature, there's the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder_;
And that _craves wary walking_. Crown him? That;--
And then, _I grant_, we put a sting in him,
That _at his will_ he may do danger with.
The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
_Remorse from power_: And, to speak truth of _Caesar_,
I have not known when _his affections_ sway'd
More than his _reason_. But 't is a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face:
But when he once attains _the utmost round_,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend: So Caesar may;
Then, lest he may, PREVENT. And, since the quarrel,
Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus; that _what he is, augmented_,
Would run to _these, and these extremities_:
And _therefore_ think him as a serpent's egg,
Which, _hatch'd_, would, AS HIS KIND, grow mischievous;
AND KILL HIM IN THE SHELL.'

Pretty sentiments these, to set before a king already engaged in so critical a contest with his subjects; pleasant entertainment, one would say, for the representative of a monarchy that had contrived to wake the sleeping Brutus in its dominions,--that was preparing, even then, for its own death-struggle on this very question, which _this_ Brutus searches to its core so untenderly.

'Have you heard the argument?' says the 'bloat king' in Hamlet. 'Is there no offence in it?'

Now, let the reader suppose, for one instant, that this work had been produced from the outset openly, for what any reader of common sense will perceive it to be, with all its fire, an elaborate, scholarly composition, the product of the profoundest philosophic invention, the fruit of the ripest scholarship of the age;--let him suppose, for argument's sake, that it had been produced for what it is, the work of a scholar, and a statesman, and a courtier,--a statesman already jealously watched, or already, perhaps, in deadly collision with this very power he is defining here so largely, and tracking to its ultimate scientific comprehensions;--and then let the reader imagine, if he can, Elizabeth or James, but especially Elizabeth, listening entranced to such passages as the one last quoted, with an audience disposed to make points of some of the 'choice Italian' lines in it.

Does not all the world know that scholars, men of reverence, men of world-wide renown, men of every accomplishment, were tortured, and mutilated, and hung, and beheaded, in both these two reigns, for writings wherein Caesar's ambition was infinitely more obscurely hinted at--writings unspeakably less offensive to majesty than this?

But, then, a Play was a Play, and old Romans would be Romans; there was, notoriously, no royal way of managing them; and if kings would have tragical mirth out of them, they must take their treason in good part, and make themselves as merry with it as they could. The poor Poet was, of course, no more responsible for these men than Chaucer was for his pilgrims. He but reported them.

And besides, in that broad, many-sided view of the subject which the author's evolution of it from the root involves,--in that pursuit of tyranny in essence through all its disguises,--other exhibitions of it were involved, which might seem, to the careless eye, purposely designed to counteract the effect of the views above quoted.

The fact that mere arbitrary will, that the individual humour and bias, is incapable of furnishing a _rule_ of _action_ anywhere,--the fact that mere will, or blind passion, whether in the _One_, or the _Few_, or the _Many_, should have no part, above all, in the business of the STATE,--should lend no colour or bias to its administration,--the fact that 'the general good,' 'the common weal,' which is justice, and reason, and humanity,--the 'ONE ONLY MAN,'--should, in some way, under some form or other, get to the head of that and _rule_, this is all which the Poet will contend for.

But, alas, HOW? The unspeakable difficulties in the way of the solution of this problem,--the difficulties which the radical bias in the individual human nature, even under its noblest forms, creates,--the difficulties which the ignorance, and stupidity, and passion of the multitude created then, and still create, appear here without _any mitigation_. They are studiously brought out in their boldest colours. There's no attempt to shade them down. They make, indeed, the TRAGEDY.

And it is this general impartial treatment of his subjects which makes this author's writings, with all their boldness, generally, so safe; for it seems to leave him without any bias for any person or any party--without any _opinion_ on any topic; for his truth embraces and resolves all partial views, and is as broad as nature's own.

And how could he better neutralise the effect of these patriotic speeches, and prove his loyalty in the face of them, than to show as he does, most vigorously and effectively, that these patriots themselves, so rebellious to tyranny, so opposed to the one-man power in others, so determined to die, rather than submit to the imposition of the humours of any man, instead of law and justice,--were themselves but men, and were as full of will and humours, and as ready to tyrannise with them, too, upon occasion, as Caesar himself; and were no more fit to be trusted with absolute power than he was, nor, in fact, half so fit.

Caesar does, indeed, send word to the senate--'_The cause is in_ MY WILL, _I will not come_; (_That_ is enough,' he says, '_to satisfy the senate_.') And while the conspirators are exchanging glances, and the daggers are stealing from their sheaths, he offers the strength of his decree, the immutability 'of his absolute shall,' to the suppliant for his brother's pardon.

But then Portia gives us to understand, that she, too, has her private troubles;--that even that excellent man, Brutus, is not without his moods in his domestic administrations,--for on one occasion, when he treats her to 'ungentle looks,' and 'stamps his foot,' and angrily gesticulates her out of his presence, she makes good her retreat, thinking 'it was but the effect of humour, which,' she says, 'sometime hath his hour with every man'; and, good and patriotic as Brutus truly is, Cassius perceives, upon experiment, that after all _he_ too is but a man, and, with a particular and private nature, as well as a larger one 'which is the worthier,' and not unassailable through that 'single I myself': he, too, may be 'thawed from the true quality with that which melteth fools,'--with words that flatter 'his particular.' In his conference with him, Cassius addresses himself skilfully to this weakness;--he poises the name of Caesar with that of Brutus, and, at the last, he clinches his patriotic appeal, with an appeal to his personal sentiment, of baffled, mortified emulation; for those writings, thrown in at his window, purporting to come from several citizens, 'all tended to the great opinion that Rome held of _his_ name;' and, alas! the Poet will not tell us that this did not unconsciously wake, in that pure mind, the feather's-weight that was perhaps needed to turn the scale.

And the very children know, by heart, what a time there was between these two men afterwards, these men that had 'struck the foremost man of all the world,' and had congratulated themselves that it was not murder, and that they were not villains, because it was for justice. Precious disclosures we have in this scene. It is this very Cassius, this patriot, who had as lief _not_ BE as submit to injustice; who brings his avaricious humour, 'his itching palm,' into the state, and 'sells and marts his offices for gold, to undeservers.' Brutus does indeed come down upon him with a most unlimited burst of patriotic indignation, which looks, at first, like a mere frenzy of honest disgust at wrong in the abstract, in spite of the partiality of friendship; but, when Cassius charges him, afterwards, with exaggerating his friend's infirmities, he says, frankly, 'I did not, _till you practised them on_ ME.' And we find, as the dialogue proceeds, that it is indeed a personal matter with him: Cassius has refused him gold to pay his legions with.

And see, now, what kind of taunt it is, that Brutus throws in this same patriot's face after it had been proclaimed, by his order, through the streets of Rome, that Tyranny 'is dead': after Cassius had shouted through his own lungs.

'Some to the common pulpits, and cry out LIBERTY, FREEDOM, ENFRANCHISEMENT.' (_Enfranchisement_?)

It would have been strange, indeed, if in so general and philosophical a view of the question, that sacred, domestic institution, which, through all this sublime frenzy for equal rights, maintained itself so peacefully under the patriot's roof, had escaped without a touch.

Brutus says:--

'Hear me, for I will speak.
Must I give way and room to your rash choler?
Shall I be frighted _when a madman stares_?'

'Look when I stare, see how the subject quakes.'

This sounds, already, as if Tyranny were not quite dead.

'_Cassius_. O ye gods, ye gods, must I endure all this!

_Brutus_. All this? ay more: Fret till your proud heart break;
_Go, show_ YOUR SLAVES _how choleric you are_,
And bid YOUR BONDMEN tremble. Must _I_ budge?
Must _I_ observe _you_? Must _I stand_ and _crouch
Under your testy humour_? By the gods,
You shall digest the venom of your spleen
Though it do split you.'

So it was a mistake, then, it seems; and, notwithstanding that shout of triumph, and that bloody flourishing of knives, Tyranny _was not_ dead.

But one cannot help thinking that that shout must have sounded rather strangely in an English theatre just then, and that it was a somewhat delicate experiment to give Brutus his pulpit on the stage, to harangue the people from. But the author knew what he was doing. That cold, stilted harangue, that logical chopping on the side of freedom, was not going to set fire to any one's blood; and was not there Mark Antony that plain, blunt man, coming directly after Brutus,--'with his eyes as red as fire with weeping,' with 'the mantle,' of the military hero, the popular favourite, _in his hand_, with his glowing oratory, with his sweet words, and his skilful appeal to the passions of the people, under his plain, blunt professions,--to wipe out every trace of Brutus's _reasons_, and lead them whither he would; and would not the moral of it all be, that with such A PEOPLE,--with such a power as that, behind the state, there was no use in killing Caesars--that Tyranny could not die.

'I fear there will a worse one come in his place.'

But this is Rome in her decline, that the artist touches here so boldly. But what now, if old Rome herself,--plebeian Rome, in the deadliest onset of her struggle against tyranny, Rome lashed into fury and conscious strength, rising from under the hard heel of her oppressors; what if Rome, in the act of creating her Tribunes; or, if Rome, with her Tribunes at her head, wresting from her oppressors a constitutional establishment of popular rights,--what if this could be exhibited, by permission; what bounds as to the freedom of the discussion would it be possible to establish afterwards? There had been no National Latin Tragedy, Frederic Schlegel suggests,--because no Latin Dramatist could venture to do this very thing; but of course Caesar or Coriolanus on the Tiber was one thing, and Caesar or Coriolanus on the Thames was another; and an English author might be allowed, then, to say of the one, with impunity, what it would certainly have cost him his good right hand, or his ears, or his head, to say of the other,--what it did cost the Founder of this school in philosophy his head, to be suspected of saying of the other.

Nevertheless, the great question between an arbitrary and a constitutional government, the principle of a government which vests the whole power of the state in the uncontrolled will of a single individual member of it; the whole history and philosophy of a military government, from its origin in the heroic ages,--from the crowning of the military hero on the battle field in the moment of victory, to the final consummation of its conquest of the liberty of the subject, could be as clearly set forth under the one form as the other; not without some startling specialities in the filling up, too, with a tone in the details now and then, to say the least, not exclusively antique, for this was a mode of treating classical subjects in that age, too common to attract attention.

And thus, whole plays could be written out and out, on this very subject. Take, for instance, but these two, Coriolanus and Julius Caesar,--plays in which, by a skilful distribution of the argument and the action, with a skilful interchange of parts now and then,--the boldest passages being put alternately into the mouths of the Tribunes and Patricians,--that great question, which was so soon to become the outspoken question of the nation and the age, could already be discussed in all its vexed and complicated relations, in all its aspects and bearings, as deliberately as it could be to-day; exactly as it was, in fact, discussed not long afterwards in swarms of English pamphlets, in harangues from English pulpits, in English parliaments and on English battle-fields,--exactly as it was discussed when that 'lofty Roman scene' came 'to be acted over' here, with the cold-blooded prosaic formalities of an English judicature.

CORIOLANUS

THE QUESTION OF THE CONSULSHIP;

OR,

THE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL PROPOUNDED.

'Well, march we on
To give obedience where 'tis truly owed:
Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal,
And _with him_, pour we in our country's purge
_Each drop of us_.
Or so much as it needs
To dew the sovereign Flower, _and drown the weeds_'--_Macbeth_.

'Have you heard the argument?'