struction, ofttimes procuring it, through its very manifestations. And thus Cæsar, as if impelled by the gods, ministers directly to his ruin.

Many of us have witnessed, in actual life, instances where men have conducted themselves with such reckless foolishness or brazen effrontery that we have exclaimed, "He must be demented": when, in fact, the very acts which called forth the exclamation were in themselves the initial workings of a rapidly approaching retribution. And in just such an apparent perversity the irony of fateCæsar, in his hour of intoxication, by his very arrogance, nerves the conspirators to their task. In a boldness of conception quite unsurpassed, but which attests the transcendent genius of the Artist and his profound insight, Cæsar is made to "turn his back" upon his past, and the principles which heretofore had regulated his conduct, and to enact before the assembled conspirators the very role assigned him by Cassius and accepted by Brutus :

Is now become a god."

"and this man

They are now assembled in the Capitol, and Cæsar arrogantly inquires:

"What is now amiss,

That Cæsar and his Senate must redress?

Metellus Cimber, one of the conspirators, makes suit for the recall of his banished brother. Kneeling before Cæsar he commences:

"Most high, most mighty, and most puissant Cæsar,
Metellus Cimber throws before thy seat

A humble heart:

But Cæsar interrupts :

"I must prevent thee, Cimber.
These couchings, and these lowly courtesies,
Might fire the blood of ordinary men,
And turn preordinance, and first decree,
Into the law of children. Be not fond,

To think that Cæsar bears such rebel blood,
That will be thaw'd from the true quality

With that which melteth fools; I mean, sweet words,
Low-crooked curtsies, and base spaniel-fawning.

Thy brother by decree is banished;

If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn, for him,

I spurn thee, like a cur, out of my way.

Know, Cæsar doth not wrong: nor without cause
Will he be satisfied."

Brutus intercedes in vain, and Cassius also, to whom Cæsar replies:

"I could be well mov'd if I were as you;

If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.

The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks,
They are all fire, and every one doth shine;
But there's but one in all doth hold his place:
So, in the world; 't is furnish'd well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;
Yet, in the number, I do know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshaken of motion: and, that I am he,
Let me a little show it,—even in this,

That I was constant Cimber should be banish'd,
And constant do remain to keep him so."

Cinna also pleads; but Cæsar impiously cries:

"Hence! wilt thou lift up Olympus?"

The infuriated conspirators press upon Cæsar; they stab him, Brutus last of all. Cæsar exclaims, "Et tu

Brute," and expires. Fate, that awful figure that all the time has been looming up in the dim background, now advances to the front, and as by a visible push of her arm, Cæsar is thrown at the base of Pompey's statue :

“And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey's statua,

Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell.”

And Pompey, Cæsar's former friend and son-in-law, whom he had long before overthrown and driven to his death, is thus finally avenged.

In the excitement of the moment, Brutus' logic again runs riot. Cassius remarking,

"Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life,
Cuts off so many years of fearing death,"

Brutus replies:

"Grant that, and then is death a benefit,

So are we Cæsar's friends, that have abridged
His time of fearing death."

The conspirators, in their drunken fury, bathe their hands in Cæsar's blood, "up to the elbows," and rush forth, crying, "Peace, Freedom, and Liberty!" a shout that later found its echo in the bloody drama of the French Revolution; drawing forth from Madame Roland, on her way to the guillotine, its appropriate answering cry, also ringing through the ages: "O Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name!"

66

CHAPTER IX.

THE physical tragedy is wrought: and a less consummate artist would either have here ended the play, or else continuing it, have failed thereafter to sustain the interest. But to the mighty intellect that had conceived and developed Brutus' fatal error and crime as the direct outgrowth of his unfortified constitutional weakness, when assailed by a malignant force centred thereon, the action was as yet incomplete. The conspirators must be shown to have drawn upon themselves a fearful retribution.

Dante, indeed, looking through the ruby gate of imagination into the fires of hell, saw, last of all, and portrayed in an ideal retribution, Cassius and Brutus plunged into its lowermost pit and there held in the mouths of the threefaced Lucifer, in grinding torment:

"At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching A sinner, in the manner of a brake,

So that he three of them tormented thus.
To him in front the biting was as naught
Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine
Utterly stripped of all the skin remained.
That soul up there which has the greatest pain,'
The Master said, 'is Judas Iscariot;

With head inside, he plies his legs without.

Of the two others, who head downward are,

The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus;
See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word.
And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius.
But night is reascending, and 'tis time.
That we depart, for we have seen the whole.'"
-Inferno, Longfellow's Translation.

But Bacon, as we have seen, by the very cast of his personality, and through the clarity of his vision, laid hold upon and gave expression to the life that now is our life -in its complex realities, and in the subtle workings of the retributive forces that ofttimes shape its destinies. And it is upon these lines that the development of the play proceeds.

In the powerful Tragedies of ancient Greece, whose production marked its Golden Age, the controlling element in the action was an irresistible destiny, in whose coils man was infolded, and which, struggle as he might, he could not avert; his very efforts ministering to the fatal end, a doom decreed by the gods, in retribution for some former violent deed; sometimes even one divorced from a guilty intent. (See Schlegel's Dramatic Literature.) This ancient Tragedy is thoroughly mastered, its agencies grasped and its spirit caught, long prior to its critical exposition in modern times; and in this play, cast amid ancient scenes, it is grandly paralleled. Its spirit is reëmbodied, in this magnificent portrayal of Cæsar advancing inevitably, in disregard of portents and warnings, and with determined strides, straight to the doom prepared for him by the gods, in retribution for his former destruction of Pompey.

But over and beyond this, in the further development of the theme, in the unfolding of the destiny of Cassius, and of Brutus also, this modern masterpiece marks a distinct advance upon the conception and methods of the ancients, an advance evincing a mightier grasp of life and its mystery, a clearer insight into its subtler workings, and a broader, keener comprehension of its realities.*

*Certainly as regards Eschylus: but as to Sophocles, the advance, though real, might be regarded by some as less distinctly marked. Thus, Symonds, in his luminous Studies of the Greek Poets, discussing Sophocles' Edipus Tyrannis, con