sible to maintain anything like historical accuracy, even for the forty pages which he devotes to correcting Mr. Freeman's blunders. Here, at least, he was thrice bound to walk warily. And yet we have pointed out eight mistakes, and these not mistakes of detail, but capital errors, in the course of a few pages. These mistakes, however, do not detract from what is really valuable in the article as a whole.

The truth is, that in history, as in all other human work, we can never hope to attain absolute accuracy, however much we strive for it. Despite all our care, errors will creep in; our judgment will occasionally go astray; our knowledge will be defective. We must put up with these things as incidental to human weakness, remembering that, were it otherwise, the first historian would be the last; for he would register the whole truth, and there would be no possibility of bettering his work. As it is, we have all been but working masons in one great building, each constructing his little corner in the great Temple of Truth. Here and there, for the best as well as the worst among us, there must arise a later workman who can improve our petty portion in detail, if not in general plan. It is well that things should be so. They teach us a lesson of humility; and we have the consolation that at all events every genuine alteration helps to make the Temple of Truth more perfect than before. Let us be thankful to have had a hand in erecting the smallest part of such a building, and not repine at learning our own imperfection; remembering the words of our greatest Englishman of the seventeenth century:

“Truth, indeed, came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on. But when He ascended, and his apostles after Him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon, ... took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do till her Master's second coming: He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection."

T. A. ARCHER.

SHAKESPERE'S "JULIUS CESAR." *

1

No part of history is more deserving of study than that meeting

point of the ancient and modern world which is depicted in Shakespere's Julius Cæsar." "Julius Cæsar." Inasmuch as it gathers up the contrast, and brings out the most striking characteristics of human thought and aspiration as it preceded and succeeded the coming of Christ, it may be called a revelation as to the meaning of all history. And though, I suppose, Shakespere knew less of the career of Cæsar than almost any reader of our day, he may teach the most learned to understand the man and the time. The divination of genius. forms the best introduction to the laborious work of the student, and those who stop at the introduction know the work better, in some respects, than those who omit it.

A

Julius Cæsar has been called by an English historian “the greatest name in history." I suppose Dr. Merivale meant that the only name to which that superlative would seem more fitted must be considered apart, as belonging to a world more mysterious than that of history. Certainly the only name equally commemorated in modern languages is that of Christ. Over the whole of Austria and the whole of Russia the monarch is still "the Cæsar"; and Cæsarism

is an expression carrying its definite meaning to every ear. We
gather up under the name that spirit of external rule which is most
remote from the influence of Christianity; we are apt to connect it
with ideas of oppression and of self-centred ambition, such as form
the most complete antithesis to the spirit of Christ.
But we may
trace these associations rather to the many successors of the great
man who first bore it than to anything in his own character or

* A lecture to the St. Andrew's Club for Women.

actions, and they find no echo in our play, which indeed indirectly vindicates its hero from some of them. Plutarch tells us of the attempt, made on Cæsar's way to the scene of his murder, to warn him of the conspiracy against his life, and adds that Cæsar received the paper and tried to read it, but "was hindered by the crowd of those who came to speak to him," giving no reply to the urgency of his wouldbe saviour. Shakespere, as he touches this incident, transfigures it with the glow of his genius. He makes the very emphasis with which, according to Plutarch, Artemidorus, the Greek who tried to save him, insisted that the paper was of importance to him a reason for his deferring its perusal.

"O Cæsar, read mine first; for mine's a suit

That touches Cæsar nearer: read it, great Cæsar."

"What touches us ourselves shall be last served," is Cæsar's reply. Surely it may be regarded as a fine Pagan rendering of that sublime tribute of the Pharisees: "He saved others, Himself He could not save." It is remarkable as the only line in the play in which Shakespere has allowed himself what we may call a touch of personal admiration for his hero, and though it has, so far as I know, no historic foundation, it has the truth of poetry in condensing the purport of history. Had Cæsar made the use of his victory that Sulla did, had he struck down every possible foe and encircled himself with an atmosphere of terror, he might have lived inaccessible to the dagger of the assassin, and known a prosperous old age. But perhaps his assassins were his best friends. The name Cæsarism conveys a warning as to the temptations of absolute power which no study of a life ended on the threshold of such power can confute. "It is the bright day that brings forth the adder," says Shakespere's Brutus, with what scientific truth I know not; but the words have that brief, grand simplicity which make his most audacious inventions appear a fitter vehicle for truth than the most accurate metaphors of other men. We cannot verify the warning from the history of Cæsar because he knew no bright day. A morning of obscurity and an afternoon of storm was all that was granted him; when the clouds rolled away and the winds were lulled to rest his career had reached its limits. It ended on the brink of its deadliest perils. The world's experience shows that there is something strangely deteriorating in absolute power; the speech of Brutus remains as an ineffaceable warning, true for all states of society, though associated by him with the ordinary form of government of the modern world, that

"The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins
Remorse from power":

that is, when it drops all those limitations, those reminders of responsibility, which holding in germ the possible rebuke of the neighbour, possess the true appeal for awakening self-rebuke. If to the highest goodness the conscience speaks clearest when it has no human echo, all lower forms of virtue are apt to find the still small voice in that case stifled by the din of the world. Imperfect human beings mostly need a conscience without to awaken the conscience within.

How Cæsar would have borne the supreme trial of irresponsible authority we cannot say, but it is unquestionable that he rose above the ordinary temptations of a career of almost unvaried success more consistently than any one with whom we can possibly compare him. Set him by the side of Napoleon, for instance. Of course he did some cruel things that Napoleon could not have done; Christianity would be an even poorer attempt than it is to follow the teaching of Him whose title it commemorates, if it were possible, in its second millennium, to ignore its spirit as did those to whom it was actually unknown. But Cæsar's cruelties are acts of ruthless policy, never expressions of hostile animus or personal spite. How little they shocked the conscience of that age we see by the fact that the brave nation against whose independence they were directed remained the loyal ally of its conqueror. There was a deserter among his followers, but the Judas was a Roman. There is no parallel among his Gaulish soldiers to the Prussian defection from Napoleon on his retreat from Moscow. The Gauls fought under his banner as nobly as they had fought against it, and answer all our doubts as to his humanity by the eloquent testimony of unswerving support, given by those who might be called his victims. I do not think there is any other great conqueror of whom we may say as much, and there are not half a dozen men in history whom we can compare with him in any way.

The world's greatest statesman and warrior, delineated by the world's greatest dramatist-here surely we shall find a character of unique splendour ! Is this what we find in Shakespere's Cæsar ? Shakespere's readers resemble the spectators of that procession in Andersen's story, where an Emperor walks naked, but everybody having been told that some terrible sin in themselves alone can prevent their seeing his magic robes, the crowd joins in a chorus of admiration of them, till a little child remarks that the Emperor wears no clothes at all. We are accustomed to clothe Shakespere's Julius Cæsar with heroic virtue in much the same fashion. But wherever any one attends to Julius Cæsar with the sincerity of Andersen's little spectator he will make the same discovery. Shakespere seems to remember nothing of almost the greatest conqueror the world has ever seen except his weaknesses. He occupies the chief part of that small proportion of his work allotted to the utterances of Cæsar, in delineating such foibles and weaknesses as we should hardly make room for in

anything but an exhaustive biography. Especially note the space he gives to his physical weaknesses, telling us such incidents (sometimes against the traditions of history) as that he was a poor swimmer, that he fainted away in a dirty crowd, that he was impatient in the thirst of fever, and the like. One of the lines he allots to the greatest of statesmen and warriors curiously brings out his determination to force upon us a consideration of his weaknesses. "Come thou on

this side, for that ear is deaf." Why should Shakespere interrupt Cæsar's speech to Anthony to tell us that? These are not touches of shadow to enhance brilliant colouring. The play actually contains no references to the glories of Cæsar's career except in the ungraceful form of assertions made by himself, these being, indeed, in some cases absurd rhodomontade.

What nonsense! and it is not the only gasconade in the few speeches given to Cæsar, while no one else seems particularly impressed with his greatness, except so far as it is a danger to Rome. But the mere records of the stage might save us the trouble of all such analysis. A spectator who, in the early years of this century, had seen Brutus, Cassius, and Anthony played respectively by Kean, Kemble, and Young, could not remember who had taken the part of Julius Cæsar. It was not worth remembering; anybody is good enough for that part. In short, if it ended with the murder of Cæsar, we might apply to it a hackneyed quotation, and say that the conquering cause pleased the gods, but that it was the conquered which pleased William Shakespere.

Of course, nobody will suppose this; most people assume the opposite so decidedly that they read into the character of Shakespere's Cæsar a nobility which is not present in any speech put into his lips or any action that is ascribed to him. They need very little imagination for the effort. It is not as if the great actions. which might truly be ascribed to him were unsuited to drama. The character thus unimpressive might have been lighted up by some of the most striking incidents of history. Shakespere might have reminded us with some outrages to chronology, perhaps, but none that he would have cared for if he had wanted to bring to a focus all that was remarkable in the character of his hero-that Cæsar as a stripling had refused to desert his wife at the command of the terrible Sulla ;-surely the most romantic incident of classical history. He might have been painted as a prisoner among the equally terrible pirates, ordering them about, bidding them cease their chatter when he wanted to take a nap, scolding them for their bad taste in not admiring his probably very bad verses, and treating them in all