Enter LUCIUS and LIGARIUS,

Lucius, who's that, knocks?? Luc. Here is a fick man, that would speak with you.

BRU. Caius Ligarius, that Metellus fpake of.-
Boy, stand aside.-Caius Ligarius! how?

LIG.Vouchsafe good morrow from a feeble tongue.
BRU. O, what a time have you chofe out, brave
Caius,

8

To wear a kerchief? Would you were not fick!

The word has already occurred in The Merry Wives of Windfor.
STEEVENS.

See Vol. IV. p. 358, n. 3. MALONE.

7 who's that, knocks?] i. e. who is that, who knocks? Our poet always prefers the familiar language of converfation to grammatical nicety. Four of his editors, however, have endeavoured to deftroy this peculiarity, by reading-who's there that knocks? and a fifth has, who's that, that knocks? MALONE.

80, what a time have you chofe out, brave Caius,

To wear a kerchief?] So, in Plutarch's Life of Brutus, tran-
flated by North: "- - Brutus went to fee him being ficke in his
bedde, and fayed unto him, O Ligarius, in what a time art thou
ficke? Ligarius rifing up in his bedde, and taking him by the right
hande, fayed unto him, Brutus, (fayed he,) if thou haft any great
enterprise in hande worthie of thy felfe, I am whole." Lord
Sterline alfo has introduced this paffage into his Julius Cæfar:
"By fickness being imprifon'd in his bed

"Whilft I Ligarius fpied, whom pains did prick,
"When I had faid with words that anguish bred,
"In what a time Ligarius art thou fick?

"He answer'd ftraight, as I had phyfick brought,
"Or that he had imagin'd my defign,

"If worthy of thyself thou would't do aught,
"Then Brutus I am whole, and wholly thine."

MALONE.

U 4

H

1

LIG. I am not fick, if Brutus have in hand Any exploit worthy the name of honour..

BRU. Such an exploit have I in hand, Ligarius, Had you a healthful ear to hear of it.

LIG. By all the gods that Romans bow before, I here difcard my fickness. Soul of Rome! Brave fon, deriv'd from honourable loins! Thou, like an exorcift, haft conjur'd up My mortified fpirit." Now bid me run, And I will strive with things impoffible; Yea, get the better of them. What's to do? BRU. A piece of work, that will make fick men whole.

LIG. But are not fome whole, that we must make fick?

BRU. That muft we also. What it is, my Caius, I fhall unfold to thee, as we are going

To whom it must be done.

LIG.
Set on your foot;
And, with a heart new-fir'd, I follow you,
To do I know not what: but it fufficeth,
That Brutus leads me on.

BRU.

Follow me then. [Exeunt.

Thou, like an exorcift, haft conjur'd up

My mortified Spirit.] Here, and in all other places where the word occurs in Shak fpeare, to exorcife means to raise spirits, not to lay them; and I believe he is fingular in his acceptation of it.

See Vol. VI. p. 373, n. 3. MALONE.

M. MASON.

SCENE II.

The fame.

A Room in Cæfar's Palace.

Thunder and lightning. Enter CÆSAR, in his Night

gown.

CAS. Nor heaven, nor earth, have been at peace. to-night:

Thrice hath Calphurnia in her fleep cried out,
Help, bo! They murder Cæfar. Who's within?

Enter a Servant.

SERV. My lord?

CAS. Go bid the priests do prefent facrifice,
And bring me their opinions of fuccefs.
SERV. I will, my lord.

Enter CALPHURNIA.

[Exit.

CAL. What mean you, Cæfar? Think you to walk forth?

You fhall not ftir out of your houfe to-day.

CAS. Cæfar fhall forth: The things, that threat

en'd me,

Ne'er look'd but on my back; when they fhall fee The face of Cæfar, they are vanished.

CAL. Cæfar, I never ftood on ceremonies,'

2 Cæfar, I never flood on ceremonies,] i. e. I never paid a ceremonious or fuperftitious regard to prodigies or omens.

The adjective is ufed in the fame fenfe in The Devil's Charter, 1607:

Yet now they fright me.

There is one within,

Befides the things that we have heard and feen,
Recounts most horrid fights feen by the watch.
A lionefs hath whelped in the streets;

And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead: 3

Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds,
In ranks, and fquadrons, and right form of war,*
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol:

The noise of battle hurtled in the air,'

"The devil hath provided in his covenant,
"I fhould not cross myself at any time:

"I never was fo ceremonious.”

The original thought is in the old tranflation of Plutarch: Calphurnia, until that time, was never given to any fear or fuperftition." STEEVENS.

3 And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead: &c.] So, in a funeral fong in Much ado about nothing:

"Graves yawn, and yield your dead.”

Again, in Hamlet:

"A little ere the mightieft Julius fell,

"The graves ftood tenantlefs, and the fheeted dead
"Did fqueak and gibber in the Roman ftreets.”

Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds,

MALONE.

In ranks, and fquadrons, and right forms of war,] So, in Tacitus. Hift. B. V. Vifæ per cælum concurrere acies, rutilantia arma, & fubito nubium igne collucere" &c. STEEVENS.

Again, in Marlowe's Tamburlaine, 1590:

"I will perfift a terror to the world;

Making the meteors that like armed men

"Are feen to march upon the towers of heaven,

"Run tilting round about the firmament,

"And break their burning launces in the ayre,

"For honour of my wondrous victories." MALONE.

5 The noife of battle hurtled in the air,] To hurtle is, I fuppofe, to clash, or move with violence and noife. So, in Selimus Emperor of the Turks, 1594:

"Here the Polonian he comes hurtling in,
"Under the conduct of fome foreign prince."

Horfes did neigh," and dying men did groan;
And ghosts did shriek, and squeal about the streets.
O Cæfar! these things are beyond all use,

And I do fear them.

CES.

What can be avoided, Whofe end is purpos'd by the mighty gods? Yet Cæfar fhall go forth: for these predictions Are to the world in general, as to Cæfar.

CAL. When beggars die, there are no comets feen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."

Again, ibid:

"To tofs the spear, and in a warlike gyre "To hurtle my sharp fword about head." Shakspeare ufes the word again in As You Like it:

66

in which hurtling,

my

"From miferable flumber I awak'd." STEEVENS. Again, in The Hiftory of Arthur, P. I. c. xiv: "They made both the Northumberland battailes to hurtle together." BowLE.

To burtle originally fignified to pub violently; and, as in fuch an action a loud noife was frequently made, it afterwards feems to have been used in the fenfe of to clash. So, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, v. 2618:

“And he him hurtleth with his hors adoun." MALONE. 6 Horfes did neigh,] Thus the fecond folio. Its blundering predeceffor reads:

Horfes do neigh. STEEVENS.

When beggars die, there are no comets feen;

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.] " Next to the fhadows and pretences of experience, (which have been met withall at large,) they feem to brag moft of the ftrange events which follow (for the most part,) after blazing ftarres; as if they were the fummoners of God to call princes to the feat of judgment. The fureft way to fhake their painted bulwarks of experience is, by making plaine, that neyther princes always dye when comets blaze, nor comets ever [i. e. always] when princes dye." Defenfative against the poison of fuppofed Prophecies, by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, 1583.

Again, ibid: Let us look into the nature of a comet, by the face of which it is fuppofed that the fame fhould portend plague, famine, warre, or the death of potentates." MALONE.