crumble away, which is the special aspect of the period that the artist wished to present. Ronsard, in his "Préface sur la Franciade," after showing how the historian follows the actual fact at every step, while the poet devotes himself to what is possible and likely to be true, adds this excellent remark:

Many people think that the historian and the poet pursue the same calling, but this is a great mistake, for they are two workmen who have nothing in common, except that neither the one nor the other may ever go contrary to the truth of things."

So that upon both poetry and history, though aiming at different sides of truth, it is equally incumbent to be true. And indeed, in more than one sense poetic truth may be said to have the superiority over historical truth :

"The difference between the historian and the poet," says Aristotle, "is not that one speaks in verse and the other in prose. The real distinction is, that the one relates what has been, the other what might have been. On this account poetry is more philosophical and a more excellent thing than history, for poetry is conversant with the universal, history with the particular."

Aristotle is right, poetry is more general than history,. and in this sense is more philosophical. But not in this sense only, for poetry has the same superiority over history that ideas have over facts, that mind has over matter, and that the human reason and conscience have over the blind course of events.

This thought has been most eloquently developed by Bacon, who, not content with saying with Aristotle that poetry relates what might have happened, boldly declares. that it relates what ought to have happened. Our introduction to the study of Shakespeare's Roman tragedies may fitly close with this magnificent passage from the "Advancement of Learning" (The Second Book, iv. § 2):

"The use of this feigned history (as he calls poetry) hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points

wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical. Because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions, not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution and more according to revealed providence. . . . And therefore poesy was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind into the nature of things."

...

CHAPTER XVII.

JULIUS CÆSAR.

NONE of Shakespeare's three Roman tragedies would appear to have been printed before the famous folio of 1623, the first complete edition of his plays. There are sufficiently cogent reasons for thinking that "Julius Cæsar" was written at latest in 1601, which is the date of Weever's "Mirror of Martyrs," a forgotten poem recently discovered by Mr. Halliwell, which in all probability alludes to the most famous scene of "Julius Cæsar" in the lines :

"The many-headed multitude were drawne

By Brutus' speech, that Cæsar was ambitious;
When eloquent Mark Antonie had showne

His vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious?"

And this discovery confirms an inference that had already been drawn by Payne Collier from Drayton's poem of the "Barons' Wars" (published in 1603), in which a passage occurs apparently inspired by the lines in which Mark Antony describes the character of Brutus (Act V., Sc. 5). The date assigned to the two other tragedies is that of about seven or eight years later.

But even if external evidence were wanting in support of their relative order in point of time, it would be abundantly apparent from a comparison of the plays

themselves, that "Julius Cæsar" must have been written a considerable time before the others. Shakespeare's language grew more and more concise, rich, and full. The style of "Julius Cæsar" is characterized by simplicity and breadth of touch, and each sentence is clear, easy, and flowing, with the thought clothed in perfect and adequate expression: the lines are as limpid as those of "Romeo and Juliet," but without their remains of rhyme and Italian conceits. Of all Shakespeare's works, none has greater purity of verse or transparent fluency. It belongs to what may be called Shakespeare's second and most perfect style. "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus," on the contrary, belong to his later period, in which his works abound in metaphors, and in abrupt and elliptical expressions, to such an extent that their meaning is in places difficult to make out.

These questions of date are not without their interest: it is not a matter of indifference to know that "Julius Cæsar" is closely connected with "Hamlet" in point of time. In the latter play, which was published in its final form in 1604, the poet's imagination is still full of the thought of Cæsar; as, for instance, in the first scene, in which, after the ghost has vanished, Horatio says:

:

"A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.

In the most high and paling state of Rome,

A little ere the mightiest Julius fell

The graves stood tenant less, and the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets," etc.

Again, in Act III., Sc. 2, Polonius boasts of how well he acted in the university:

"Pol. I did enact Julius Cæsar; I was killed in the Capitol: Brutus killed me;"

not to mention Hamlet's moralizing in the churchyard

on the dust of Alexander and of "Imperial Cæsar." But "Hamlet" and "Julius Cæsar" stand to each other in a far closer relationship than that implied by stray reminiscences and details; they belong to the same current of reflections and ideas, and the poet's thought in each lies in the same direction. In the earlier one, Shakespeare has drawn a noble nature grappling with a duty enforced in no actual and binding category, and which, from its doubtful and uncertain character, deeply troubles the conscience of the hero, who questions and considers and weighs it over and over again: Brutus has a passionate love for justice, but is led astray by the exacting demands of a too delicate and lofty soul. In the other tragedy, the same note is again struck, but with this considerable variation, that with Hamlet, although the duty is more imperious, yet his uncertainty is greater he, too, thirsts after the Ideal, but with him the generous instincts of the heart are mingled with all the graceful refinements and superb disgusts, all the baffling turns, of an over-subtle brain, and the end of his hesitations is a rapid moral decadence. Brutus, after his deliberation, acts resolutely; he greatly errs, but he preserves our esteem and sympathy to the end: Hamlet -always deliberating errs in a far graver manner by never acting at all, and our respect for him finally goes. Both of them are men of meditative and studious nature, called by circumstances to a line of action repugnant to their whole character. But of this deep inner affinity that unites "Hamlet" with "Julius Cæsar," there is none between "Julius Cæsar" and the two later Roman tragedies. Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus," both written about the same time, proceed from an entirely new order of thoughts and reflections, their motive being the portrayal of selfishness, which in the one case presents itself in an amiable, open, and attractive character, and in the other, in a proud and reserved