down. Abandoning the expedition, he returns with the Volscians to their capital, but only to perish in an outbreak occasioned by his fickle conduct. No man is so great that he can afford to live to himself alone; the most brilliant gifts may only procure their owner's ruin, unless, united with them, be the saving grace of charity. Such is the moral of Coriolanus.

If the purpose of Shakspeare's writings were to illustrate political principles, we should expect to find in Julius Cæsar a discussion of the rival claims of Republicanism and Imperialism; for this was the issue involved in the conflicts which it describes. We do also find in the play indications of this fact. Cæsar is an impersonation of arbitrary power, not very worthily conceived, falling far beneath the Julius Cæsar of actual history. Brutus, on the other hand, is the embodiment of republican principles: he is sincerely attached to the tradition of the past and cannot endure to see his country enslaved to Cæsar's ambition. But Shakspeare is far less concerned about the rightness and wrongness of the political creed of Brutus than with the loyalty of his hero to what he believes. Brutus is one of the prime favourites of the dramatist; next to Henry the Fifth, he may be called his ideal of manhood; but it is not with his political principles but with the purity and completeness of his character as a man that Shakspeare is concerned.

If there is any political principle which may be said

to be embodied in this play, it is neither Republicanism nor Imperialism, but what may be called the Destiny of the State. Political institutions are neither good nor bad in themselves: they are only good or bad according to circumstances. They are not intended to last forever, but are subject to the law of mutability, which plays so vast a part in human things. The Roman state began with kings and passed on through aristocracy and republicanism to imperialism. Coriolanus's life was a desperate attempt to stop this evolution at an early stage and keep things forever as they had been; but the law at the heart of things is mightier than the will of any individual; and accordingly the evolution proceeded, while Coriolanus, strong as he was, was swept aside.1 In the same way, when the period depicted in the other play had come, the republican stage of the state, having done its work, was ready to be superseded. It had raised problems which it could not solve and created forces which it could not control. One strong man was needed to take all the threads into his hand and give to Rome's far-extended conquests the unity which the republic could not impress on the vanquished world. Julius

1 Whose course will on

The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs
Of more strong link asunder than can ever
Appear in your impediment.

-Act i. Scene 1.

Cæsar seemed to be the man; but Brutus threw himself in the way, resolved to turn back the wheels of change. He succeeded so far as to thwart the ambition of Cæsar; but he could not alter the course of destiny: the wheels which he attempted to stop passed over himself and crushed him, as they went.

His motives are of the highest, but his enterprise contains within itself from the beginning the seeds of failure. More than he is aware, he is the tool of Cassius, his fellow-conspirator, whose motives are far from being equally pure. Cassius is inflamed not

with zeal for his country's freedom, but with envy that anyone should be greater than himself; as Caesar threatens to be. Of Cæsar he says:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus; and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs, and peep about

To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

Cæsar had noted the envy of this man and was afraid of it :

Let me have about me men that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond Cassius hath a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

Would he were fatter!—but I fear him not;
Yet, if my name were liable to fear,

I do not know the man I should avoid

So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much,

He is a great observer, and he looks

Quite through the deeds of men; he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves;
And therefore are they very dangerous.

When Cæsar was murdered, Cassius wished Antony to be sacrificed too, but Brutus would not hear of it: he was too noble to make use of the means necessary to accomplish the end he had in view. Those who rallied to his standard were too like himself-dreamy and visionary, men of the closet rather than of the camp, as is indicated by a poet rushing into the general's tent with his advice on the eve of battle. Worst of all, the cause, which was holy in the eyes of Brutus, had at the outset been stained with murder; and this disturbed his conscience, as is indicated by the spectre of the assassinated Cæsar, which appeared in his tent and warned him that he would meet him again at Philippi. The attempt to restore the republic failed,

and Brutus perished along with the cause of which he had constituted himself the champion. The reasons of his failure are indicated in detail in the play; but the true cause is rather in the atmosphere than actually expressed it was that the hour had come.

If the political motive can be admitted only in a modified sense in Coriolanus and Julius Cæsar, the psychological interest comes clearly into predominance in Antony and Cleopatra. The political movement is, indeed, still going on: the republic is passing away, and its enormous possessions are steadily and inevitably accumulating in the hands of Octavius, who, though not the ablest of the competitors for them, yet, by his self-control and perseverance, proved himself to be the man whom the times required. From another point of view this play may be held to illustrate another momentous feature of the age-namely, how Rome, though she conquered the East, was herself conquered by Eastern magnificence and luxury. But it is the great character of Antony which fascinates Shakspeare; and on its delineation he expends an almost superhuman power.

Antony already plays a leading part in the play of Julius Cæsar. Reference has been made to the extraordinary speech with which he detached the populace of Rome from the cause of the conspirators;