f orators; and his own immortal work, his History of the
Gallic Campaign and the Civil War, is a literary monument which
distinguishes him among all other commanders. As a speaker and a
writer he had no superior among his contemporaries. His varied talents
are further shown by his numerous literary labours, of which some
small notices remain. His views were large and enlightened, his
schemes were vast and boundless. His genius deserved a better sphere
than the degenerate republic in which he lived. But the power which he
acquired did not die with him. A youth of tender age succeeded to the
name and the inheritance of Caesar, and by his great talents and a long
career of wonderful success consolidated that Monarchy which we call
the Roman Empire.

Shakspere has founded his play of Julius Caesar on Plutarch's Life of
Caesar and the Lives of Brutus and Antonius. The passages in North's
version which he has more particularly turned to his purpose are
collected in Mr. Knight's edition of Shakspere (8vo. edition).
Shakspere has three Roman plays, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony
and Cleopatra. As a drama the first is the best. The play of Julius
Caesar has been estimated very differently by different critics. Mr.
Knight has many valuable remarks on these Roman plays (vol. xi.), and
he has shown the way, as he conceives, in which they should be viewed.
The Julius Caesar is so constructed as to show the usurpation and death
of Caesar, and the fall of Brutus, the chief of the assassins, at the
battle of Philippi. With Brutus the hopes of his party fell. The play
should therefore rather be entitled Marcus Brutus than Julius Caesar;
and it is deficient in that unity without which no great dramatic
effect can be produced. The name and the fame of Caesar,

the noblest man,
That ever lived in the tide of time,

obscure the meaner talents of Brutus; and that death which in Plutarch
forms a truly tragical catastrophe, here occurs in the middle of the
action, which would appropriately terminate with it. But we have to
follow the historical course of events; we follow Brutus to his fate
at the battle of Philippi, and witness the vengeance of which Caesar's
ghost forewarns the false friends. Shakspere may have meant to
represent Brutus as the last of the Romans, and the Republic as dying
with him; but he also represents him as haunted by the ghost of his
murdered benefactor, and losing heart before the fi