pily verified in the
present day. What is an immense army, in which the lust of plunder has
quenched all the duties of the citizen, other than a horde of robbers, or
differenced only as fiends are from ordinarily reprobate men? Caesar
supported, and was supported by, such as these;--and even so Buonaparte in
our days.

I know no part of Shakespeare that more impresses on me the belief of his
genius being superhuman, than this scene between Brutus and Cassius. In
the Gnostic heresy it might have been credited with less absurdity than
most of their dogmas, that the Supreme had employed him to create,
previously to his function of representing, characters.

"Antony And Cleopatra."

Shakespeare can be complimented only by comparison with himself: all other
eulogies are either heterogeneous, as when they are in reference to
Spenser or Milton; or they are flat truisms, as when he is gravely
preferred to Corneille, Racine, or even his own immediate successors,
Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and the rest. The highest praise, or
rather form of praise, of this play, which I can offer in my own mind, is
the doubt which the perusal always occasions in me, whether the _Antony
and Cleopatra_ is not, in all exhibitions of a giant power in its strength
and vigour of maturity, a formidable rival of _Macbeth_, _Lear_, _Hamlet_,
and _Othello_. _Feliciter audax_ is the motto for its style comparatively
with that of Shakespeare's other works, even as it is the general motto of
all his works compared with those of other poets. Be it remembered, too,
that this happy valiancy of style is but the representative and result of
all the material excellencies so expressed.

This play should be perused in mental contrast with _Romeo and Juliet_;--as
the love of passion and appetite opposed to the love of affection and
instinct. But the art displayed in the character of Cleopatra is profound;
in this, especially, that the sense of criminality in her passion is
lessened by our insight into its depth and energy, at the very moment that
we cannot but perceive that the passion itself springs out of the habitual
craving of a licentious nature, and that it is supported and reinforced by
voluntary stimulus and sought-for associations, instead of blossoming out
of spontaneous emotion.

Of all Shakespeare's historical plays, _Antony and Cleopatra_ is by far
the most wonderful. There is not one in which he has followed history so
minutely, and ye