g either
withheld from the scene or thrown so far into the background that the
proper effect of them is lost.

Yet we have ample proof that Shakespeare understood Caesar thoroughly,
and that he regarded him as "the noblest man that ever lived in the tide
of times." For example, in _Hamlet_, he makes Horatio, who is one of his
calmest and most right-thinking characters, speak of him as "the
mightiest Julius." In _Antony and Cleopatra_, again, the heroine is made
to describe him as "broad-fronted Caesar"; and in _King Richard the
Third_ the young Prince utters these lines:

That Julius Caesar was a famous man:
With what his valour did enrich his wit,
His wit set down to make his valour live:
Death makes no conquest of this conqueror. [III, i, 84-87.]

In fact, we need not go beyond Shakespeare to gather that Julius
Caesar's was the deepest, the most versatile, and the most multitudinous
head that ever figured in the political affairs of mankind.

Indeed, it is clear from this play itself that Shakespeare did not
proceed at all from ignorance or misconception of the man. For it is
remarkable that, though Caesar delivers himself so out of character, yet
others, both foes and friends, deliver him much nearer the truth; so
that, while we see almost nothing of him directly, we nevertheless get,
upon the whole, a just reflection of him. Especially in the marvelous
speeches of Antony and in the later events of the drama, both his inward
greatness and his right of mastership over the Roman world are fully
vindicated. For in the play as in the history, Caesar's blood hastens
and cements the empire which the conspirators thought to prevent. They
soon find that in the popular sympathies, and even in their own dumb
remorses, he has "left behind powers that will work for him." He proves,
indeed, far mightier in death than in life; as if his spirit were become
at once the guardian angel of his cause and an avenging angel to his
foes.

And so it was in fact. Nothing did so much to set the people in love
with royalty, both name and thing, as the reflection that their beloved
Caesar, the greatest of their national heroes, the crown and
consummation of Roman genius and character, had been murdered for
aspiring to it. Thus their hereditary aversion to kingship was all
subdued by the remembrance of how and why their Caesar fell; and they
who, before, would have plucked out his heart rather than he should wear
a crown, would no