9.]

and again, a little later, when Brutus says of Antony, "I know that we
shall have him well to friend." Not indeed that the men themselves
thought any irony in those speeches: it was natural, no doubt, that they
should utter such things in all seriousness; but what they say is
interpreted into irony by the subsequent events. And when such a
shallow idealist as Brutus is made to overtop and outshine the greatest
practical genius the world ever saw, what is it but a refined and
subtile irony at work on a much larger scale, and diffusing itself,
secretly, it may be, but not the less vitally, into the texture? It was
not the frog that thought irony, when he tried to make himself as big as
the ox; but there was a pretty decided spice of irony in the mind that
conceived the fable.

It is to be noted further that Brutus uniformly speaks of Caesar with
respect, almost indeed with admiration. It is his ambition, not his
greatness, that Brutus resents; the thought that his own consequence is
impaired by Caesar's elevation having no influence with him. With
Cassius, on the contrary, impatience of his superiority is the ruling
motive: he is all the while thinking of the disparagement he suffers by
Caesar's exaltation.

This man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature, and must bend his body
If Caesar carelessly but nod on him. [I, ii, 115-118.]

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs. [I, ii, 135-137.]

Thus he overflows with mocking comparisons, and finds his pastime in
flouting at Caesar as having managed by a sham heroism to hoodwink the
world.

And yet Shakespeare makes Caesar characterize himself very much as
Cassius, in his splenetic temper, describes him. Caesar gods it in his
talk, as if on purpose to approve the style in which Cassius mockingly
gods him. This, taken by itself, would look as if the dramatist sided
with Cassius; yet one can hardly help feeling that he sympathized rather
in Antony's great oration. And the sequel, as we have seen, justifies
Antony's opinion of Caesar. The subsequent course of things has the
effect of inverting the mockery of Cassius against himself.

The final issue of the conspiracy, as represented by Shakespeare, is a
pretty conclusive argument of the blunder, not to say the crime, of its
authors. Caesar, dead, tears them and their cause all to pieces. In
eff