y because his
wisdom knew not its place; a right noble, just, heroic spirit bearing
directly athwart the virtues he worships. On the whole, it is not
wonderful that Brutus should have exclaimed, as he is said to have done,
that he had worshiped virtue and found her at last but a shade. So
worshiped, she may well prove a shade indeed! Admiration of the man's
character, reprobation of his proceedings,--which of these is the
stronger with us? And there is much the same irony in the representation
of Brutus as in that of Caesar; only the order of it is here reversed.
As if one should say, "O yes, yes! in the practical affairs of mankind
your charming wisdom of the closet will doubtless put to shame the
workings of mere practical insight and sagacity."

Shakespeare's exactness in the minutest details of character is well
shown in the speech already referred to; which is the utterance of a man
philosophizing most unphilosophically; as if the Academy should betake
itself to the stump, and this too without any sense of the incongruity.
Plutarch has a short passage which served as a hint, not indeed for the
matter, but for the style of that speech. "They do note," says he, "in
some of his epistles that he counterfeited that brief compendious manner
of speech of the Lacedaemonians. As, when the war was begun, he wrote
unto the Pergamenians in this sort: 'I understand you have given
Dolabella money: if you have done it willingly, you confess you have
offended me; if against your wills, show it then by giving me
willingly.'... These were Brutus' manner of letters, which were honoured
for their briefness." The speech in question is far enough indeed from
being a model of style either for oratory or anything else, but it is
finely characteristic; while its studied primness and epigrammatic
finish contrast most unfavorably with the frank-hearted yet artful
eloquence of Antony.

And what a rare significance attaches to the brief scene of Brutus and
his drowsy boy Lucius in camp a little before the catastrophe! There, in
the deep of the night, long after all the rest have lost themselves in
sleep, and when the anxieties of the issue are crowding upon him,--there
we have the earnest, thoughtful Brutus hungering intensely for the
repasts of treasured thought.

Look, Lucius, here's the book I sought for so;
I put it in the pocket of my gown. [IV, iii, 252, 253.]

What the man is, and where he ought to be, is all signified in these