Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible.

Enter CINNA.

CASCA. Stand close awhile, for here comes one in haste.

CAS. 'Tis Cinna, I do know him by his gait;

He is a friend. -Cinna, where haste you so?
CIN. To find out you: Who's that? Metellus
Cimber?

CAS. No, it is Casca; one incorporate

To our attempts. Am I not staid for, Cinna?
CIN. I am glad on't. What a fearful night is

this?

There's two or three of us have seen strange sights.
CAS. Am I not staid for, Cinna? Tell me.
CIN.

You are. O, Cassius, if you could but win
The noble Brutus to our party-

Yes,

CAS. Be you content: Good Cinna, take this

paper,

And look you lay it in the prætor's chair,

Where Brutus may but find it; and throw this
In at his window: set this up with wax
Upon old Brutus' statue: all this done,
Repair to Pompey's porch, where you shall find us.
Is Decius Brutus, and Trebonius, there?

CIN. All but Metellus Cimber; and he's gone
To seek you at your house. Well, I will hie,
And so bestow these papers as you bade me.
CAS. That done, repair to Pompey's theatre.
[Exit CINNA
Come, Casca, you and I will, yet, ere day,
See Brutus at his house: three parts of him
Is ours already; and the man entire,

Upon the next encounter, yields him ours.

CASCA. O, he sits high, in all the people's hearts: And that, which would appear offence in us,

His countenance, like richest alchymy,

Will change to virtue, and to worthiness.

CAS. Him, and his worth, and our great need of him,

You have right well conceited. Let us go,

For it is after midnight; and, ere day,

We will awake him, and be sure of him. [Exeunt.

ACT II. SCENE I.

The Same. BRUTUS'S Orchard".

Enter BRUTUS.

BRU. What, Lucius! ho!

I cannot, by the progress of the stars,

6

Brutus's ORCHARD.] The modern editors read garden, but orchard seems anciently to have had the same meaning.

STEEVENS.

That these two words were anciently synonymous, appears from a line in this play:

he hath left you all his walks,

"His private arbours, and new planted orchards,
"On this side Tyber."

In Sir T. North's translation of Plutarch, the passage which Shakspeare has here copied, stands thus: "He left his gardens and arbours unto the people, which he had on this side of the river Tyber." MALONE.

Orchard was anciently written hort-yard; hence its original meaning is obvious. HENLEY.

By the following quotation, however, it will appear that these words had in the days of Shakspeare acquired a distinct meaning. "It shall be good to have understanding of the ground where ye do plant either orchard or garden with fruite." A Booke of the Arte and Maner howe to plant and graffe all Sortes of Trees, &c. 1574, 4to.-And when Justice Shallow invites Falstaff to see his orchard, where they are to eat a "last year's pippin of his own graffing," he certainly uses the word in its present acceptation.. VOL. XII.

D

Give guess how near to day.-Lucius, I say!-
I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly.-
When, Lucius, when?? Awake, I say: What Lu-
cius!

Enter LUCIUS.

Luc. Call'd you, my lord?

BRU. Get me a taper in my study, Lucius: When it is lighted, come and call me here.

Luc. I will, my lord.

[Exit. BRU. It must be by his death: and, for my part,

I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general. He would be crown'd:-
How that might change his nature, there's the
question.

It is the bright day, that brings forth the adder;
And that craves wary walking. Crown him?-
That ;-

And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
Remorse from power: And, to speak truth of
Cæsar,

Leland also, in his Itinerary, distinguishes them: "At Morle in Derbyshire (says he) there is as much pleasure of orchards of great variety of frute, and fair made walks, and gardens, as in any place of Lancashire." HOLT WHITE.

7 WHEN, Lucius, WHEN?] This was a common expression of impatience in Shakspeare's time. So, Richard II. Act I. Sc. I.: "When Harry? when?" MALONE.

8 REMORSE from power:] Remorse, for mercy. WARBURTON. Remorse (says Mr. Heath) signifies the conscious uneasiness arising from a sense of having done wrong; to extinguish which feeling, nothing has so great a tendency as absolute uncontrouled power.

I think Warburton right. JOHNSON.

Remorse is pity, tenderness; and has twice occurred in that sense in Measure for Measure. See vol. ix. p. 60, and p. 183. The same word occurs in Othello, and several other of our author's dramas, with the same signification. STEEVENS.

I have not known when his affections sway'd
More than his reason. But 'tis a common proof",
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face:
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back',
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees 2
By which he did ascend: So Cæsar may;
Then, lest he may, prevent.

quarrel

And, since the

Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these, and these extremities:
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg,
Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mis-
chievous;

And kill him in the shell.

9-common proof,] Common experiment. JOHNSON. Common proof means a matter proved by common experience. With great deference to Johnson, I cannot think that the word experiment will bear that meaning. M. MASON.

'But when he once attains the utmost round,

He then unto the ladder turns his back, &c.] So, in Daniel's Civil Wars, 1602:

2

"The aspirer once attain'd unto the top,

"Cuts off those means by which himself got up:
"And with a harder hand, and straighter rein,
"Doth curb that looseness he did find before :

"Doubting the occasion like might serve again;

His own example makes him fear the more." MALone. base degrees] Low steps. JOHNSON.

So, in Ben Jonson's Sejanus:

3

"Whom when he saw lie spread on the degrees."

STEEVENS.

as his kind,] According to his nature. JOHNSON.

So, in Antony and Cleopatra: " You must think this, look you, [i. e. serpent] will do his kind." STEEVENS. Perhaps rather, as all those of his kind, that is, nature.

the worm

"As his kind" does not mean,

66

MALONE.

according to his nature," as Johnson asserts, but "like the rest of his species." M. MASON.

Re-enter Lucius.

Luc. The taper burneth in your closet, sir. Searching the window for a flint, I found This paper, thus seal'd up; and, I am sure, It did not lie there, when I went to bed.

BRU. Get you to bed again, it is not day. Is not to-morrow, boy, the ides of March? Luc. I know not, sir.

BRU. Look in the calendar, and bring me word. Luc. I will, sir.

[Exit. BRU. The exhalations, whizzing in the air, Give so much light, that I may read by them.

[Opens the Letter, and reads.
Brutus, thou sleep'st; awake, and see thyself.
Shall Rome, &c. Speak, strike, redress!
Brutus, thou sleep'st; awake,

Such instigations have been often dropp'd
Where I have took them up.

Shall Rome, &c. Thus must I piece it out;
Shall Rome stand under one man's awe? What!
Rome !

My ancestors did from the streets of Rome

4 Is not to-morrow, boy, the IDES of MARCH?] [Old copythe first of March.] We should read ides: for we can never suppose the speaker to have lost fourteen days in his account. He is here plainly ruminating on what the Soothsayer told Cæsar [Act I. Sc. II.] in his presence. ["-Beware the ides of March."] The boy comes back and says, Sir, March is wasted fourteen days." So that the morrow was the ides of March, as he supposed. For March, May, July, and October, had six nones each, so that the fifteenth of March was the ides of that month. WARBURTON.

66

The correction was made by Mr. Theobald. The error must have been that of a transcriber or printer; for our author without any minute calculation might have found the ides, nones, and kalends, opposite the respective days of the month, in the Almanacks of the time. In Hopton's Concordancie of Yeares, 1616, now before me, opposite to the fifteenth of March is printed Idus. MALONE.