The New Hudson Shakespeare · William Shakespeare
IX. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
As a whole, _Julius Cæsar_ is inferior to _Coriolanus_, but it abounds in scenes and passages fraught, with the highest virtue of Shakespeare's genius. Among these may be specially mentioned the second scene of the first act, where Cassius sows the seed of the conspiracy in Brutus's mind, warmed with such a wrappage of instigation as to assure its effective germination; also the first scene of the second act, unfolding the birth of the conspiracy, and winding up with the interview, so charged with domestic glory, of Brutus and Portia. The oration of Antony in Cæsar's funeral is such an interfusion of art and passion as realizes the very perfection of its kind. Adapted at once to the comprehension of the lowest mind and to the delectation of the highest, and running its pathos into the very quick of them that hear it, it tells with terrible effect on the people; and when it is done we feel that Cæsar's bleeding wounds are mightier than ever his genius and fortune were. The quarrel of Brutus and Cassius is deservedly celebrated. Dr. Johnson thought it "somewhat cold and unaffecting." Coleridge thought otherwise. See note, p. 123. But there is nothing in the play that is more divinely touched than the brief scene, already noticed, of Brutus and his boy Lucius--so gentle, so dutiful, so loving, so thoughtful and careful for his master, and yet himself no more conscious of his virtue than a flower of its fragrance. There is no more exquisite passage in all Shakespeare than that which tells of the boy's falling asleep in the midst of his song and exclaiming on being aroused, "The strings, my lord, are false."
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