His care for the lad's comfort, at a time when his own life
is striking the supreme hour, is exquisitely pathetic. Then come his
farewell to Cassius and his lament over Cassius' body; then the second
fight and the nobly generous words that hold in them, as flowers their
perfume, all Shakespeare's sweetness of nature:
"My heart doth joy, that yet in all my life
I found no man, but he was true to me."
And then night hangs upon the weary, sleepless eyes, and we are all
ready to echo Antony's marvellous valediction:
"This was the noblest Roman of them all;
* * * * * *
His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, 'This was a man!'"
But this Brutus was no murderer, no conspirator, no narrow republican
fanatic, but simply gentle Shakespeare discovering to us his own sad
heart and the sweetness which suffering had called forth in him.
CHAPTER VII
DRAMAS OF REVENGE AND JEALOUSY: HAMLET.
"A beautiful, pure and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve
which makes the hero, sinks beneath a burden which it can neither bear
nor throw off; every duty is holy to him,--this too hard.
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