we know no Principle of human Action but human Sentiment only, Cæsar, who did greater Things, and had greater Designs than the rest of the Romans, ought certainly to have outshin'd by many Degrees all the other Characters of his Tragedy. Cæsar ought particularly to have justified his Actions, and to have heighten'd his Character, by shewing that what he had done, he had done by Necessity; that the Romans had lost their Agrarian, lost their Rotation of Magistracy, and that consequently nothing but an empty Shadow of publick Liberty remain'd; that the Gracchi had made the last noble but unsuccessful Efforts for the restoring the Commonwealth, that they had fail'd for want of arbitrary irresistible Power, the Restoration of the Agrarian requiring too vast a Retrospect to be done without it; that the Government, when Cesar came to publick Affairs, was got into the Hands of a few, and that those few were factious, and were contending among themselves, and, if you will pardon so mean an Expression, scrambling as it were for Power; that Cesar was reduc'd to the Necessity of ruling, or himself obeying a Master; and that apprehending that another would exercise the supreme Command without that Clemency and Moderation which he did, he had rather chosen to rule than to obey. So that Cesar was faulty not so much in seizing upon the Sovereignty, which was become in a manner necessary, as in not re-establishing the Commonwealth, by restoring the Agrarian and the Rotation of Magistracies, after he had got absolute and uncontroulable Power. And if Cesar had seiz'd upon the Sovereignty only with a View of re-establishing Liberty, he had surpass'd all Mortals in Godlike Goodness as much as he did in the rest of his astonishing Qualities. I must confess, I do not remember that we have any Authority from the Roman Historians which may induce us to believe that Casar had any such Design. Nor if he had had any such View, could he, who was the most secret, the most prudent, and the most discerning of Men, have discover'd it

before his Parthian Expedition was over, for fear of utterly disobliging his Veterans. And Cæsar believ'd that Expedition necessary for the Honour and Interest of the State, and for his own Glory.

But of this we may be sure, that two of the most discerning of all the Romans, and who had the deepest Insight into the Soul of Cæsar, Sallust and Cicero, were not without Hopes that Cæsar would really re-establish Liberty, or else they would not have attack'd him upon it; the one in his Oration for Marcus Marcellus, the other in the Second Part of that little Treatise De Republica ordinanda, which is address'd to Cæsar. Hæc igitur tibi reliqua pars, says Cicero, Hic restat Actus, in hoc elaborandum est, ut Rempublicam constituas, eaque tu in primis composita, summa Tranquillitate & otio perfruare. Cicero therefore was not without Hope that Cæsar would re-establish the Commonwealth; and any one who attentively peruses that Oration of Cicero, will find that that Hope was reasonably grounded upon his knowledge of the great Qualities of Casar, his Clemency, his Beneficence, his admirable Discernment; and that avoidless Ruine in which the whole Empire would be soon involv'd, if Cæsar did not effect this. Sallust Sallust urges it still more home to him and with greater vehemence; he has recourse to every Motive that may be thought to be powerful over so great a Soul. He exhorts him by the Memory of his matchless Conquests, not to suffer the invincible Empire of the Roman People to be devour'd by Time, or to be torn in pieces by Discord; one of which would soon and infallibly happen, if Liberty was not restor❜d.

He introduces his Country and his Progenitors urging him in a noble Prosopopeia, by all the mighty Benefits which they had conferr'd upon him, with so little Pains of his own, not to deny them that just and easy Request of the Restoration of Liberty. He adjures him by those Furies which will eternally haunt his Soul upon his impious Refusal: He implores him by the foresight of

those dismal Calamities, that horrible Slaughter, those endless Wars, and that unbounded Devastation, which will certainly fall upon Mankind, if the Restoration of Liberty is prevented by his Death, or his incurable Sickness: And lastly, he entreats him by his Thirst of immortal Glory, that Glory in which he now has Rivals, if he has not Equals; but which, if he re-establishes Liberty, will be acknowledg'd by consenting Nations to have neither Equal nor Second.

I am apt to believe that if Shakespear had been acquainted with all this, we had had from him quite another Character of Cæsar than that which we now find in him. He might then have given us a Scene something like that which Corneille has so happily us'd in his Cinna; something like that which really happen'd between Augustus, Mecenas, and Agrippa. He might then have introduc'd Cæsar consulting Cicero on the one side, and on the other Anthony, whether he should retain that absolute Sovereignty which he had acquir'd by his Victory, or whether he should re-establish and immortalize Liberty. That would have been a Scene which might have employ'd the finest Art and the utmost force of a Writer. That had been a Scene in which all the great Qualities of Casar might have been display'd. I will not pretend to determine here how that Scene might have been turn'd; and what I have already said on this Subject, has been spoke with the utmost Caution and Diffidence. But this I will venture to say, that if that Scene had been manag'd so, as, by the powerful Motives employ'd in it, to have shaken the Soul of Casar, and to have left room for the least Hope, for the least Doubt, that Cesar would have re-establish'd Liberty, after his Parthian Expedition; and if this Conversation had been kept secret till the Death of Cesar, and then had been discover'd by Anthony; then had Cæsar fall'n, so belov'd and lamented by the Roman People, so pitied and so bewail'd even by the Conspirators themselves, as never Man fell. Then there would have been a Catastrophe

the most dreadful and the most deplorable that ever was beheld upon the Tragick Stage. Then had we seen the noblest of the Conspirators cursing their temerarious Act, and the most apprehensive of them in dreadful expectation of those horrible Calamities which fell upon the Romans after the Death of Cæsar. But, Sir, when I write this to you, I write it with the utmost Deference to the extraordinary Judgment of that great Man who some Years ago, I hear, alter'd the Julius Cæsar. And I make no doubt but that his fine Discernment and the rest of his great Qualities have amply supply'd the Defects which are found in the Character of Shakespear's Cæsar.

I should here answer an Argument, by which some People pretend to prove, and especially those with whom I lately convers'd, that Shakespear was conversant with the Ancients. But besides that the Post is about to be gone, I am heartily tir'd with what I have already writ, and so doubtless are you; I shall therefore defer the rest to the next opportunity, and remain

Your, &c.

LETTER III.

Feb. 8.

SIR, I COME now to the main Argument, which some People urge to prove that Shakespear was conversant with the Ancients. For there is, say they, among Shakespear's Plays, one call'd The Comedy of Errors, which is undeniably an Imitation of the Menechmi of Plautus. Now Shakespear, say they, being conversant with Plautus, it undeniably follows that he was acquainted with the Ancients; because no Roman Author could be hard to him who had conquer'd Plautus. To which I answer, that the Errors which we have mention'd above are to be accounted for no

other way but by the want of knowing the Ancients, or by downright want of Capacity. But nothing can be more absurd or more unjust than to impute it to want of Capacity. For the very Sentiments of Shakespear alone are sufficient to shew that he had a great Understanding: And therefore we must account some other way for his Imitation of the Menechmi. I remember to have seen, among the Translations of Ovid's Epistles printed by Mr. Tonson, an Imitation of that from Enone to Paris, which Mr. Dryden tells us in his Preface to those Epistles was imitated by one of the Fair Sex who understood no Latin, but that she had done enough to make those blush who understood. it the best. There are at this day several Translators, who, as Hudibrass has it,

Translate from Languages of which
They understand no part of Speech.

I will not affirm that of Shakespear; I believe he was able to do what Pedants call construe, but that he was able to read Plautus without Pain and Difficulty I can never believe. Now I appeal to you, Sir, what time he had between his Writing and his Acting, to read any thing that could not be read with Ease and Pleasure. We see that our Adversaries themselves acknowledge, that if Shakespear was able to read Plautus with Ease, nothing in Latinity could be hard to him. How comes it to pass then, that he has given us no Proofs of his familiar Acquaintance with the Ancients, but this Imitation of the Menechmi, and a Version of two Epistles of Ovid? How comes it that he had never read Horace, of a superiour Merit to either, and particularly his Epistle to the Piso's, which so much concern'd his Art? Or if he had read that Epistle, how comes it that in his Troylus and Cressida [we must observe by the way, that when Shakespear wrote that Play, Ben Johnson had not as yet translated that Epistle] he runs counter to the Instructions which