A just estimate of the first of all the Romans is not a difficult task.  We know him from the evidence of his contemporaries, both friends and enemies.  The devoted attachment of his true friends is beyond doubt; and his enemies could not deny his exalted talents.  Cicero, who has in various places heaped on him every term of abuse that his copious storehouse contained, does not refuse his testimony to the great abilities and generous character of Caesar.  Drumann (Geschichte Roms, Julii) has given an elaborate examination of Caesar’s character.  His faults and his vices belonged to his age, and he had them in common with nearly all his contemporaries.  His most striking virtues, his magnanimity, his generosity, his mercy to the vanquished, distinguished him among all the Romans of his period.  Caesar was a combination of bodily activity, intellectual power, of literary acquirements, and administrative talent that has seldom appeared.  As a soldier he was not inferior in courage and endurance to the hardiest veteran of his legions; and his military ability places him in the first rank of commanders who have contended with and overcome almost insurmountable obstacles.  Cicero ranks him in the first class of orators; and his own immortal work, his History of the Gallic Campaign and the Civil War, is a literary monument which distinguishes him among all other commanders.  As a speaker and a writer he had no superior among his contemporaries.  His varied talents are further shown by his numerous literary labours, of which some small notices remain.  His views were large and enlightened, his schemes were vast and boundless.  His genius deserved a better sphere than the degenerate republic in which he lived.  But the power which he acquired did not die with him.  A youth of tender age succeeded to the name and the inheritance of Caesar, and by his great talents and a long career of wonderful success consolidated that Monarchy which we call the Roman Empire.

Shakspere has founded his play of Julius Caesar on Plutarch’s Life of Caesar and the Lives of Brutus and Antonius.  The passages in North’s version which he has more particularly turned to his purpose are collected in Mr. Knight’s edition of Shakspere (8vo. edition).  Shakspere has three Roman plays, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra.  As a drama the first is the best.  The play of Julius Caesar has been estimated very differently by different critics.  Mr. Knight has many valuable remarks on these Roman plays (vol. xi.), and he has shown the way, as he conceives, in which they should be viewed.  The Julius Caesar is so constructed as to show the usurpation and death of Caesar, and the fall of Brutus, the chief of the assassins, at the battle of Philippi.  With Brutus the hopes of his party fell.  The play should therefore rather be entitled Marcus Brutus than Julius Caesar; and it is deficient in that unity without which no great dramatic effect can be produced.  The name and the fame of Caesar,