Contaminate our fingers with base bribes ?
And sell the mighty space of our large honors,
For so much trash as may be grasped thus ?
I had rather be a dog and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman.

Cas. Brutus, bay not me:
I'll not endure it. You forget yourself
To hedge me in: I am a soldier,
Older in practice, abler than yourself,
To make conditions.

Bru. Go to! You are not, Cassius.
Cas. I am.

Bru. I say you are not.

Cas Urge me no more: I shall forget myself:
Have mind upon your health: tempt me no farther.
Bru. Away, slight man!
Cas. Is't possible!

Bru. Hear me, for I will speak.

Must I give way and room to your rash choler?
Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?

Cas. Must I endure all this!

Bru. All this! Ay, more. Fret till your proud heart break;

Go, show your slaves how choleric you are,
And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge?
Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch
Under your testy humor!

You shall digest the venom of your spleen,
Though it do split you; for, from this day forth,
I'll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter,
When you are waspish.

Cas. Is it come to this?

Bru. You say you are a better soldier;
Let it appear so; make your vaunting true,
And it shall please me well. For my own part

I shall be glad to learn of noblemen.

Cas. You wrong me every way; you wrong me Brutus; I said an elder soldier, not a better.

Did I say better?

Bru. If you did I care not.

Cas. When Cesar liv'd he durst not thus have mov’d mé.

Bru. Peace peace; you durst not so have tempted him. Cas. I durst not!

Bru. No.

Cas. What! durst not tempt him!

Bru. For your life you durst not.

Cas. Do not presume too much upon my love. I may do that I shall be sorry

for.

Bru. You have done that you should be sorry for.
There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats;
For I am arm'd so strong in honesty,
That they pass by me as the idle wind,
Which I respect not. I did send to you
For certain sums of gold, which you denied me;
I had rather coin my heart,

And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring
From the hard hands of peasants, their vile trash,
By any indirection. I did send

To you for gold to pay my legions;

Which you denied me. Was that done like Cassius ? Should I have answer'd Caius Cassius so ?

When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous,
To lock such rascal counters from his friends,
Be ready, Gods, with all your thunderbolts,
Dash him in pieces.

Cas. I denied you not.

Bru. You did.

Cas. I did not; he was but a fool

That brought my answer back. Brutus hath riv'd my

heart.

A friend should bear a friend's infirmities ;

But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.
Bru. I do not. Still you practise them on me.
Cas. You love me not.

Bru. I do not like your faults.

Cas. A friendly eye could never see such faults. Bru. A flatterer's would not, though they did appear As huge as high Olympus.

Cas. Come Anthony! And young Octavius, come! Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius: For Cassius is weary of the world

Hated by one he loves; brav'd by his brother;
Check'd like a bondman; all his faults observ'd,
Set in a note book, learn'd and conn'd by rote
To cast into my teeth. There is my dagger,
And here my naked breast- -within, a heart
Dearer than Plutus' mine, richer than gold;
If that thou need'st a Roman's take it forth:
I that denied thee gold will give my heart.
/ Strike as thou didst at Cesar; for I know,

When thou didst hate him worst, thou lov'st him better
Than ever thou lov'st Cassius.

Bru. Sheath your dagger,

Be

angry when you will, it shall have scope,
Do what you will, dishonor shall be humor.
O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb,
That carries anger as the flint bears fire;
Who much enforc'd, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again.

Cas. Hath Cassius lived

To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus,
When grief and blood ill temper'd vexeth him!

Bru. When I spoke that, I was ill temper'd too.
Cas. Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.
Bru. And my heart too.

(Embracing.)

Cas. O Brutus !

Bru. What's the matter?

Cas. Have you not love enough to bear with me, When the rash humor which

my mother gave me,

Makes me forgetful?

Bru. Yes, Cassius; and from henceforth, When you are over earnest with your Brutus, He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so.

II-SPEECHES AND SOLILOQUIES.

I.-Hamlet's Advice to the Players.
TRAGEDY OF HAMLET.

SPEAK the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you; trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier had spoken my lines. And do not saw the air too

much with your hands; but use all gently: For in the very, torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, perriwig pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. Pray you avoid it.

Be not too tame, neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing; whose end is--to hold as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy of, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of one of which must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh! There be players that have seen play and heard others praise, and that highly, that, neither having the accent of Christian, nor the gait of Christian, pagan nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

II-Douglas' Account of himself
TRAGEDY OF DOUGLAS.

My name is Norval. On the Grampian hills
My father feeds his flocks; a frugal swain,
Whose consta cares were to increase his store,
And keep his only son myself at home.
For I had heard of battles, and I long'd
To follow to the field some warlike lord;
And heaven soon granted what my sire denied.
This moon, which rose last night, round as my shield,
Had not yet fill'd her horns, when by her light,
A band of fierce barbarians, from the hills,
Rush'd like a torrent, down upon the vail,
Sweeping our flocks and herds. The shepherds fled
For safety and for succor. I alone,
With bended bow, and quiver full of arrows,

Hover'd about the enemy, and mark'd
The road he took; then hasted to my friends,
Whom with a troop of fifty chosen men,
1 met advancing. The pursuit I led,
Till we o'ertook the spoil encumber'd foe.
We fought and conquer'd. Ee a sword was drawn,
An arrow from my bow had pierc'd their chief,
Who wore that day the arms which now I wear.
Returning home in triumph, I disdain'd
The shepherd's slothful life; and having heard
That our good king had summon'd his boid peers,
To lead their warriors to the Carron side,
I left my father's house and took with me
A chosen servant to conduct my steps-
Ton trembling coward, who forsook his master.
Journeving with this intent, I pass'd these towers,
And heaven directed, came this day to do
The happy deed, that gilds my humble name.

IH.-Douglas' Account of the Hermit.—Iş

BENEATH a mountain's brow, the most remote And inaccessible, by shepherds trod, In a deep cave, dug by no mortai hand, A hermit liv'd; a melancholly man, Who was the wonder of our wand'ring swains. Austere and lonely, cruel to himself,

Did they report him; the cold earth his bed,
Water his drink, his food the shepherds' alms.
I went to see him; and my heart was touch'd
With rev'rence and with pitv. Mild he spake;
And, entering on discourse, such stories told,
As made me oft revisit his sad cell.
For he had been a soldier in his youth;
And fought in famous battles, when the peers
Of Europe by the bold Godfredo led,
Against th' usurping infidel display'd
The blessed cross, and won the Holy Land.
Pleas'd with my admiration, and the fire

His speech struck from me, the old man would shake
His years away, and act his young encounters:

Then, having show'd his wounds, he'd sit him down,
And all the live long day discourse of war.
To help my fancy, in the snooth green turf
He cut the figures of the marshal'd hosts;
Describ'd the motions, and explain'd the use
Of the deep column and the legchen'd line,
The square, the crescert, and the phalanx firm;
For all that Saracen or Christian knew
Of war's vast art, was to this hermit known.