Caesar says, hearing of his conduct at the
court of Cleopatra:
--Antony,
Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
Wert beaten from Mutina, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow, whom thou fought'st against,
Though daintily brought up, with patience more
Than savages could suffer. Thou did'st drink
The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle
Which beast would cough at. Thy palate then did deign
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge,
Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsed'st. On the Alps,
It is reported, thou did'st eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on: and all this,
It wounds thine honour, that I speak it now,
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lank'd not.
The passage after Antony's defeat by Augustus where he is made to
say:
Yes, yes; he at Philippi kept
His sword e'en like a dancer; while I struck
The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and 'twas I
That the mad Brutus ended,
is one of those fine retrospections which show us the winding and
eventful march of human life. The jealous attention which has been
paid to the unities both of time and place has taken away the
principle of perspective in the drama, and all the interest which
objects derive from distance, from contrast, from privation, from
change of fortune, from long-cherished passion; and contracts our
view of life from a strange and romantic dream, long, obscure, and
infinite, into a smartly contested, three hours' inaugural
disputation on its merits by the different candidates for theatrical
applause.
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