How we do misquote sayings, or misunderstand them when quoted rightly! For instance, we "wait for something to turn up, like Micawber," careless or ignorant of the fact that Micawber worked harder than all the rest put together for the leading characters' sakes; he was the chief or only instrument in straightening out of the sadly mixed state of things -- and he held his tongue till the time came. Moreover -- and "_Put a pin in that spot, young man_," as Dr "Yark" used to say -- when there came a turn in the tide of the affairs of Micawber, he took it at the flood, and it led on to fortune. He became a hardworking settler, a pioneer -- a respected early citizen and magistrate in this bright young Commonwealth of ours, my masters!
And, by the way, and strictly between you and me, I have a shrewd suspicion that Uriah Heep wasn't the only cad in David Copperfield.
Brutus, the originator of the saying, took the tide at the flood, and it led him and his friends on to death, or -- well, perhaps, under the circumstances, it was all the same to Brutus and his old mate, Cassius.
And this, my masters, brings me home, Bush-born bard, to Ancient Rome.
And there's little difference in the climate, or the men -- save in the little matter of ironmongery -- and no difference at all in the women.
We'll pass over the accident that happened to Caesar. Such accidents had happened to great and little Caesars hundreds of times before, and have happened many times since, and will happen until the end of time, both in "sport" (in plays) and in earnest:
Cassius: . How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over In states unborn and accents yet unknown?
Brutus: How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport, That now at Pompey's basis lies along No worthier than the dust!
Shakespeare hadn't Australia and George Rignold in his mind's eye when he wrote that.
Cassius: So oft as that shall be, So often shall the knot of us be call'd The men that gave their country liberty.
Well, be that as it will, I'm with Brutus too, irrespective of the merits of the case. Antony spoke at the funeral, with free and generous permission, and see what he made of it. And why shouldn't I? and see what I'll make of it.
Antony, after sending abject and uncalled-for surrender, and grovelling unasked in the dust to Brutus and his friends as no straight mate should do for another, dead or alive -- and after taking the blood-stained hands of his alleged friend's murderers -- got permission to speak. To speak for his own ends or that paltry, selfish thing called "revenge," be it for one's self or one's friend.
"Brutus, I want a word with you," whispered Cassius. "Don't let him speak! You don't know how he might stir up the mob with what he says."
But Brutus had already given his word:
Antony: That's all I seek: And am moreover suitor that I may Produce his body to the market place, And in the pulpit, as becomes a friend, Speak in the order of his funeral.
Brutus: You shall, Mark Antony.
And now, strong in his right, as he thinks, and trusting to the honour of Antony, he only stipulates that he (Brutus) shall go on to the platform first and explain things; and that Antony shall speak all the good he can of Caesar, but not abuse Brutus and his friends.
And Antony (mark you) agrees and promises and breaks his promise immediately afterwards. Maybe he was only gaining time for his good friend Octavius Caesar, but time gained by such foul means is time lost through all eternity. Did Mark think of these things years afterwards in Egypt when he was doubly ruined and doubly betrayed to his good friend Octavius by that hot, jealous, selfish, shallow, shifty, strumpet, Cleopatra, and Octavius was after his scalp with a certainty of getting it? He did -- and he spoke of it, too.
Brutus made his speech, a straightforward, manly speech in prose, and the gist of the matter was that he did what he did (killed Caesar), not because he loved Caesar less, but because he loved Rome more. And I believe he told the simple honest truth.
Then he acts as Antony's chairman, or introducer, in a manly straightforward manner, and then he goes off and leaves the stage to him, which is another generous act; though it was lucky for Brutus, as it happened afterwards, that he was out of the way.
Mark Antony gets all the limelight and blank verse. He had the "gift of the gab" all right. Old Cassius referred to it later on in one of those "words-before-blows" barneys they had on the battlefield where they hurt each other a damned sight more with their tongues than they did with their swords afterwards.
We've all heard of Antony's speech:
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
Which was a lie to start with.
The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones.
Which is not so true in these days of newspapers and magazines. And so on. He says that Brutus and his friends are honourable men about nine times in his short speech. Now, was Mark Antony an honourable man?
And then the flap-doodle about dead Caesar's wounds, and their poor dumb mouths, and the people kissing them, and dipping their handkerchiefs in his sacred blood. All worthy of our Purves trying to pump tears out of a jury.
But it fetched the crowd; it always did, it always has done, it always does, and it always will do. And the hint of Caesar's will, and the open abuse of Brutus and Co. when he saw that he was safe, and the cheap anti-climax of the reading of the will. Nothing in this line can be too cheap for the crowd, as witness the melodramas of our own civilized and enlightened times.
Antony was a noble Purves.
And the mob rushed off to burn houses, as it has always done, and will always do when it gets a chance -- it tried to burn mine more than once.
The quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius is one of the best scenes in Shakespeare. It is great from the sublime to the ridiculous -- you must read it for yourself. It seems that Brutus objected to Cassius's, or one of his off-side friends' methods of raising the wind -- he reckoned it was one of the very things they killed Julius Caesar for; and Cassius, loving Brutus more than a brother, is very much hurt about it. I can't make out what the trouble really was about and I don't suppose either Cassius or Brutus was clear as to what it was all about either. It's generally the way when friends fall out. It seems also that Brutus thinks that Cassius refused to lend him a few quid to pay his legions, and, you know, it's an unpardonable crime for one mate to refuse another a few quid when he's in a hole; but it seems that the messenger was but a fool who brought Cassius's answer back.
It is generally the messenger who is to blame, when friends make it up after a quarrel that was all their own fault. Messengers had an uncomfortable time in those days, as witness the case of the base slave who had to bring Cleopatra the news of Antony's marriage with Octavia.
But the quarrel scene is great for its deep knowledge of the hearts of men in matters of man to man -- of man friend to man friend -- and it is as humanly simple as a barney between two old bush mates that threatens to end in a bloody fist-fight and separation for life, but chances to end in a beer. This quarrel threatened to end in the death of either Brutus or Cassius or a set-to between their two armies, just at the moment when they all should have been knit together against the forces of Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar; but it ended in a beer, or its equivalent, a bowl of wine.
Earlier in the quarrel, where Brutus asks why, after striking down the foremost man in all the world for supporting land agents and others, should they do the same thing and contaminate their fingers with base bribes?
I'd rather be a dog and bay the moon, Than such a Roman.
Cassius says:
Brutus, bait not me I'll not endure it: you forget yourself, To hedge me in; I am a soldier, I, Older in practice, abler than yourself To make conditions.
Brutus: Go to, you are not, Cassius.
Cassius: I am.
Brutus: I say you are not.
And so they get to it again until:
Cassius: Is it come to this?
Brutus: You say you are a better soldier: Let it appear so; make your vaunting true, And it shall please me well: for mine own part, I shall be glad to learn of noble men.
Cassius: You wrong me every way; you wrong me, Brutus; I said, an elder soldier, not a better. Did I say better?
(What big boys they were -- and what big boys we all are! )
Brutus: If you did, I care not.
Cassius: When Caesar lived he durst not thus have moved me.
Brutus: Peace, peace! you durst not thus have tempted him.
Cassius: I durst not!
Brutus: No.
Cassius: What! Durst not tempt him!
Brutus: For your life you durst not.
Cassius: Do not presume too much upon my love; I may do that I shall be sorry for.
Brutus: You have done that you should be sorry for.
And so on till he gets to the matter of the refused quids, which is cleared up at the expense of the messenger.
Cassius: . Brutus hath rived my heart A friend should bear his friend's infirmities, But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.
Brutus: I do not, till you practise them on me.
Cassius: You love me not.
Brutus: I do not like your faults.
Cassius: A friendly eye could never see such faults.
Brutus: A flatterer's would not, though they do appear As huge as high Olympus.
Then Cassius lets himself go. He calls on Antony and young Octavius and all the rest of 'em to come and be revenged on him alone, for he's tired of the world ("Cassius is aweary of the world," he says). He's hated by one he loves (that's Brutus). He's braved by his "brother" (Brutus), checked like a bondman, and Brutus keeps an eye on all his faults and puts 'em down in a note-book, and learns 'em over and gets 'em off by memory to cast in his teeth. He offers Brutus his dagger and bare breast and wants Brutus to take out his heart, which, he says, is richer than all the quids -- or rather gold -- which Brutus said he wouldn't lend him. He wants Brutus to strike him as he did Caesar, for he reckons that when Brutus hated Caesar worst he loved him far better than ever he loved Cassius.
Remember these men were Southerners, like ourselves, not cold-blooded Northerners -- and, in spite of the seemingly effeminate Italian temperament, as brave as our men were at Elands River. The reason of Brutus's seeming coldness and hardness during the quarrel is set forth in a startling manner later on, as only the greatest poet in this world could do it.
Brutus tells him kindly to put up his pig-sticker (and button his shirt) and he could be just as mad or good-tempered as he liked, and do what he liked, Brutus wouldn't mind him:
. Dishonour shall be humour. O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb That carries anger as the flint bears fire, Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark And straight is cold again.
Whereupon Cassius weeps because he thinks Brutus is laughing at him.
Hath Cassius lived To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus, When grief and blood ill-temper'd vexeth him.
Brutus: When I spoke that, I was ill-temper'd too.
Cassius: Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.
Brutus: And my heart too.
Then Cassius explains that he got his temper from his mother (as I did mine).
Cassius: O Brutus!
Brutus: What's the matter? [Shakespeare should have added `now. ']
Cassius: Have not you love enough to bear with me, When that rash humour which my mother gave me Makes me forgetful?
Brutus: Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth, When you are over-earnest with your Brutus, He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so.
And all this on the brink of disaster and death.
But here comes a rare touch, and we might as well quote it in full.
Mind you, I am following Shakespeare, and not history, which is mostly lies.
A great poet's instinct might be nearer the truth; after all. Of course scholars know that Macbeth (or Macbethad) reigned for upwards of twenty years in Scotland a wise and a generous king -- so much so that he was called "Macbathad the Liberal," and it was Duncan who found his way to the throne by way of murder; but it didn't fit in with Shakespeare's plans, and -- anyway that's only a little matter between the ghosts of Bill and Mac which was doubtless fixed up long ago. More likely they thought it such a one-millionth part of a trifle that they never dreamed of thinking of mentioning it.
(Noise within.)
Poet (within): Let me go in to see the generals; There is some grudge between 'em -- 'tis not meet They be alone.
Lucilius (within): You shall not come to them.
Poet (within): Nothing but death shall stay me.
("Within" in this case is, of course, without -- outside the tent where Lucilius and Titinius are on guard.)
Enter POET.
Cassius: How now! What's the matter?
Poet: For shame, you generals! What do you mean? Love, and be friends, as two such men should be: For I have seen more years, I'm sure, than ye.
Cassius: Ha, ha! how vilely doth this cynic rhyme!
Brutus: Get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence!
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