The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

As to the rest, it was this man – this man of a scientific 'prudence' with the abhorrence of change, which is the instinct of the larger whole, confirmed by a scientific forethought – it was this man who gave at last the signal for change; not for war. 'Proceed by process' was his word. Constitutional remedies for the evils which appeared to have attained at last the unendurable point, were the remedies which he proposed – this was the move which he was willing, for his part, to initiate. – 'We are not, perhaps, at the last gasp. I think I see ways to save us.' – The proceedings of the Parliament which condemned him were studiously arranged beforehand by himself, – he wrote the programme of it, and the part he undertook to perform in it was the greatest in history. [''Tis the indiligent reader that loses my subject, not I,' says the 'foreign interpreter' of this style of writing. 'There will always be found some word or other, in a corner, though it lie very close.' That is the rule for the reading of the evidence in this case. The word is there, though it lies very close, as it had need to, to be available.]

It was as a baffled, disgraced statesman, that he found leisure to complete and put in final order for posterity, those noble works, through which we have already learned to love and honour him, in the face of this calumny. It was as a disgraced and baffled statesman and courtier – all lurking jealousies and suspicions at last put to rest – all possibility of a political future precluded; but as a courtier still hanging on the king and on the power that controlled the king, for life and liberty; and careful still not to assert any independence of those same ends, which had always been taken to be his ends; it was in this character that he brought out at last the Novum Organum; it was in this character that he ventured to collect and republish his avowed philosophical works; it was in this character too that he ventured at last to produce that little piece of history which comes down to us loosely appended to these philosophical writings. A history of the Second Conquest of the Children of Alfred, a Conquest which they resisted, in heroic wars, but vainly, for want of leaders and organization – overborne by the genius of a military chief whom this historian compares in king-craft with his contemporaries Ferdinand of Spain, and Louis XI. It is a history which was dedicated to Charles I., which was corrected in the manuscript by James I., at the request of the author; and he owed to that monarch's approval of it, permission to come to town for the purpose of superintending its publication. It is the History of the Founding of the Tudor Dynasty: prepared, – as were the rest of these works, – under the patronage of an insolent favourite with whom it was necessary 'entirely to drop the character that carried with it the least show of truth or gracefulness,' and under the patronage of a monarch with whom it was not sufficient 'for persons of superior gifts and endowments to act the deformity of obsequiousness, unless they really changed themselves and became abject and contemptible in their persons.'

'I am in this (Volumnia)  Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles,  And you will rather show our general lowts,  How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them,  For the inheritance of their loves, and safeguard,  Of what that want might ruin.

Away my disposition!

When you do find him, or alive or dead,He will be found like Brutus, LIKE HIMSELF.'Yet country-men, O yet, hold up your heads. I will proclaim my name about the field. I am the son of Marcus Cato, HO! A foe TO TYRANTS, and my country's friend.'And I am Brutus, Marcus Brutus I, Brutus, MY COUNTRY'S FRIEND, know ME for BRUTUS.'FINIS