That by no means I may discover them
By any mark of favour.

BRU.

Let them enter. [Exit Lucius. They are the faction. O confpiracy!

Sham'st thou to fhow thy dangerous brow by night, When evils are most free? O, then, by day,

Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough To mask thy monftrous visage? Seek none, confpiracy;

Hide it in fmiles, and affability:

For if thou path, thy native femblance on,'
Not Erebus itself were dim enough

To hide thee from prevention.

Enter CASSIUS, CASCA, DECIUS, CINNA, METELLUS CIMBER, and TREBONIUS.

CAS. I think, we are too bold upon your reft: Good morrow, Brutus; Do we trouble you?

BRU. I have been up this hour; awake, all night. Know I these men, that come along with you?

CAS. Yes, every man of them; and no man here, But honours you: and every one doth wish, You had but that opinion of yourself, Which every noble Roman bears of you. This is Trebonius.

— any mark of favour.] Any diftinction of countenance.

JOHNSON.

3 For if thou path, thy native semblance on,] If thou walk in thy true form. JOHNSON.

The fame verb is ufed by Drayton in his Polyolbion, Song II: "Where, from the neighbouring hills, her paffage Wey doth path."

Again, in his Epiftle from Duke Humphrey to Elinor Cobham : "Pathing young Henry's unadvifed ways." STEEVENS.

[They whisper.

Betwixt your eyes and night?

CAS. Shall I entreat a word?

DEC. Here lies the east: Doth not the day break

here?

CASCA. NO.

CIN. O, pardon, fir, it doth; and yon grey lines, That fret the clouds, are meffengers of day.

CASCA. You fhall confefs, that you are both deceiv'd.

Here, as I point my fword, the fun arises;
Which is a great way growing on the south,
Weighing the youthful season of the year.
Some two months hence, up higher toward the
north

He first presents his fire; and the high east
Stands, as the Capitol, directly here.

4

BRU. Give me your hands all over, one by one. CAS. And let us fwear our refolution.

BRU. No, not an oath: If not the face of men,"

do interpofe themselves &c.] For the fake of measure I am willing to think our author wrote as follows, and that the wordthemfelves, is an interpolation :

What watchful cares do interpose betwixt
Your eyes and night?

Caf.

Shall I entreat a word? STEEVENS.

5 No, not an oath: If not the face of men, &c.] Dr. Warburton would read fate of men; but his elaborate emendation is, I think, The face of men is the countenance, the regard, the

erroneous.

The fufferance of our fouls, the time's abufe,-
If these be motives weak, break off betimes,

efleem of the publick; in other terms, honour and reputation; or the face of men may mean the dejected look of the people. JOHNSON. So, Tully in Catilinam-Nihil horum ora vultufque moverunt ? Shakspeare formed this fpeech on the following paffage in Sir T. North's tranflation of Plutarch:-" The confpirators having never taken oaths together, nor taken or given any caution or affurance, nor binding themselves one to another by any religious oaths, they kept the matter fo fecret to themselves," &c. STEEVENS. I cannot reconcile myfelf to Johnfon's explanation of this paffage, but believe we fhould read

If not the faith of men, &c.

which is fupported by the following paffages in this very speech :

What other bond

Than fecret Romans, that have spoke the word,
And will not palter.-

when every drop of blood

That every Roman bears, and nobly bears,
Is guilty of a feveral baftardy,

If he do break the fmalleft particle

Of any promife that hath pass'd from him,

Both of which prove, that Brutus confidered the faith of men as their firmeft fecurity in each other. M. MASON.

In this fentence, [i. e. the two firft lines of the fpeech] as in feveral others, Shakspeare, with a view perhaps to imitate the abruptnefs and inaccuracy of difcourfe, has conftructed the latter part without any regard to the beginning." If the face of men, the fufferance of our fouls, &c. If thefe be not fufficient; if thefe be motives weak," &c. So, in The Tempest:

"I have with fuch provifion in mine art,
"So fafely order'd, that there is no foul-
"No, not fo much perdition," &c.

Mr. M. Mafon would read-if not the faith of men-. If the text be corrupt, faiths is more likely to have been the poet's word; which might have been eafily confounded by the ear with face, the word exhibited in the old copy. So, in Antony and Cleopatra: the manner of their deaths?

"I do not fee them bleed."

Again, in King Henry VI. P. III.

"And with their helps only defend ourselves."

Again, more appofitely, in The Rape of Lucrece:

66

You, fair lords, quoth fhe,

"Shall plight your honourable faiths to me." MALOXE.

And every man hence to his idle bed;
So let high-fighted tyranny range on,
Till each man drop by lottery."

But if thefe,
As I am fure they do, bear fire enough
To kindle cowards, and to fteel with valour
The melting spirits of women; then, countrymen,
What need we any fpur, but our own caufe,
To prick us to redrefs? what other bond,
Than fecret Romans, that have spoke the word,
And will not palter?' and what other oath,
Than honefty to honefty engag'd,

That this shall be, or we will fall for it?
Swear priests, and cowards, and men cautelous,"

6 Till each man drop by lottery.] Perhaps the poet alluded to the custom of decimation, i. e. the felection by lot of every tenth foldier, in a general mutiny, for punishment.

He fpeaks of this in Coriolanus:

66

By decimation, and a tithed death,

"Take thou thy fate." STEEVENS.

And will not palter?] And will not fly from his engagements. Cole in his Dictionary, 1679, renders to palter, by tergiverfor. In Macbeth it fignifies, as Dr. Johnfon has obferved, to buffle with ambiguous expreffions: and, indeed, here also it may mean to Souffle; for he whofe actions do not correfpond with his promises is properly called a buffler. MALONE.

8 Swear priests, &c.] This is imitated by Otway:

"When you would bind me, is there need of oaths?" &c. Venice Preferved. JOHNSON.

cantelous,] Is here cautious, fometimes infidious. So, in Woman is a Weathercock, 1612: " Yet warn you, be as cautelous not to wound my integrity."

Again, in Drayton's Miseries of Queen Margaret:

Witty, well-fpoken, cautelous, though young." Again, in the fecond of these two fenfes in the romance of Kynge Appolyn of Thyre, 1610: "a fallacious policy and cautelous wyle. Again, in Holinbed, p. 945: "the emperor's councell thought by a cautell to have brought the king in mind to fue for a licence from the pope." STEEVENS.

Bullokar in his English Expofitor, 1616, explains cautelous thus: "Warie, circumfpect;" in which fenfe it is certainly used here.

MALONE.

Old feeble carrions, and fuch fuffering fouls
That welcome wrongs; unto bad caufes fwear
Such creatures as men doubt: but do not stain
The even virtue of our enterprize,

Nor the infuppreffive mettle of our fpirits,
To think, that, or our caufe, or our performance,
Did need an oath; when every drop of blood,
That every Roman bears, and nobly bears,
Is guilty of a feveral bastardy,

If he do break the fmalleft particle

Of any promise that hath pafs'd from him.

CAS. But what of Cicero? Shall we found him?

I think, he will stand very strong with us.

CASCA. Let us not leave him out.

No, by no means.

CIN.
MET. O, let us have him; for his filver hairs
Will purchase us a good opinion,

And buy men's voices to commend our deeds:
It fhall be faid, his judgement rul'd our hands;
Our youths, and wildnefs, fhall no whit appear,
But all be buried in his gravity.

BRU. O, name him not; let us not break with

him;

For he will never follow any thing

That other men begin.

CAS.

Then leave him out.

CASCA. Indeed, he is not fit.

9 The even virtue of our enterprize,] The calm, equable, temperate fpirit that actuates us. MALONE.

Thus in Mr. Pope's Eloifa to Abelard:

"Defires compos'd, affections ever even,-." STEEVENS. 2-opinion,] i. e. character. So, in King Henry IV. P. I: "Thou haft redeem'd thy loft opinion.'

The quotation is Mr. Reed's. See Vol. VIII. p. 585, n. 7. STEEVENS.