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But of this we may be sure, that two of the most discerning of all the Romans, and who had the deepest Insight into the Soul of Caesar, Sallust and Cicero, were not without Hopes that Caesar would really re-establish Liberty, or else they would not have attack’d him upon it; the one in his Oration for Marcus Marcellus, the other in the Second Part of that little Treatise De Republica ordinanda, which is address’d to Caesar. Haec igitur tibi reliqua pars, says Cicero, Hic restat Actus, in hoc elaborandum est, ut Rempublicam constituas, eaque tu in primis composita, summa Tranquillitate & otio perfruare. Cicero therefore was not without Hope that Caesar would re-establish the Commonwealth; and any one who attentively peruses that Oration of Cicero, will find that that Hope was reasonably grounded upon his knowledge of the great Qualities of Caesar, his Clemency, his Beneficence, his admirable Discernment; and that avoidless Ruine in which the whole Empire would be soon involv’d, if Caesar did not effect this. Sallust urges it still more home to him and with greater vehemence; he has recourse to every Motive that may be thought to be powerful over so great a Soul. He exhorts him by the Memory of his matchless Conquests, not to suffer the invincible Empire of the Roman People to be devour’d by Time, or to be torn in pieces by Discord; one of which would soon and infallibly happen, if Liberty was not restor’d.

He introduces his Country and his Progenitors urging him in a noble Prosopopeia, by all the mighty Benefits which they had conferr’d upon him, with so little Pains of his own, not to deny them that just and easy Request of the Restoration of Liberty. He adjures him by those Furies which will eternally haunt his Soul upon his impious Refusal: He implores him by the foresight of those dismal Calamities, that horrible Slaughter, those endless Wars, and that unbounded Devastation, which will certainly fall upon Mankind, if the Restoration of Liberty is prevented by his Death, or his incurable Sickness: And lastly, he entreats him by his Thirst of immortal Glory, that Glory in which he now has Rivals, if he has not Equals; but which, if he re-establishes Liberty, will be acknowledg’d by consenting Nations to have neither Equal nor Second.

I am apt to believe that if Shakespear had been acquainted with all this, we had had from him quite another Character of Caesar than that which we now find in him. He might then have given us a Scene something like that which Corneille has so happily us’d in his Cinna; something like that which really happen’d between Augustus, Mecaenas, and Agrippa. He might then have introduc’d Caesar consulting Cicero on the one side, and on the other Anthony, whether he should retain that absolute Sovereignty which he had acquir’d by his Victory, or whether he should re-establish and immortalize Liberty. That would have been a Scene which might have employ’d the finest Art and the utmost force of a Writer. That had been a Scene in which all the great Qualities of Caesar might have been display’d. I will not pretend to determine here how that Scene might have been turn’d; and what I have already said on this Subject, has been spoke with the utmost Caution and Diffidence. But this I will venture to say, that if that Scene had been manag’d so, as, by the powerful Motives employ’d in it, to have shaken the Soul of Caesar, and to have left room for the least Hope, for the least Doubt, that Caesar would have re-establish’d Liberty, after his Parthian Expedition; and if this Conversation had been kept secret till the Death of Caesar, and then had been discover’d by Anthony ; then had Caesar fall’n, so belov’d and lamented by the Roman People, so pitied and so bewail’d even by the Conspirators themselves, as never Man fell. Then there would have been a Catastrophe the most dreadful and the most deplorable that ever was beheld upon the Tragick Stage. Then had we seen the noblest of the Conspirators cursing their temerarious Act, and the most apprehensive of them in dreadful expectation of those horrible Calamities which fell upon the Romans after the Death of Caesar. But, Sir, when I write this to you, I write it with the utmost Deference to the extraordinary Judgment of that great Man who some Years ago, I hear, alter’d the Julius Caesar. And I make no doubt but that his fine Discernment and the rest of his great Qualities have amply supply’d the Defects which are found in the Character of Shakespear‘s Caesar.