Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/130

Rh 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

is one of those fine retrospections which shew 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