Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/68

38 sufficient to find out the unfitness of Cicero to be included in their enterprize, from his affected egotism and literary vanity?

His scepticism as to prodigies and his moralising on the weather—"This disturbed sky is not to walk in"—are in the same spirit of refined imbecility.

Shakespear has in this play and elsewhere shewn the same penetration into political character and the springs of public events as into those of every-day life. For instance, the whole design to liberate their country fails from the generous temper and overweening confidence of Brutus in the goodness of their cause and the assistance of others. Thus it has always been. Those who mean well themselves think well of others, and fall a prey to their security. That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others, because they are themselves sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to any thing but their own unprincipled