Shakespeare of Stratford
97
fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped: Sufflaminandus erat,[1] as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter: as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him ‘Cæsar, thou dost me wrong!’—he replied, ‘Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause’;[2] and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues: there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.
- ↑ ‘He had to be checked.’
- ↑ The passage in Jonson’s mind is Julius Cæsar III. i. 47, which does not now stand as Jonson quotes it. The absence of precise logical consistency, which Jonson ascribes to too hasty composition, is abundantly frequent in Shakespeare’s style.
