by instinct. Placed in a social position which removes him from
the temptation to ordinary crime, circumstances combine in his
case to bring out the criminal tendency and give it free play in
the projected murder of Caesar. Sour, envious, unscrupulous,
the suggestion to kill Caesar under the guise of the public
weal is in reality a gratification to Cassius of his own ignoble
instincts, and the deliberate unscrupulousness with which he
seeks to corrupt the honourable metal, seduce the noble mind of
his friend, is typical of the man's innate dishonesty. Cassius
belongs to that particular type of the envious nature which
Shakespeare is fond of exemplifying with more or less degree
of villainy in such characters as Iago, Edmund, and Don John, of
which Robert Butler, whose career is given in this book, is a
living instance. Cassius on public grounds tempts Brutus to
crime as subtly as on private grounds Iago tempts Othello, and
with something of the same malicious satisfaction; the soliloquy
of Cassius at the end of the second scene of the first act is
that of a bad man and a false friend. Indeed, the quarrel
between Brutus and Cassius after the murder of Caesar loses
much of its sincerity and pathos unless we can forget for the
moment the real character of Cassius. But the interest in the
cases of Cassius and Brutus, Iago and Othello, lies not so much
in the nature of the prompter of the crime. The instances in
which an honest, honourable man is by force of another's
suggestion converted into a criminal are psychologically
remarkable. It is to be expected that we should look in the
annals of real crime for confirmation of the truth to life of
stories such as these, told in fiction or drama.

The strongest influence, under which the naturally non-criminal