I have looked into many an edition of Shakspeare, but I have not found
one that traced the connexion that I fancy exists between the lines--

_Cassius._ "I did not think you could have been so angry."

_Brutus._ "O Cassius! I am sick of many griefs."

or between

_Brutus._ "No man bears sorrow better.--Portia is dead."

_Cassius._ "How 'scaped I killing when I crossed you so!"

_Julius Cæsar_, Act iv. Sc. 3.

which will perhaps better suit the object that I have in view. The
editors whose notes I have examined probably thought the connexion so
self-evident or insignificant as not to require either notice or
explanation. If so, I differ from them, and I therefore offer the
following remarks for the _amusement_ rather than for the _instruction_
of those who, like myself, are not at all ashamed to confess that they
cannot read Shakspeare's music "_at sight_." I believe that both
_Replies_ contain an allusion to the fact that _Anger, grafted on
sorrow, almost invariably assumes the form of frenzy; that it is in
every sense of the word "Madness," when the mind is unhinged, and
reason, as it were, totters from the effects of grief_.

Cassius had but just mildly rebuked Brutus for making no better use of
his philosophy, and now--startled by the sudden sight of his bleeding,