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    c according to their capacity , and according to their works . * A portion of that principle is to strip the veil from antiquated errors ,, and expose them ,, as far as possible ,, to the bright and piercing

    light of truth . In pursuit of this object , I purpose doing what my capacity will enable me , to destroy an ancient Tory fallacy respecting the play of Coriolanus , to which people of all parties , and even philosophical radicals , have given , as it seems to me , too hasty and unqualified a credence .

    Coriolanus has been wholly given up to the admirers of arbitrary power , as their especial mouth-piece and oracle to quote from . The modern English Tories have made him all their own , and have been accustomed to liken their leaders to him ; but with how much reason is still a matter for analysis . His Grace of Wellington has occasionally figured in the print-shops in a Roman garb , making scorn of sundry plebeian leaders , attired a 3 c unwashed artisans . * c There is a river in Macedon and a river

    in Monmouth , ' and upou some such princi p le of resemblance , it is probable , that the artist deemed that as Konian noses are hooknoses , and the hero of Waterloo had a hook-nose , ergo he was invested with all other Roman qualities . The resemblance may be carried on still further . The Romans maintained parasites , and the English artist was desirous of being parasite to the English hook-nose . We have amongst us sufficient f free-born Britons , ' who would have thriven even under Nero . I have seen

    —pray believe me , reader , scarce credible though it be—ja print , in which the gross sirloin , '—I quote from a patrician writerthe gross sirloin of the fourth Guelph was girdled round with a Roman tunic , while his arm was extended towards Henry Hunt , and other personages , and his lips mumbled something about

    ' rotten cry of curs . ' Did he mean his owa cry ? It was an exceeding : £ ood iest . At that toeriod th ^ re could scarc el y have been found in England a man so entirely unlike the noble Roman . ' There was nothing noble in him . He was a made-up thing , as unreal as a Bartholomew baby . His tailor might have said to him , as truly as Volumnia did to her son ,

    1 hdp to frame thee . Yet the tailor did not all ; he merely put on the exterior varnish . It was the cook and the distiller who formed the solid , or rather not solid , substratum beneath . He was an Heliogabalus , and

    the garb of Coriolanus was put on him in mockery * Yet , notwitustanding , in all his disgusting attributes , he was a true type and emblem of the doctrines and practices of modern English Tbrjrism . * In the analysis of the play before us , it must be taken as a trhfcle . The pride of Coriolanus must not be weighed as applied * Probabl y the similitude waii an ori g inal conception of the hero ' s emu Wai it because the artist did ribt chooste to dechne a job from CerHon frenatt , that h * 5 , eon-» cietitiou&ly , put hia owa face amongst the radical rabble ?

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    42 Coriolanus fco Aristocrat .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 42, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/44/