On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
pretence of serving the cause of the people , for the pleasure of irritating the patricians , and forcing them to acknowledge them to be c somebodies . * Individually they are greater tyrants than
the patricians , being , like all vulgar-minded people , who can take no credit on account of their ancestors , doubly jealous of any want of personal respect . Qualifications for the offices they have undertaken they are marvellously lacking in ; but let old Menenius describe
them' I know you can do very little alone , for your helps are many ; or else your actions would grow wondrous single ; your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone . You talk of pride ! Oh ! that you would turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks , and make but an interior survey of your good selves , you should then discover a brace of unmeriting , proud , violent , testy magistrates , alias fools , as any in Rome . You are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs ; you wear
out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orangewife and a fosset-seller , and then rejourn the controversy of threepence to a second day of audience . Our very priests must become mockers , if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are . * * * * Yet you must be saying , Marcius is proud , who , in a cheap estimation , is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion ; though peradventure , some of the best of them were hereditary hangmen . '
Such are the tribunes who proceed to criticise Marcius so soon as his back is turned ; * Was ever man so proud as is this Marcius ? Being moved he will not spare to gird the gods V Not satisfied with accusing him of pride , they turn even his virtues to faults , with the most inveterate malignity , suiting their base natures . His free and unforced assent to take a subordinate
rank in the army , is attributed to mean design and political trickery . They evidently have the knack of measuring his corn by their own bushel . ' Was it possible that the noble and unsuspicious nature of Marcius could do otherwise than chafe when brought in contact with such base opposites ? Was it not natural , that a headlong spirit , all unused to philosophize , aiid actuated mostly by impulses , should think hardly of a people who selected
such unworthy and contemptible beings as their especial representatives . The act showed either a want of judgment , or a depraved taste , and in either case it made equall y against them , in viewing them as the depositories of power . The philosopher alone could look upon such things with patience , knowing them to belong to the phases which human nature must pass through in its progress towards perfection ; and Caiua Marcius was not a philosopher .
The third scene of the play gives us a fresh insight into the character of Caius Marcius , through his mother Volumnia and his wife Virgilia , between whom there is a remarkable contrast . Volumnia does not love Cuius Marcius as a man , but prides
Untitled Article
50 Coriolanus no Aristocrat .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 50, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/52/
-