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have left the chase after Aufidius , to rescue his poor host / but the temptation was strong , and * The blood more stirs To rouse a lion than to start a hare '
When Quentin Durward had hunted the ' Boar of Ardennes ' to bay , and all but vanquished him , he left him and all the advantages attendant on his capture ,, amongst which successful love was numbered , in order to rescue the shrieking Trudchen from the hands of her ravishers ; and our hearts honour him for it . But how beautiful is the reply of Coriolanus , when Titus Lartius asks him the name of his poor host . '
By Jupiter , forgot : — I am weary ; yea my memory is tided . — Have we no wine here ?
Reader , did you ever mingle in the din of battle , where human slaughter was rife , and do the work of ten men , while under the influence of excitement , utterly ignorant that edges had cut , and shot torn your flesh , while your hands were skinless from , hauling in the ropes used to train the guns to batter down the strong
hold of a despot , or the accursed floating castle of a salt-water tyrant ? Dicl you ever awake from your busy trance , with the loud shout of victory ringing in your ears , and then find yourself half choked with a raging thirst , from the gunpowder swallowed in hiting off the ends of cartridges , your face and hands blackened
with smoke , your wounds smarting , and your body sore and stiff with contusions and straining ? Did you ever then strike off the neck of a wine-bottle against a musket barrel , and drain it at a draught , and then sink to sleep in the elysium of a coil of rope ? If you have , you may imagine the feelings of Coriolanus in calling for wine , and also the peculiar sensation of a tired memory . ' He cared nothing for the name of his * poor host ; ' he cared not whether he were patrician or plebeian . He only knew him as a man who had ' used him kindly . ' Of all else his memory was tired , not his jympathies ; they were strong as at the period
ol receiving the kindness . And equally kind would he have been to tlie Roman plebeians , had they rightly understood his nature ; Wt they did not , and therefore could but irritate him , and then mistake his irritability for pride , and the love of oppression . Now let those who would fain liken his Grace of Wellington ,
ind such men , to the noble Coriolanus , show wherein consists the parallel betwixt them . Coriolanus fought in person , in a just w , and ran the same risks with his soldiers . Wellington fought by proxy with officers and soldiers , keeping himself as much as possible out of the ' stroke and flash / and he fought in
ai unjust war , to put down an oppressor , it is true , yet not for th <» benefit of mankind , but only to set up other and more mis-
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CoriolctnUs no Aristocrat . 137
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Xo . SO . h
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 137, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/53/
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