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Untitled Article
' We will deny him : I'll have five hundred voices of that sound , ' he even outdoes him , and replies , * I , twice five hundred , and their friends to piece ' em . ' Thus it ever is . A public man , chosen without reason , on the score of mere feeling , is turned out again , with as little reason , on the score of an opposite feeling . The applause of one ' s fellows is precious to the he . art , but it is only wholesome and profitable when it is based on the exercise of the judgment . The conduct of Coriolanus was not wise : it was not calculated to conciliate the
minds of ignorant men ; and those who possess knowledge are , above all others , morally bound to avoid causeless offence to their ignorant fellows : but his errors were the result of an overboiling nobleness of spirit ; and , when compared with the cool , cunning , deliberate , mean , calculating malice of the crafty tribunes , he shows like a god . The tribunes were also cowards , making the people serve as their tools to screen themselves from the patrician indignation ; and we should loathe , did we not scorn them .
The third act opens with a kind of walking conversation in the streets , between Coriolanus and some of the patricians , on the subject of the Volscians and Aufidius , who are supposed to be so worn that their banners w ill scarcely wave again for an age ; and Coriolanus expresses his longing for a cause to meet his adversary in Antium , just at which time the two tribunes appear . He has hardly expressed to his companions his antipathy to them , when they inform him of the change in the minds of the people . Well may he say in the bitterness of scornful indignation , * Have I had children's voices ?
Are these your herd : Must these have voices , that can yield them now , And straight disclaim their tongues ? * * * - *
Have you not set them on ?' Ignorance alone caused the people to act thus , and become the tools of designing demagogues , called tribunes . But the way to remedy it was to allow them to go on , and learn their errors through the evil consequences . It was of far more importance that the people should be instructed , than that Coriolanus should
be spared a mortification ; and had this result been clearly shown to him , he would have considered it as noble an exercise ol patriotism , to suffer undeserved odium for the welfare of others , as to jeopard his life for them in the open field or the walled town , —nobler , inasmuch as it must be the most painful to the generous mind . The Athenians were proverbial for being somc-
Untitled Article
200 oriolanus no Aristocrat .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 200, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/40/
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