On this page

• Text (1)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• 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

    No meanness committed by others can excuse him to his own conscience for practising a like meanness . Men of England , men of all countries , think of the evil ye do when ye give unworthy mothers to your children . The high utility of Coriolanus was made a wreck by the evil counsels of his mother . Had he been mothered by a Cornelia what a glorious beinsr would he have become .

    The next scene in its opening shows that the trial by the people , to which Coriolanus is ordered to submit , is not in fact a trial , but a mere ceremony of condemnation by his enemies , in which the people are used as mere ignorant tools . The knavish old tribune , Sicinius , goes about , as coolly as a modern special pleader , to accomplish the ruin of a higher-minded being than himself . Ignorant people are ever thus to be made tools of . As Coriolanus enters Metienius says ,

    Calmly , I do beseech you . ' The noble Roman is smarting under the sense of the dishonourable injuries done to him by his enemies , and his lips quiver with scorn while he replies ,

    ' Ay , as an hostler , that for the poorest price WiJl bear the knave by the volume . ' Checking himself , however , the native nobleness of his heart , the true spirit of generosity , bursts out ,

    • The honoured gods Keep Rome in safety , and the chairs of justice Supplied with worthy men ! plant love among us ! Throng our large temples with the shows of peace , And not our streets with war !'

    He then declares his ready submission to the laws , and Menenius alludes to his c wounds' received for his country , Coriolanus is annoyed that his defence should thus be put upon the ground of mere feeling , and not of justice , and he exclaims with contempt ,

    ' Scratches with briars , Scars to move laughter only . ' But nothing can move the baserminded tribunes from their unworthy purpose , and the juggling half decrepit knave Sicinius , without any impulse of passion , without any motive but the cold calculation of interest , deliberately applies the term 'traitor' one , the high excellence of whose nature he cannot understand . The term traitor is one from which every mind revolts . It is the attribute of all mean and base natures , and it is a proof wheti treason is practised that the practiser has no honourable power whatever , that he is a rtiean and contemptible being . The term traitor implies a combination of weakness , treachery , and falsehood ; three things which , though much practised , are univcr-

    Untitled Article

    £ 94 Coriolanvt no Aristocra t *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 294, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/66/