i Or fol'd fome debile wretch, which, without note As if I lov'd, my little should be dieted Com. Too modest are you : With all th' applause and clamour of the host, Omnes. Caius Marcius Coriolanus ! Mar. I will go wash : And when my face is fair, you shall perceive Com, So, to our tent: Where, ere we do repose us, we will write Mar. The gods begin to mock me: But But then Aufidius was within my view, Com. O, well begg'd! Were he the butcher of my son, he should Mar. By Jupiter, forgot:- Com. Go we to our tent; The blood upon your visage dries; 'tis time [Exeunt. SCENE changes to the Camp of the Volfci. A flourish. Cornets. Enter Tullus Aufidius bloody, with two or three Soldiers. Sol. 'Twill be deliver'd back on Auf. Auf. Condition! good condition. Condition? I would, I were a Roman; for I cannot, Sol. He's the devil. Auf. Bolder, tho' not so subtle: my valour (poifon'd, With only fuffering stain by him) for him Shall fly out of itself: not sleep, nor fanctuary, Being naked, sick, nor fane, nor capitol, The prayers of priests, nor times of facrifice, Embark. Embarkments all of fury, shall lift up Wash my fierce hand in's heart. Go you to th' city, Learn, how 'tis held; and what they are, that must Be hostages for Rome. Sol. Will not you go? Auf. I am attended at the cypress grove. I pray you, ('Tis fouth the city mills) bring me word thither How the world goes, that to the pace of it I may spur on my journey. Sol. I shall, Sir. [Exeunt. T ACT II. Enter Menenius, with Sicinius and Brutus. MENENIUS. HE augur tells me, we shall have news to-night. Men. Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Marcius. Sic. Nature teaches beasts to know their friends. Men. Pray you, whom does the wolf love? Sic. The lamb. Men. Ay, to devour him, as the hungry Plebeians would the noble Marcius. Bru. He's a lamb, indeed, that baes like a bear. Men. He's a bear, indeed, that lives like a lamb. You two are old men, tell me one thing that I shall ask you. Both. Well, Sir; Men. In what enormity is Marcius poor, that you two have not in abundance ? Bru Bru. He's poor in no one fault, but stor'd with all. Sic. Especially, in pride. Bru. And topping all others in boafting. Men. This is strange now; do you two know how you are cenfur'd here in the city, I mean of us o'th' right hand file, do you ? Bru. Why, how are we cenfur'd? Men. Because you talk of pride now, will you not be angry? Both. Well, well, Sir, well. Men. Why, 'tis no great matter; for a very little thief of occafion will rob you of a great deal of patience : -give your dispositions the reins, and be angry at your pleasures; at the least, if you take it as a pleasure to you, in being fo:-you blame Marcius for being proud. Bru. We do it not alone, Sir. Men. 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 could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves! Oh that you could ! Bru. What then, Sir? Men. Why, then you should discover a brace of as unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magiftrates, alias fools, as any in Rome. Sic. Menenius, you are known well enough too. Men. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in't: said to be something imperfect, in favouring the first complaint; hasty and tinderlike, upon too trivial motion: one that converses more with the buttock of the night, than with the fore-head of the morning. What I think, I utter; and spend my malice in my breath. Meeting two fuch weals-men as you are, (I cannot call you Lycurgusses) if the drink you give me touch my palate adverfly, I make a crooked face at it. I can't say, your worships have deliver'd the r 3 4 the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables; and tho I must be content to bear with those, that say, you are reverend grave men; yet they lie deadly, that tell you, you have good faces; if you see this in the map of my microcofm, follows it, that I am known well enough too? (11) what harm can your biffon confpectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough too? Bru. Come, Sir, come, we know you well enough. Men. You know neither me, yourselves, nor any thing; you are ambitious for poor knaves caps and legs: you wear out a good wholesome forenoon, in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a fossetfeller, and then adjourn a controversy of three-pence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinch'd with the cholick, you make faces like mummers, set up the bloody flag against all patience, and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controverfy bleeding, the more intangled by your hearing: all the peace you make in their cause, is calling both the par-. ties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones. Bru. Come, come, you are well understood to be a (II) What barm can your besom confpectuities glean out of this character, &c.] If the editors have form'd any construction to themselves, of this epithet befom, that can be a propos to the sense of the context;-Davus fum, non Oedipus: it is too hard a riddle for me to expound. Menenius, 'tis plain, is abusing the tribunes, and bantering them ironically. By confpectuities he must mean, their fagacity, clearsightedness; and that they may not think he's complimenting them, he tacks an epithet to it, which quite undoes that character; i. e. bisson, blind, bleer-ey'd. Skinner, in his Etymologicon, explains this word, cacus; vox agro lincoln. ufitatissima. Ray concurs, in his north and fouth country words. And our author gives us this term again in his Hamlet, where the sense exactly corresponds with this interpretation. Run barefoot up and down, threatning the flames, i. e. blinding. It is spoken of Hecuba, whose eyes o'erflow and are perfecter |