"CORIOLANUS."

HIS play illustrates the wonderfully philosophic impartiality of Shakespeare's politics. His own country's history furnished him with no matter but what was too recent to be devoted to patriotism. Besides, he knew that the instruction of ancient history would seem more dispassionate. In Coriolanus and Julius Cæsar, you see Shakespeare's good-natured laugh at mobs. Compare this with Sir Thomas Brown's aristocracy of spirit. Act i. sc. 1. Marcius' speech :

"He that depends

Upon your favours, swims with fins of lead,

And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?" I suspect that Shakespeare wrote it transposed! "Trust ye? Hang ye!"

Ib. sc. 10. Speech of Aufidius :

"Mine emulation

Hath not that honour in't, it had; for where

I thought to crush him in an equal force,

True sword to sword; I'll potch at him some way,
Or wrath, or craft may get him.—

My valour (poison'd

With only suffering stain by him) for him

Shall fly out of itself: nor sleep, nor sanctuary,
Being naked, sick, nor fane, nor capitol,

The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifices,
Embankments all of fury, shall lift up

Their rotten privilege and custom 'gainst
My hate to Marcius"

I have such deep faith in Shakespeare's heartlore, that I take for granted that this is in nature,

I

and not as a mere anomaly; although I cannot in myself discover any germ of possible feeling, which could wax and unfold itself into such sentiment as this. However, I perceive that in this speech is meant to be contained a prevention of shock at the after-change in Aufidius's character.

Act ii. sc. 1. Speech of Menenius :—

"The most sovereign prescription in Galen," &c.

Was it without, or in contempt of, historical information that Shakespeare made the contemporaries of Coriolanus quote Cato and Galen? I cannot decide to my own satisfaction.

Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Coriolanus :—

"Why in this wolvish toge should I stand hero "

That the gown of the candidate was of whitened wool, we know. Does "wolvish" or "woolvish" mean "made of wool?" If it means

what is the sense?

Act iv. sc. 7. Speech of Aufidius:

"All places yield to him ere he sits dowu," &c.

wolfish,"

I have always thought this, in itself so beautiful speech, the least explicable from the mood and full intention of the speaker of any in the whole works of Shakespeare. I cherish the hope that I am mistaken, and that, becoming wiser, I shall discover some profound excellence in that, in which I now appear to detect an imperfection.

"JULIUS CÆSAR."

ACT I. sc. 1.-—

"Mar. What meanest thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!"

THE

HE speeches of Flavius and Marullus are in blank verse. Wherever regular metre can be rendered truly imitative of character, passion, or personal rank, Shakespeare seldom, if ever, neglects it. Hence this line should be read:

"What mean'st by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow!"

I say regular metre: for even the prose has in the highest and lowest dramatic personage, a Cobbler or a Hamlet, a rhythm so felicitous and so severally appropriate, as to be a virtual metre.

Ib. sc. 2.

"Bru. A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March." If my ear does not deceive me, the metre of this line was meant to express that sort of mild philosophic contempt, characterising Brutus even in his first casual speech. The line is a trimeter,-each dipodia containing two accented and two unaccented syllables, but variously arranged, as thus:—

A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.
Ib. Speech of Brutus :-

"Set honour in one eye, and death i' the other,
And I will look on both indifferently."

Warburton would read "death" for "both;" but
I prefer the old text. There are here three things,

the public good, the individual Brutus' honour, and his death. The latter two so balanced each other, that he could decide for the first by equipoise; nay -the thought growing-that honour had more weight than death. That Cassius understood it as Warburton, is the beauty of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus.

Ib. Cæsar's speech:

"He loves no plays

As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music," &c.

"This is not a trivial observation, nor does our poet mean barely by it, that Cassius was not a merry, sprightly man; but that he had not a due temperament of harmony in his disposition.”—Theobald's

note."

O Theobald! what a commentator wast thou, when thou would'st affect to understand Shake-· speare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of thine to fathom.

Ib. sc. 3. Cæsar's speech:

"Be factious for redress of all these griefs;
And I will set this foot of mine as far,

As who goes farthest."

I understand it thus: "You have spoken as a conspirator; be so in fact, and I will join you. Act on your principles, and realize them in a fact." Act ii. sc. 1. Speech of Brutus :

"It must be by his death; and, for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,

But for the general. He would be crown'd:

How that might change his nature, there's the question.

And, to speak truth of Cæsar,

I have not known when his affections sway'd

This speech is singular;-at least, I do not at

present see into Shakespeare's motive, his rationale, or in what point of view he meant Brutus' character to appear. For surely-(this, I mean, is what I say to myself, with my present quantum of insight, only modified by my experience in how many instances I have ripened into a preception of beauties, where I had before descried faults;) surely, nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him-to him, the stern Roman republican; namely,-that he would have no objection to a king, or to Cæsar, a monarch in Rome, would Cæsar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal cause-none in Cæsar's past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his Gauls in the Senate ?-Shakespeare, it may be said, has not brought these things forward-True;-and this is just the ground of my perplexity. What character did Shakespeare mean his Brutus to be?

Ib. Speech of Brutus:

"For if thou path, thy native semblance on."

Surely, there need be no scruple in treating this "path" as a mere misprint or mis-script for "put." In what place does Shakespeare-where does any other writer of the same age-use "path" as a verb for "walk?"

Ib. sc. 2. Cæsar's speech :

"She dreamt to-night, she saw my statue."

No doubt, it should be statua, as in the same age, they more often pronouncd "heroes" as a trisyl