When he did need your loves; and do you think, That his contempt shall not be bruising to you, When he hath power to crush? Why, had your

bodies

No heart among you? Or had you tongues, to cry Against the rectorship of judgment?

SIC. Have you, Ere now, deny'd the asker? and, now again, On him,1 that did not ask, but mock, bestow Your su'd-for tongues ?2

3 CIT. He's not confirm'd, we may deny him yet. 2 CIT. And will deny him :

I'll have five hundred voices of that sound.

1 CIT. I twice five hundred, and their friends to piece 'em.

BRU. Get you hence instantly; and tell those

friends,

They have chose a consul, that will from them take
Their liberties; make them of no more voice
Than dogs, that are as often beat for barking,
As therefore kept to do so.

SIC.

Let them assemble; And, on a safer judgment, all revoke Your ignorant election: Enforce his pride,3

1 On him,] Old copy-of him. STEEVENS.

2 Your su'd-for tongues?] Your voices that hitherto have been solicited. STEEVENS.

Your voices, not solicited, by verbal application, but sued-for by this man's merely standing forth as a candidate.-Your suedfor tongues, however, may mean, your voices, to obtain which so many make suit to you; and perhaps the latter is the more just interpretation. MALONE.

3

Enforce his pride,] Object his pride, and enforce the objection. JOHNSON.

So afterwards:

Enforce him with his envy to the people—.'

STEEVENS.

And his old hate unto you: besides, forget not
With what contempt he wore the humble weed;
How in his suit he scorn'd
you: but your loves,
Thinking upon his services, took from you
The apprehension of his present portance,*
Which gibingly, ungravely he did fashion
After the inveterate hate he bears you.

5

BRU.
Lay
A fault on us, your tribunes; that we labour'd
(No impediment between) but that you must
Cast your election on him.

SIC.
Say, you chose him
More after our commandment, than as guided
By your own true affections: and that, your minds
Pre-occupy'd with what you rather must do
Than what you should, made you against the grain
To voice him consul: Lay the fault on us.

BRU. Ay, spare us not. Say, we read lectures

to you,

How youngly he began to serve his country,
How long continued: and what stock he springs of,
The noble house o'the Marcians; from whence

came

That Ancus Marcius, Numa's daughter's son,
Who, after great Hostilius, here was king:
Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,
That our best water brought by conduits hither;
And Censorinus, darling of the people,"

4

6.

-his present portance,] i. e. carriage. So, in Othello: "And portance in my travels' history." STEEVENS. Which gibingly,] The old copy, redundantly:

Which most gibingly, &c. STEEVEns.

And Censorinus, darling of the people,] This verse I have supplied; a line having been certainly left out in this place, as will appear to any one who consults the beginning of Plutarch's

And nobly nam'd so, being censor twice,7
Was his great ancestor.

8

Life of Coriolanus, from whence this passage is directly translated. POPE.

:

The passage in North's translation, 1579, runs thus "The house of the Martians at Rome was of the number of the patricians, out of which hath sprong many noble personages: whereof Ancus Martius was one, king Numaes daughter's sonne, who' was king of Rome after Tullus Hostilius. Of the same house were Publius and Quintus, who brought to Rome their best water they had by conduits. Censorinus also came of that familie, that was so surnamed because the people had chosen him censor twice."-Publius and Quintus and Censorinus were not the ancestors of Coriolanus, but his descendants. Caius Martius Rutilius did not obtain the name of Censorinus till the year of Rome 487; and the Marcian waters were not brought to that city by aqueducts till the year 613, near 350 years after the death of Coriolanus.

Can it be supposed, that he who would disregard such anachronisms, or rather he to whom they were not known, should have changed Cato, which he found in his Plutarch, to Calves, from a regard to chronology? See a former note, p. 39.

MALONE.

"And nobly nam'd so, being censor twice,] The old copy reads:-being twice censor; but for the sake of harmony, I have arranged these words as they stand in our author's original, Sir T. North's translation of Plutarch: "the people had chosen him censor twice." STEEVENS.

8 And Censorinus

Was his great ancestor.] Now the first censor was created U. C. 314, and Coriolanus was banished U. C. 262. The truth is this: the passage, as Mr. Pope observes above, was taken from Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus; who, speaking of the house of Coriolanus, takes notice both of his ancestors and of his posterity, which our author's haste not giving him leave to observe, has here confounded one with the other. Another instance of his inadvertency, from the same cause, we have in The First Part of King Henry IV. where an account is given of the prisoners taken on the plains of Holmedon:

"Mordake the earl of Fife, and eldest son

"To beaten Douglas

But the Earl of Fife was not son to Douglas, but to Robert Duke of Albany, Governor of Scotland. He took his account from Holinshed, whose words are, And of prisoners amongst

Sic.
One thus descended,
That hath beside well in his person wrought
To be set high in place, we did commend
To your remembrances: but you have found,
Scaling his present bearing with his past,"
That he's your fixed enemy, and revoke
Your sudden approbation.

BRU.

Say, you ne'er had done't, (Harp on that still,) but by our putting on:1 And presently, when you have drawn your number, Repair to the Capitol.

CIT. We will so: almost all [Several speak. Repent in their election.

BRU.

[Exeunt Citizens.

Let them go on;

This mutiny were better put in hazard,
Than stay, past doubt, for greater:

If, as his nature is, he fall in rage

With their refusal, both observe and answer
The vantage of his anger."

SIC.

To the Capitol:

others were these, Mordack earl of Fife, son to the governor Arkimbald, earl Douglas, &c. And he imagined that the Governor and Earl Douglas were one and the same person.

Scaling his present bearing with his past,] his past and present behaviour. JOHNSON.

3

66

'by our putting on:] i. e. incitation.
you protect this course,
"And put it on by your allowance."

So, in King Henry VIII:

WARBURTON.

That is, weighing

So, in K. Lear:

STEEVENS.

The vantage of his anger.] Mark, catch, and improve the opportunity, which his hasty anger will afford us.

JOHNSON.

Come; we'll be there before the stream o'the peo

ple; 3

And this shall seem, as partly 'tis, their own,
Which we have goaded onward.

[Exeunt.

ACT III. SCENE I.

The same. A Street.

Cornets. Enter CORIOLANUS, MENENIUS, CoMINIUS, TITUS LARTIUS, Senators, and Patricians.

COR. Tullus Aufidius then had made new head? LART. He had, my lord; and that it was, which caus'd

Our swifter composition.

COR. So then the Volces stand but as at first; Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road Upon us again.

3

Сом.

They are worn, lord consul, so,

the stream o' the people;] So, in King Henry VIII: The rich stream

Of lords and ladies having brought the queen

"To a prepar'd place in the choir," &c. MALONE.

+-- lord consul,] Shakspeare has here, as in other places, attributed the usage of England to Rome. In his time the title of lord was given to many officers of state who were not peers ; thus, lords of the council, lord ambassador, lord general, &c.

MALONE