IT

Is not the ground which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish and preserve them, is to reduce them ad principia; a rule in religion and nature, as well as in civil administration? [Again.] Was not the Persian magic a reduction or correspondence of the principles and architectures of nature to the rules and policy of governments? - Questions to be asked.]' -Advancement of Learning.

T is by means of this popular rejection of the Hero's claims, which the tribunes succeed in procuring, that the Poet is enabled to complete his exhibition and test of the virtue which he finds in his time 'chiefest among men, and that which most dignifies the haver'; the virtue which he finds in his time rewarded with patents of nobility, with patrician trust, with priestly authority, with immortal fame, and thrones and dominions, with the disposal of the human welfare, and the entail of it to the crack of doom- no matter what 'goslings' the law of entail may devolve it on.

He makes use of this incident to complete that separation he is effecting in the hitherto unanalysed, ill-defined, popular notions, and received and unquestioned axioms of practice — that separation of the instinctive military heroism, and the principle of the so-called heroic greatness, from the true principles of heroism and nobility, the true principle of subjection and sovereignty in the individual human nature and in the common-weal.

That martial virtue has been under criticism and suspicion from the beginning of this action. It was shown from the first-from that ground and point of observation which the

sufferings of the diseased common-weal made for it - in no favourable light. It was branded in the first scene, in the person of its Hero, as a dog to the commonalty.' It is one of the wretched 'commons' who invents, in his distress, that title for it; but the Poet himself exhibits it, not descriptively only, but dramatically, as something more brutish than that — eating the poor man's corn that the gods have sent him, and gnawing his vitals, devouring him soul and body, 'tooth and fell.' It was shown up from the first as an instinct that men share with 'rats'. It was brought out from the first, and exhibited with its teeth in the heart of the common-weal. The Play begins with a cross-questioning in the civil streets, of that sentiment which the hasty affirmations of men enthrone. It was brought out from the first-it came tramping on in the first act, in the first scene-with its sneer at the commons' distress, longing to make a quarry of the quartered slaves, as high' as the plumed hero of it could prick his lance'; and that, too, because they rebelled at famine, as slaves will do sometimes, when the common notion of hunger is permitted to instruct them in the principle of new unions; when that so impressive, and urgent, and unappeasable teacher comes down to them from the Capitol, and is permitted by their rulers to induct them experimentally into the doctrine of 'extensive wholes,' and 'larger congregations,' and 'the predominance of powers.' And it so happened, that the threat above quoted was precisely the threat which the founder of the reigning house had been able to carry into effect here a hundred years before, in putting down an insurrection of that kind, as this author chanced to be the man to know.

6

But the cry of the enemy is heard without; and this same principle, which shows itself in such questionable proofs of love at home, becomes with the change of circumstances - patriotism. But the Poet does not lose sight of its identity under this change. This love, that looks so like hatred in the Roman streets, that sniffs there so haughtily at questions about corn, and the price of coals,' and the price of labour, while it loves Rome so madly at the Volscian gates-this love, that sneers

at the hunger and misery of the commons at home, while it makes such frantic demonstrations against the common enemy abroad, appears to him to be a very questionable kind of love, the least of it.

to say

In that fine, conspicuous specimen of this quality, which the hero of his story offers him this quality which the hostilities of nations deify - he undertakes to sift it a little. While in the name of that virtue which has at least the merit of comprehending and conserving a larger unity, a more extensive whole, than the limit of one's own personality, 'it runs reeking o'er the lives of men, as 't were a perpetual spoil'; while under cover of that name which in barbaric ages limits human virtue, and puts down upon the map the outline of it — the bound which human greatness and virtue is required to come out to; while in the name of country it shows itself 'from face to foot a thing of blood, whose every motion is timed with dying cries,' undaunted by the tragic sublimities of the scene, this Poet confronts it, and boldly identifies it as that same principle of state and nobility which he has already exhibited at home.

That sanguinary passion which the heat of conflict provokes is but the incident; it is the principle of acquisition, it is the natural principle of absorption, it is the instinct that nature is full of, that nature is alive with; but the one that she is at war with, too at war with in the parts—one that she is for ever opposed to, and conquering in the members, with her mathematical axioms with her law of the whole, of 'the worthier whole,' of 'the greater congregation'; it is that principle of acquisition which it is the business of the state to set bounds to in the human constitution - which gets branded with other names, very vulgar ones, too, when the faculty of grasp and absorption is smaller. That, and none other, is the principle which predominates, and is set at large here. The leashed' dog' of the commonalty at home, is let slip here in the conquered town. The teeth that preyed on the Roman weal there, have elongated and grown wolfish on the Volscian fields. The consummation of the captor's deeds in the captured

city- those matchless deeds of valor-the consummation for Coriolanus in Corioli, for the conqueror in the conquest,' is 'Now ALL'S HIS.' And the story of the battle without is 'He never stopped to ease his breast with panting, till he could call both field and city — OURS.'

The Poet sets down nought in malice, but he will have the secret of this LOVE, he will have the heart out of it- this love that stops so short with geographic limits,-that changes with the crossing of a line into a demon from the lowest pit.

But it is a fair and noble specimen, it is a highly-qualified, 'illustrious instance,' of this instinctive heroic virtue, he has seized on here, and made ready now for his experiment; and even when he brings him in, reeking from the fresh battlefield, with the blood undried on his brow, rejoicing in his harvest, even amid the horrors of the conquered town, this Poet, with his own ineffable and matchless grace of moderation, will have us pause and listen while his Coriolanus, ere he will take food or wine in his Corioli, gives orders that the Volscian who was kind to him personally the poor man at whose house he lay shall be saved, when he is so weary with slaying Volscians that his very memory is tired,' and he cannot speak his poor friend's name. He tracks this conqueror home again, and he watches him more sharply than ever this man, whose new name is borrowed from his taken town. CORIOLANUS of CORIOLI. Marcius, plain Caius Marcius, now no more. He will think it treason even in the conquered city he will resent it if any presume to call him by that petty name henceforth, or forget for a breathing space to include in his identity the town -the town, that in its sacked and plundered streets, and dying cries that, with that 'painting' which he took from it so lavishly, though he scorned the soldiers who took 'spoons' - has clothed him with his purple honours: those honours which this Poet will not let him wear any longer, tracked in the misty outline of the past, or in the misty complexity of the unanalysed conceptions of the vulgar, the fatal unscientific

opinion of the many-headed many; that old coat of arms, which the man of science will trace now anew (and not here only) with his new historic pencil, which he will fill now anewnot here only which he will fill on another page also, approaching his particular more near' — with all its fresh, recent historic detail, with all its hideous, barbaric detail.

He is jealous, this new Poet of his kind, he is jealous of this love that makes such work in Volscian homes, in Volscian mother's sons, under this name, 'that men sanctify, and turn up the white of the eyes to.' He flings out suspicions on the way home, that it is even narrower than it claims to be: he is in the city before it; he contrives to jet a jar into the sound of the trumpets that announce its triumphant entry; he has thrown over all the glory of its entering pageant, the suspicion that it is base and mercenary, that it is base and avaricious, though it puts nothing in its pocket, but takes its hire on its brows.

Menenius. Brings a victory in his pocket.

Volumnia. On's brows Menenius.

He surprises the mother counting up the cicatrices. He arrests the cavalcade on its way to the Capitol, and bids us note, in those private whispers of family confidence, how the Camp and the Capitol stand in this hero's chart, put down on the road to our own house.' Nay, he will bring out the haughty chieftain in person, and show him on his stage, standing in his 'wolfish gown,' showing the scars that he should hide, and asking, like a mendicant, for his hire. And though he does it proudly enough, and as if he did not care for this return, though he sets down his own services, and expects the people to set them down, to a disinterested love for his country, it is to this Poet's purpose to show that he was mistaken as to that. It is to his purpose to show that these two so different things which he finds confounded under one name and notion in the popular understanding here, and, what is worst of all, in the practical understanding of the populace, are two, and not one. That the mark of the primal differences, the