Or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness To yield your voices? BRU. Fast foe to the plebeii, your voices might 8 Thus to have said, SIC. Tying him to aught; so, putting him to rage, BRU. Did you perceive, He did solicit you in free contempt9, 7 arriving A place of potency,] Thus the old copy, and rightly. So, in The Third Part of King Henry VI. Act V. Sc. III. : those powers that the queen "Hath rais'd in Gallia, have arriv'd our coast." STEEVENS. 8 Would think upon you-] Would retain a grateful remembrance of you, &c. MALONE. When he did need your loves; and do you think, No heart among you? Or had you tongues, to cry 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 Than dogs, that are as often beat for barking, SIC. Let them assemble; And, on a safer judgment, all revoke Your ignorant election: Enforce his pride 3, free contempt,] strained. That is, with contempt open and unre I 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 ob'ection. JOHNSON. So afterwards: "Enforce him with his envy to the people-." STEEVENS, And his old hate unto you: besides, forget not BRU. SIC. 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, 4 his present PORTANCE,] i. e. carriage. So, in Othello: "And portance in my travels' history." STEEVENs. 5 Which gibingly,] The old copy, redundantly: "Which most gibingly," &c. STEEVENS. 6 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 Life of Coriolanus, from whence this passage is directly translated, РОРЕ. The passage in North's translation, 1579, runs thus: "The And nobly nam'd so, being twice censor 7, 8 SIC. 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. 35. MALONE. 7 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 : 66 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 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. WARBURTON. To your remembrances: but you have found, BRU. Say, you ne'er had don't, (Harp on that still,) but by our putting on ': And presently, when you have drawn your number, Repair to the Capitol. CIT. We will so almost all [Several speak. Repent in their election. [Exeunt Citizens, Let them go on; BRU. If, as his nature is, he fall in rage With their refusal, both observe and answer SIC. To the Capitol: Come; we'll be there before the stream o' the 3 people3; And this shall seem, as partly 'tis, their own, 9 Scaling his present bearing with his past,] his past and present behaviour. JOHNSON. by our PUTTING ON :] i. e. incitation. - you protect this course, 1 66 [Exeunt. That is, weighing So, in K. Lear: "And put it on by your allowance." STEEVENS. So, in King Henry VIII.: 2 66 as putter on "Of these exactions observe and answer -." MALONE. The vantage of his anger.] Mark, catch, and improve the opportunity, which his hasty anger will afford us. JOHNSON. 3-the STREAM of the people ;] So, in King Henry VIII.: The rich stream 66 "Of lords and ladies having brought the queen "To a prepar'd place in the choir," &c. MALONE. |