reproving them, though at the same time sensible of their virtues; who smilingly stoops to play jokes upon them, that so he may soothe and sweeten their exasperated minds; exercising his good-natured wit to heal as fast as his sharpness wounds; and thus standing at an equal remove from the insulting aristocrat and the snaky demagogue.

The hero offers a capital study for those who, in their estimates of men, have not learned to temper their thoughts to "a web of mingled yarn," such as human nature, even in its best specimens, ordinarily presents. The character is a very mixed one; and all its parts, good and bad, are fashioned on so large a scale as to yield matter enough for making out a strong case either way, according as the observer's mind is set to a course of all blame or all praise; while at the same time the several lines are so energetic and bold as to render it not easy for one to steer clear of all extremes, and so to take the impression of a given side as to fit the subject all round. The main features of the man are drawn together in Plutarch with so vigorous yet delicate a hand, that we should seem hardly excusable in omitting the passage. We subjoin it from North, making no changes but what are needful for due compression of the matter:

"Caius Marcius, being left an orphan by his father, was brought up under his mother, a widow, who taught us by experience that orphanage bringeth many discommodities to a child, but doth not hinder him to become an honest man, and to excel in virtue above the common sort. This man also is a good proof to confirm some men's opinions, that a rare and excellent wit untaught doth bring forth many good and evil things together; as a fat soil bringeth forth both herbs and weeds. For his natural wit and great heart did marvelously stir up his courage to do and attempt notable acts. But, on the other side, for lack of education, he was so choleric and impatient that he would yield to no living creature; which made him churlish, uncivil, and altogether unfit for any man's conversation. Yet men, marveling much at his constancy, that he was never

overcome with pleasure nor money, and how he would endure easily all manner of pains and travels, thereupon well liked his stoutness and temperance. But, for all that, they could not be acquainted with him, as one citizen useth to be with another, his behavior was so unpleasant to them by reason of a certain insolent and stern manner he had. . . . . It is daily seen that, honor lighting on young men before the time, the desire to win more dyeth straight in them, the same having no deep root: whereas the first honor that valiant minds come upon doth quicken up their appetite, hasting them forward as with force of wind to enterprise things of high-deserving. This desire being bred in Marcius, he strained still to pass himself in manliness, and his noble service did still advance his fame. And, as for others, the only respect that made them valiant was, that they hoped to have honor; but, touching Marcius, the only thing that made him to love honor was the joy he saw his mother did take of him. For nothing made him so happy, as that his mother might hear everybody praise and commend him; that she might always see him return with a crown upon his head, and still embrace him, with tears running down her cheeks, for joy."

In strict keeping with this account of the man, Shakespeare represents pride as the back-bone of his composition. And his pride is rendered altogether inflammable and uncontrollable by passion, insomuch that, let but a spark of provocation be struck into the latter, and the former at once flames up beyond measure, and sweeps away all the regards of prudence, of decorum, and even of life. It is therefore perfectly characteristic of the man that an unexpected word of scornful reproach stings him to the quick the instant it touches his ear, he explodes like a rocket. It is on this principle that the wily Tribunes work, plying their craft and watching their time to provoke him into some fatal provocation of popular resentment. Hence the Poet, with great judgment, and without any hint from the history, makes Aufidius, when the time is ripe for firing off the conspiracy against his life, touch

him into an ecstasy of passionate rage by spitting the term "boy" at him. Now, his very pride, if duly guarded by the ensconcements of reason and self-respect, would have caused him, from the monstrous unfitness of such an epithet, to answer it with calm and silent scorn: but he seems to resent it in proportion as it strikes wide of him, and makes its very unfitness to him the cause of its power over him.

The natural working of these qualities, together with the gigantic structure of the man in other parts, made his character an apt and inviting occasion to represent the struggle between those two antagonist elements in the state, which in their reconcilement and unity did. much towards rearing up the solid greatness and grandeur of old Rome. There is in the people much that is really despicable. This the hero seizes on greedily, and makes the most of, as favoring that whereon his pride fastens, and at the same time winks away whatsoever there is in them of a redeeming quality: he scorns their meanness, and is glad to find it in them as giving him cause for scorning them; will see in them nothing but what is vile, and would fain make them as vile as he thinks them, that so his scorn may stand justified to his sense of right. Still he is placed where his pride can only come at its proper food by their suffrage; for its dearest gratification he must needs look to that which most galls and offends it. This puts him upon trying to extort their admiration and homage while making them hate his person: what he most prides himself upon is to have his greatness force honors from them in spite of his insolence to them; because such an inverse proportion between their returns and receipts serves to magnify and set off his superiority. This is well shown in what falls from one of those almost characterless persons of the drama, in whom the Poet sometimes puts much candor and shrewdness of observation, and then uses them as the mouth-piece of his own judgment: "If he did not care whether he had their love or no, he would wave indifferently 'twixt doing them neither good nor harm; but he seeks their hate with

greater devotion than they can render it him, and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover him their opposite." Hence, when he goes out to beg their voices, he takes care to season his requests with scorn, and to let them see that his spirit still disclaims what his tongue speaks: then, if they excuse his spirit on the score of his formal compliance, this will be his triumph.

The hero's pride, however, is far from being of a mean and narrow cast: nobly elemented out of the various regards of rank, family, country, talents, and courage, it therefore partakes the general greatness of his character; is of a towering and majestic pitch; and as it grows not less by what he derives from and shares with others, than by what is peculiar to himself, so it is of that high and generous scope that commonly issues in great virtues as well as great faults. Hence it is nowise such as, of itself, to eat out the better juices of humanity: on the contrary, modesty, gratitude, openness of heart and hand, are its chosen playfellows; and it is of an element that would keep clean and fresh the breast where it dwells, and under whose stern yet free patronage, tenderness of heart, purity and rectitude of life, and many of the milder and gentler qualities, have their best cherishing; a sure source of replenishment to whatsoever virtues it guards, because its own best source of thrift is in the noble growth it fosters. Which is rarely shown in that, with all his passionate craving after fame, he still counts it his highest honor to be the cause that others are honored. For he is as jealous of the merit as of the position of his fellow-Patricians; would guard their virtue as carefully as their rank; is not less strenuous to have them deserve than to have them hold the place of supreme rule and reverence in the state. He is prouder, too, of his mother than of himself; cares more to please her than himself; owns no titles to honor in himself but what he can refer to that honored source, nor covets any returns but such as will magnify the part she has in him: in brief, he looks up to her as a superior being whose benediction is the best grace of his life; and his

profound awe of her person and of her rights in him is itself a principle of such intrinsic greatness and energy as would burst asunder the cold dry ligatures of an ignoble and ungenerous nature. When, upon her coming out to intercede with him, he says, "My mother bows; as if Olympus to a molehill should in supplication nod"-we have the sublimity of filial reverence, imaged in a form not more magnificent in itself than characteristic of the speaker.

Volumnia has the same essential greatness of character, and the same high-strung pride; the whole being cast, however, in a perfectly feminine mold, and rendered mellow and considerate by a larger experience and a more disinterested spirit. More firm and steady, too, because less passionate, her pride is never inflamed into any breach of propriety and decorum: on the contrary, she seems to become more dignified and self-possessed when her pride is chafed and galled. And her energy of will and thought, if not greater than her son's, yet in the end outwrestles his, because it proceeds on grounds less selfish and personal. It was a very profound insight of woman's nature that led the Poet to represent her as exhorting her son to temporize with the people, and to use arts for conciliating them which had no allowance in his bosom's truth; for even so woman, as having less of willfulness and more of sensibility in the reason, naturally judges the quality of an action more by the consequences which she hopes or fears therefrom. What a story does the life of this mother and this son, with their reciprocal action and influence, as set forth in the play, tell us of the old Roman matronage, and of that profound religion toward womanhood which formed so large and powerful an element in the social constitution of republican Rome! And what a comment does this deep awe of motherhood, taken along with the history of that wonderful nation, read upon the precept,-"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee!" reverence of children to their fathers is the principle that

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