portance, they no longer appear; in Cæsar, where their degeneracy ruined the republic, they are shewn in all their weakness; in Coriolanus, where they can oppose but not stop the progress of Rome's political career, they appear equally endowed with good and bad qualities. We must allow, that the populace are not flattered. The multitude are not alone blamed by Coriolanus as inconstant and variable, they make him conscious of their changeableness by their behaviour concerning his election. Not alone does Menenius say, that their imprudence "transports them by calamity thither where more attends them", but we find them actually on this road, and their leaders surpass them in that popular frenzy; what is inconvenient is not believed and is concealed from the people, and the messenger is flogged, who brings the unwelcome truth. It is true, they are not alone reproached by words with unjustly ascribing to the government what is perhaps the decree of Providence, that they curse the justice that overtakes the criminal, and persecute the great with hatred; we see them ourselves in action, now loving and now hating without a reason and, as it always happens in stirring times, scattering abroad the exciting common-places, which have much show and little truth. Coriolanus despises all the deed and capacity of the people, which "where it should find lions, finds hares", but the poet has actually shewn us their cowardice, and their love of plunder. On the other hand we must not be, like Coriolanus, unreasonable, and overlook the fact, that Shakespeare has introduced some better and braver among the people, who, when the general calls for volunteers, all shout and follow him, to his great joy and admiration. We must not omit to observe, that the

whole mass of the people acknowledge the merit of Coriolanus, that the zeal to admire and applaud the conqueror is universal, that his party among the people seems very great, that, even the inflamed and excited people acknowledge he is not avaricious, that he is not more proud than brave, that, with regard to his haughtiness, they take into consideration the power of nature in him, that they acknowledge, his merit surpasses their power to recompense. Menenius imagined that, if the nobles did not keep them in awe, they would destroy themselves, yet they acknowledge readily the wisdom of his fable, before which their wisdom yields. The friends of Coriolanus expected that the people, when left to themselves on his banishment would fall into confusion, but to their surprise, peace and union prevail. If fickleness be the attribute of the populace in all ages, there is an advantage even in this fault, which is quite opposed to the stiff obstinacy of the aristocrat; the populace become, through this quality, a manageable mass, which a wise man, like Menenius, can easily guide: if it be easily inflamed, it is also easily calmed again, and this quality of ready forgiveness, Menenius himself praises in the people. Their hostility against Coriolanus is excusable on account of his indifference and haughty contempt, on account of the scorn and enmity, with which the proud man intentionally challenges their hatred.

Here, in fact, the good and bad qualities of the multitude are weighed truly, and even with moderation. If, however, we would find out the poet's estimation of the democratic and aristocratic principles, we must, as we intimated above, compare the highest representative of

both principles, Coriolanus, with Brutus and Cassius, not the populace with Coriolanus, who is intended by the poet expressly and in accordance with history, to tower, like a hero, above them. We might compare this character with Marlowe's transcendant heroes, if Shakespeare's exaggeration were intended for genuine nature, and our admiration claimed in good faith, as is the case in similar descriptions of the old school of poetry, whereas with him, on the contrary, this outdoing of nature breaks to pieces of itself as something unnatural, and leaves in the observer a very mixed feeling. The poet has taken pains, to makethe exceptional pride and greatness of his hero possible. He has given him a mother, glowing with patriotism, early left a widow, who has centered all her pride, her strength, and her love, on making her only and early distinguished son, the chief hero and ruler of his country. This Volumnia is a grand, but not an attractive woman, who considers her masculine disposition as an honourable characteristic, and who says, had she been the wife of Hercules, she would have undertaken six of his labours for him. She has "like a hen clucked him to the wars"; if she had been his wife, she would "freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour," than at home where he "would show most love"; she knows his wounds by heart, and old as she is, she is enthusiastic in proudly imagining his warlike exploits, and his return with "bloody brows". She tells him with the utmost satisfaction, that no son has so much to thank his mother for as he has. Never had he been an hour out of her sight. She trained him in and for dangers and ambition; she taught him early that misfortune tries courage; had she a dozen sons, she would rather, that "eleven should

die nobly for their country, than one voluptuously surfeit out of action." She can boast, that Coriolanus has "sucked his valiantness from her", and she looks with pride on the realization of her boldest imaginings. This pride her son has inherited from her, although she denies it, and in a certain degree, is justified in denying it. Her's was pride in her son; his, pride in himself; idolized by her, and by the friends of the family, Coriolanus' innate and cherished selfishness, through the delicate flattery of his well-meaning fosterer and friends, became great and aspiring haughtiness. Even his contempt for the people was first instilled into him by his mother; he was their enemy in his earliest youth, before he had ever come into collision with them. Volumnia educated her son in the conviction, that man was "no better than picture-like, if renown made it not stir”; in contrast to Antony, therefore, Coriolanus is instinctively brought up to the activity of public and military life; he

"rewards

His deeds with doing them, and is content
To spend the time to end it";

it seems to him a thing not to be thought of, that he would sit in the sun and have "his head scratched", when the alarum were struck. He has been trained from childhood to an elevation above the ordinary and the vulgar; he has, says Volumnia, "affected the fine strains of honour, to imitate the graces of the gods". These overstrained claims on himself and others, springing from pride and begetting a greater pride, made him in time unfit for every thing, and ruinous to himself, because with them every good and every bad quality rose to a height, that

could not, as it were, support itself; he strove for a degree of merit, "that stifled itself by its own excess.' No idle dream of honour impels him to seek for renown; he wishes to be, not to seem the first; in this sense he is an aristocrat in the simplest and noblest meaning of the word; with him the name and the rank are nothing, but everything, consistent with true pride, lies in real merit; it would not satisfy him, like Cæsar, to be rather the first in the smallest place in the world, than the second in the greatest; he wishes to be, not the first in rank, but the greatest in deeds in the whole earth.

What induced Shakespeare, to endow the hero of this play with this superhuman, demi-godlike greatness? History imposed upon the poet a catastrophe of the rarest kind. Coriolanus, after his banishment fights against his country, for which, before, he would have striven in the hardest battles, without requiring any reward; he enters into a league with his bitterest enemy, from a cold, unfeeling thirst for vengeance; then, at the certain peril of his life, he suddenly abandons this revenge at the entreaty of his mother. These contradictions, Shakespeare thought, could only be imputed to a man, who from nature and education had carried his virtues and his faults to extremes, which rendered the change of his different qualities into their opposites, natural This is managed with an art and a delicacy, which can scarcely be suspected in the apparently coarse strokes of this delineation.

First his unmeasured thirst for glory, which in an heroic age can only seek its satisfaction in the praise bestowed on the highest valour. If valour be "the chiefest virtue," it is said of him, that he is then "singly counterpoised in the world."