A& II. Howleglas the husbandmans gowne and made thereof a woulfe with the head and feete, &c. Then sayd the maister, I ment that you should have made up the russet gown, for a husbandman's gowne is here called a wolfe." By a wolvish gown, therefore, (if gown be the true reading) Shakspere might have meant Coriolanus to compare the dress of a Roman candidate to the coarse frock of a ploughman, who exposed himself to solicit the votes of his fellow rusticks. STEEVENS. Why in this wolvish tongue.] The old copy's reading in and not with shews that tongue was, as Mr. Steevens conjectures, an errour of the press for toge. The very same mistake has happened in Othello, where we meet "the tongued consuls," instead of toged consuls. MALONE. 612. Coriolanus seems now, in earnest, to petition for the consulate: perhaps we may better read: -battles thrice six I've seen, and you have heard of; for your voices FARMER. 658. aged custom] This was a strange inattention. The Romans at this time had but lately changed the regal for the consular government: for Coriolanus was banished the eighteenth year after the expulson of the kings. WARBURTON. 664. ignorant to see't?] Were you ignorant to sce it, is, did you want knowledge to discern it. JOHNSON. 672. -arriving A place of potency.-] Thus Thus the old copy, and rightly. So, in the third part -those powers that the queen "Hath rais'd in Gallia, have arriv'd our coast." STEEVENS. 693. free contempt,] That is, with contempt open and unrestrained. 1 JOHNSON. 702. Your su'd-for tongues?] Your tongues that have been hitherto solicited. Or in other words your suffrages. 714. STEEVENS. * * * Enforce his pride,] Object his pride, and enforce the objection. JOHNSON. 719. -his present portance,] i. e. carriage. So, in Othello: "And portance in my travels' history." STEEVENS. 740. 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, rom whence this passage is directly translated. 740. And Censorinus Was his great ancestor.] POPE. 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 A& III. 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 Henry IV. act i. line 71. where an account is given of the prisoners took 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, Mordake 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. 747. Scaling his present bearing with his past,] That is weighing his past and present behaviour. JOHNSON. 760. -observe and answer The vantage of his anger.] Mark, catch, and improve the opportunity, which his hasty anger will afford us. JOHNSON. ACT III. -PRANK them in authority,] Plume, deck, Line 28- JOHNSON. 45. why rule you not their teeth?] The metaphor is from men's setting a bull-dog or mastiff upon any one. WARBURTON. i. e. likely to provide better for the security of the commonwealth than you (whose business it is) will do. To which the reply is pertinent: Why then should I be consul? 74. This palt'ring Becomes not Rome ;- -] WARBURTON. That is, this trick of dissimulation; this shuffling. Thus in Mackbeth, act v. line 342: And be these jugling fiends no more believ'd, That palter with us in a double sense. JOHNSON. 76. laid falsely] Falsely for treacherously. JOHNSON. Regard me as I do not flatter, and Therein behold themselves: -] Let them look in the mirror which I hold up to them, a mirror which does not flatter, and see themselves. 88. The cockle of rebellion, -] Cockle is a weed which grows up with the corn. The thought is from sir Tho. North's translation of Plutarch, where it is given as follows: "Moreover he said, that they nourished against themselves the naughty seed and cockle of insolency and sedition, which had been sowed and scattered abroad among the people, &c." STEEVENS. 98. meazels,] Mesell is used in Pierce Plowmmn's Vision for a leper. The same word frequently occurs in the London Prodigal. 114. -minnows? STEEVENS. -] A minnow is one of the smallest river fish, called in some counties a pink. JOHNSON. 116. 'Twas from the canon.] Was contrary to the established rule; it was a form of speech to which he had no right. 122. The horn and noise- -] ing called him Triton before. 125. Then vail your ignorance: JOHNSON. Alluding to his hav- -] The sense is If this man has power, let the ignorance that gave it him vail or bow down before him. JOHNSON. If they be senators: and they are no less, When, both your voices blended, the greatest taste Most palates theirs.] The plain meaning is, that senators and plèbeians are equal, when the highest taste is best pleased with that which pleases the lowest. STEEVENS. 135. -and my soul akes;] The mischief and absurdity of what is called Imperium in imperio, is here finely expressed.. WARBURTON. 141. Whoever gave that counsel, &c.] So, in the old translation of Plutarch: "Therefore sayed he, they that gaue counsell, and persuaded that the corne should be giuen out to the common people gratis, as they used to doe in citties of Græce, where the people had more absolute power: dyd but only nourishe their disobedience, which would breake out in the ende, to the |