BRU. Could you not have told him, As you were leffon'd,-When he had no power, But was a petty fervant to the state, 8 He was your enemy: ever spake against SIC. Thus to have said As you were fore-advis'd, had touch'd his fpirit, And try'd his inclination; from him pluck'd Either his gracious promife, which you might, As caufe had call'd you up, have held him to; Or else it would have gall'd his furly nature, Which easily endures not article Tying him to aught; fo, putting him to rage, You fhould have ta'en the advantage of his choler, And pafs'd him unelected: --arriving A place of potency,] Thus the old copy, and rightly. So, in the third part of King Hoy VI. A&. V. fc. iii: thofe powers that the queen Hath rais'd in Gallia, have arriv'd our coast." STEEVENS. 9 Would think upon you] Would retain a grateful remembrance of you, &c. MALONE. 2 -free contempt,] That is, with contempt open and unre. Arained. JOHNSON. When he did need your loves; and do you think, That his contempt fhall not be bruifing to you, When be hath power to crufh? Why, had your bodies No heart among you? Or had you tongues, to cry SIC. 2 Ere now, deny'd the afker? and, now again, 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 found. 1. CIT. I twice five hundred, and their friends to piece 'em. BRU. Get you hence inftantly; and tell those friends, They have chose a conful, that will from them take Let them affemble; SIC. * On him,] Old copy—of him—, STEEVENS. 3 Your fu'd-for tongues?] Your voices that hitherto have been folicited. STEEVENS. Your voices, not folicited, by verbal application, but fued-for by this man's merely ftanding forth as a candidate.-Your fued-for tongues, however, may mean, your voices, to obtain which fo many make fuit to you; and perhaps the latter is the more juft interpre lation. 4 MALONE. Enforce his pride,] Obje& his pride, and enforce the ob jedion. JOHNSON. So afterwards: “Enforce him with bis envy to the people." STEEVENS, And his old hate unto you: befides, forget not 6 5 BRU. SIC. BRU. Ay, fpare us not. Say, we read lectures to you, How youngly he began to ferve his country, came That Ancus Marcius, Numa's daughter's fon, 5 his prefent portance,] i. e. carriage. So, in Othello: Which gibingly,] The old copy, redundantly, Which moft gibingly, &c. STEEVENS. STEEVENS. 7 And Cenforinus, darling of the people,] This verfe I have fupplied; a line having been certainly left out in this place, as will appear to any one who confults the beginning of Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus, from whence this paffage is diredly tranflated, POPE And nobly nam'd fo, being cenfor twice, One thus defcended, SIC. The paffage in North's tranflation, 1579, runs thus: "The houfe of the Martians at Rome was of the number of the patricians, out of which hath fprong many noble perfonages: whereof Ancus Martius was one, king Numaes daughter's fonne, who was king of Rome after Tullus Hoftilius. Of the fame houfe were Publius and Quintus, who brought to Rome their beft water they had by conduits. Cenforinus alfo came of that familie, that was fo furnamed because the people had chofen him cenfor twice."-Publius and Quintus and Cenforinus were not the ancestors of Coriolanus, but his defcendants. Caius Martius Rutilius did not obtain the name of Cenforinus 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 difregard such anachronifms, or rather he to whom they were not known, fhould have changed Cato, which he found in his Plutarch, to Calves, from a regard to chronology? See a former note, p. 239. MALONE. 5 And nobly nam'd fo, being cenfor twice,] The old copy reads: being twice cenfor; but for the fake of harmony, I have arranged these words as they fland in our author's original,--Sir ̧T. North's tranflation of Plutarch: " the people had chofen him cenfor twice." STEEVENS. 7 And Cenforinus- Was his great ancestor.] Now the firft cenfor was created U. C. 314, and Coriolanus was banifhed U. C. 262. The truth is this: the paffage, as Mr. Pope obferves above, was taken from Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus; who, fpeaking of the house of Coriolanus, takes notice both of his ancestors and of his pofterity, which our author's hafte not giving him leave to obferve, has here confounded one with the other. Another inftance of his inadvertency, from the fame caufe, we have in the first part of Henry IV. where an account is given of the prifoners took on the plains of Holmedon: Mordake the earl of Fife, and eldest fon 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 Holinfhed, whofe words are, And of prisoners amongst others were thefe, Mordack earl of Fife, fon to the governor Arkimbald, earl Douglas, &c. And he imagined that the governor and earl Douglas were one and the fame person. WARBURTON. 8 To be fet high in place, we did commend BRU. Say, you ne'er had done't, (Harp on that fill,) but by our putting on: 9 And presently, when you have drawn your number, Repair to the Capitol. CIT. We will fo: almoft all [feveral fpeak. Repent in their election. BRU. [Exeunt Citizens. Let them go on; This mutiny were better put in hazard, If, as his nature is, he fall in rage With their refufal, both obferve and anfwer The vantage of his anger." SIC. To the Capitol: Come; we'll be there before the fream o' the And this fhall feem, as partly 'tis, their own, Which we have goaded onward. 8 [Exeunt. s Scaling his prefent bearing with his paft, ] That is weighing his paft and prefent behaviour. JOHNSON. 9 by our putting on: ] i. e. incitation. So, in King Lear: you protect this courfe 2 "And put it on by your allowance." STEEVENS. So, in King Henry VIII: "Of thefe exa&ions." See Vol. XVI. p 29, n. 4. MALONE. - obferve and answer The vantage of his anger.] Mark, catch, and improve the opportunity, which his hafty anger will afford us. JOHNSON. 3 the ftream of the people; ] So, in King Henry VIII : The rich fream "Of lords and ladies having brought the queen To a prepar'd place in the choir," &c. MALONE. |