CORIOLANUS.
"First Citizen. Consider you what services he has done for his country?
"Second Citizen. Very well; and could be content to give him good report for't, but that he pays himself with being proud."—Coriolanus, Act I., Scene 1.
Teuton Coriolanus loquitur:—
"Was ever man so proud as is this MARCIUS?"
There spake the babbling Tribune! Proud? Great gods!
All power seems pride to men of petty souls,
As the oak's knotted strength seems arrogance
To the slime-rooted and wind-shaken reed
That shivers in the shallows.
I who perched,
An eagle on the topmost pinnacle
Of the State's eminence, and harried thence
All lesser fowl like sparrows!—I to hide
Like a chased moor-hen in a marsh, and bate
The breath that awed the world into a whisper,
That would not shake a taper-flame or stir
A flickering torch to flaring!
"I do wonder
His insolence can brook to be commanded
Under COMINIUS." So the Roman said:
SICINIUS VELUTUS, thou hadst reason.
Under COMINIUS! Who's COMINIUS now?
The adolescent Emperor, or his cool
Complacent Chancellor? COMINIUS!
Unseasoned youth, or untried middle-age,
A shouting boy, or a sleek-spoken elder,
Hot stripling, cool supplanter!
I serve not
"Under COMINIUS," nay!—yet since he stands
There, where I made firm footing amidst chaos,
Stands in smug comfort where we Titans struggled—
MOLTKE, and I, and the great Emperor,—
Struggled for vantage, which he owes to us;—
Since he stands there, and I in shadow sit,
Silenced and chidden, I half feel I serve,
Whom he would bid to second. Second him,
In that Imperial Policy whose vast
And soaring shape, like air-launched eagle, seemed
To fill the sky, and shadow half the world?
As well the Eagle's self might be expected
To second the small jay!
My shadow, mine?
Yes, but distorted by the skew-cast ray
Of a far lesser sun than lit the noon
Of my meridian glory. So I spurn
The shrunken simulacrum!
And they shriek,
Shout censure at me, the cur-crowd who crouched,
Ere that a woman's hate and a boy's pride
Smote me, the new Abimelech, so sore;
They'd hush me, like a garrulous greybeard, chaired
At the hearth-corner out of harm; they'd hush
My voice—the valorous vermin! What say they?
"That's a brave fellow; but he's vengeance proud;
Loves not the common people!" Humph! I stand
As MARCIUS would not, in the market-place,
And show my wounds to the people. Is that pride?
I stooped to—her!—let me not think of that;
'T would poison paradise!—but is that pride?
The Roman pride was stiff and taciturn,
And I,—they tell me, I "will still be talking,"
And no MENENIUS is by to say
In charity of the modern MARCIUS,
"Consider this:—he has been bred i'the wars
Since he could draw a sword, and is ill-school'd
In bolted language: meal and bran together
He throws without distinction."
Well, well, well
"I would he had continued to his country
As he began; and not unknit, himself,
The noble knot he made." So they'll whine out
The smug SICINIUSES. But what I wonder
If once again the Volscians make new head!
Who, "like an eagle in a dovecote," then
Will flutter them and discipline AUFIDIUS?
An eagle! Shall I spurn my shadow, then
Trample my own projection? So they babble
Who'd silence me, make this my mouthpiece[1] mute;
Who prate of prosecution—banishment,
Perchance, anon, for me, as for the Roman,
Because "I cannot brook to be commanded
Under COMINIUS." What said VOLUMNIA
To her imperious son? "The man was noble,
But with his last attempt he wiped it out;
Destroy'd his country; and his name remains
To the ensuing age abhorr'd." I would not have
My own VIRGILIA say so—she who frets,
At my colossal chafing. ARNIM's shade
Would mock my fall; but silent Friedrichsruh
Irks me, whilst lesser spirits so misshape
My vast designs, whose shadow, dwarfed, distorted,
I trample in my anger, thus—thus—thus!
Footnote 1: [(return)]
The Hamburger Nachrichten, in whose columns (says the Times) Prince BISMARCK, according to the friends of the Government, "inspires incessant attacks upon the Imperial Policy, domestic, foreign, and colonial, and especially upon the proceedings of his successor, General CAPRIVI."
