He steels himself against Cominius; he steels himself against Menenius. 'He sits in gold,' Cominius reports, 'his eye red as 'twould burn Rome'—a small flambeau the poet thinks for so large a city. 'He no more remembers his mother than an eight year old horse,' is the poor old Menenius querulous account of him, when with a cracked heart he returns and reports how the conditions of a man are altered in him: but while he is making that already-quoted report of this superhuman growth and assumption of a divine authority and honour in the Military Chieftain, the Poet is quietly starting a little piece of philosophical machinery that will shake out that imperial pageant, and show the slave that is hidden under it, for it is no man at all, but, in very deed, a slave, as Hamlet calls it, 'passion's slave,' 'a pipe for fortune's finger to sound what stop she please.' For that state,—that command—depends on that which 'changes,'— fortuities, impressions, nay, it has the principle of revolution within it. It is its nature to change. The single passion cannot engross the large, many-passioned, complex nature, so rich and various in motivity, so large and comprehensive in its surveys—the single passion seeks in vain to subdue it to its single end. That reigning passion must give way when it is spent, or sooner if its master come. You cannot make it look to-day as it looked yesterday; you cannot make it look when its rival affection enters as it looked when it reigned alone. An hour ago, the hue of resolution on its cheek glowed immortal red. It was strong enough to defy God and all his creatures; it would annul all worlds but that one which it was god of.
This is the speech of it on the lips of the actor who comes in to interpret to us the thinker's inaction, the thinker's irresolution, for 'it is conscience that makes cowards of us all.' Here is a man who is resolute enough. His will is not 'puzzled.' His thoughts, his scruples will not divide and destroy his purpose. Here is THE UNITY which precedes ACTION. This man is going to be revenged for his father. 'What would you undertake to do?' 'To cut his throat i' the church.'
'To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil.
Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit.
I dare damnation. To this point I stand
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes, only I'll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father.' [Only.]
That is your passionate speech, your speech of fire. That was what the principle of vindictiveness said when it was you, when it mastered you, and called itself by your name. Ay, it has many names, and many lips; but it is always one. That was what it said an hour ago; and now it is shrunk away you know not where, you cannot rally it, and you are there confounded, self-abandoned, self-annulled, a forgery, belying the identity which your visible form—which your human form, was made to promise,—a slave,—a pipe for fortune's finger. This is the kind of action which is criticised in the scientific drama, and 'rejected'; and the conclusion after these reviews and rejections, 'after every species of rejection,'—the affirmation is, that there is but one principle that is human, and that is GOOD yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and whose is true to that is true, in the human form, to the self which was, and will be. He cannot then be false to his yesterday, or tomorrow; he cannot then be false to himself; he cannot then be false to any man; for that is the self that is one in us all—that is the self of reason and conscience, not passion.
But as for this affection that is tried here now, that the diagram of this scene exhibits so tangibly, 'as it were, to the eye,'—this poor and private passion, that sits here, with its imperial crown on its head, in the place of God, but lacking His 'mercy,'—this passion of the petty man, that has made itself so hugely visible with its monstrous outstretching, that lies stretched out and glittering on these hills, with its dragon coils unwound, with its deadly fangs—those little fangs, that crush our private hearts, and torture and rend our daily lives—exposed in this great solar microscope, striking the common-weal,—as for this petty, usurping passion, there is a spectacle approaching that will undo it.
Out of that great city there comes a little group of forms, which yesterday this hero 'could not stay to pick out of that pile which had offended him,' that was his word,—which yesterday he would have burnt in it without a scruple. Towards the great Volscian army that beleaguers Rome it comes—towards the pavilion where the Volscian captain sits in gold, with his wings outspread, it shapes its course. To other eyes, it is but a group of Roman ladies, two or three, clad in mourning, with their attendants, and a prattling child with them; but, with the first glance at it from afar, the great chieftain trembles, and begins to clasp his armour. He could think of them and doom them, in his over-mastering passion of revenge, with its heroic infinity of mastery triumphant in him,—he could think of them and doom them; but the impressions of the senses are more vivid, and the passions wait on them. As that group draws nearer, one sees, by the light of this Poet's painting, a fair young matron, with subdued mien and modest graces, and an elder one, leading a wilful boy, with a 'confirmed countenance,' pattering by her side; just such a group as one might see anywhere in the lordly streets of Palatinus,—much such a one as one might find anywhere under those thousand-doomed plebeian roofs.
But to this usurping 'private,' to this man of passion and affection, and not reason—this man of private and particular motives only, and blind partial aims, it is more potent than Rome and all her claims; it outweighs Rome and all her weal—'it is worth of senators and patricians a city full, of tribunes and plebeians a sea and land full'—it outweighs all the Volscians, and their trust in him.
His reasons of state begin to falter, and change their aspects, as that little party draws nearer; and he finds himself within its magnetic sphere.
For this is the pattern-man, for the man of mere impression and instinct. He is full of feeling within his sphere, though it is a sphere which does not embrace plebeians,—which crushes Volscians with clarions, and drums, and trumpets, and poets' voices to utter its exultations. Within that private sphere, his sensibilities are exquisite and poetic in their depth and delicacy. He is not wanting in the finer impulses, in the nobler affections of the particular and private nature. He is not a base, brutal man. Even in his martial conquests, he will not take 'leaden spoons.' His soul is with a divine ambition fired to have all. It is instinct, but it is the instinct of the human; it is 'conservation with advancement' that he is blindly pursuing, for this is a generous nature. He knows the heights that reason lends to instinct in the human kind, and the infinities that affection borrows from it.
And the Poet himself has large and gentle views of 'this particular,' scientific views of it, scientific recognitions of its laws, such as no philosophic school was ever before able to pronounce. Even here, on this sad and tragic ground of a subdued and debased common-weal, he will not cramp its utterance—he will give it leave to speak, in all its tenderness and beauty, in its own sweet native dialect, all its poetic wildness, its mad verities, its sober impossibilities, even at the moment in which he asks in statesmanship for the rational motive, undrenched in humours and affections—for the motive of the weal that is common, and not for the motive of that which is private and exclusive.