As you intended well.
(V. i. 45).
When Menenius, returning from his fruitless mission, describes Coriolanus in his unapproachable, inexorable power, the tribune’s rejoinder is again the true one:
Menenius. He wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in.
Sicinius. Yes, mercy, if you report him truly.
(V. iv. 24.)
Yet these various traits so little interfere with the general impression, that perhaps many tolerably careful readers who are familiar with the play, hardly take them into account. In the total effect they both seem to us pitiful busybodies, whose ill-earned influence only leads to disaster; or, as Menenius describes them:
A pair of tribunes that have rack’d for Rome,
To make coals cheap.
(V. i. 16.)