It seems strange that Coleridge should say this, for it is proved by not a few examples that baffled emulation may issue in an envy which knows few restraints. Perhaps it was the avowal rather than the temper which struck him as verging on the unnatural or abnormal. Those who deliberately adopt such an attitude do not usually admit it to themselves, still less to their victims, and least of all to a third party. Which may admonish us that Aufidius’ threats were not deliberate, but mere frantic outcries wrung from him in rage and mortification. Yet they spring from authentic impulses in his heart, and though they may for a time be hidden by his superficial chivalry, they will spread and thrive if the conditions favour their growth. When they have overrun his nature and choked the wholesome grain, he will not point to them so openly and will name them by other names. But they are the same and differ from what they were only as the thorny thicket differs from its parent seeds. They have always been there and it is well that we should be aware of their presence from the first. Coleridge concludes his criticism: “However I perceive that in this speech is meant to be contained a prevention of the shock at the after-change in Aufidius’ character.” In short, it is not to be taken as his definite programme from which he inconsistently deviates when the opportunity is offered at Antium for carrying it out, but as the involuntary presentiment, which the revealing power of anguish awakens in his soul, of the crimes he is capable of committing for his master passion, a presentiment that in the end is realised almost to the letter.
And in the fulfilment, as in the anticipation, he has an eye merely to the results, and seeks only to obtain the first place for himself whether he deserve it or no. When Coriolanus consents to the peace with Rome, Aufidius soliloquises:
I am glad thou hast set thy mercy and thy honour
At difference in thee: out of that I’ll work
Myself a former fortune.
(V. iii. 200.)
It is the adventitious superiority and the judgment by appearances that always appeal to him. Listen to the interchange of confidences between his accomplice and himself:
Third Conspirator. The people will remain uncertain whilst
’Twixt you there’s difference; but the fall of either
Makes the survivor heir of all.