Thy thoughts with nobleness, that thou mayst prove
To shame invulnerable, and stick i'th' wars
Like a great fea-mark, standing every flaw,
And saving those that eye

thee!
Coriolanus' Mother's pathetic Speech to him.

-Think with thyself,
How more unfortunate than all living women
Are we come hither; since thy fight, which should
Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with coin-

forts,
Constrains them weep, and shake with fear and sorrow;
Making the mother, wite, and child to fee,
The fon, the husband, and the father tearing
His country's bowels out; and to poor we
Thine enmity's most capital ; thou burr'it us
Our prayers to the gods, which is a confort
That all but we enjoy.

We must find,
An eininent calamity though we had
Our with which side Thou'd win. For either ou
Must, as a foreign recreant, be led
With manacles along our streets : or else
Triumphantly tread on thy country's ruin,
And bear the palm for having brately the
Thy wife and children's blood for my ffon,
I purpose not to wait on fortune, till
Thefe wars determine; if I can't perfuade thee
Rather to fhew a noble grace to both parts,

Than

*

*

In the Two Noble Kinsmen, Arcile, lamenting the many miseries of their captivity, among the rest complains that they Thould have

No issue know them;
No figure of ourselves shall we e'er see,
To glad our eye, and like young eagles, teach 'em
Boldly to gaze against bright arms, and say
Remember what your fathers were-and conquer.'

Than feek the end of one : thou shalt no sooner
March to assault thy country, than to tread
(Trust to't, thou shalt not) on thy mother's womb,
That brought thee to this world.

SCENE IV. Peace after a Siege.
Ne'er thro' an arch so hurried the blown tide,
As the re-comforted thro' th' gates. Why, hark you
(15) The trumpets, fackbuts, pfalteries and fifes,
Tabors and cymbals, and the shouting Romans
Make the sun dance.

(15) The, &c.} Shakespear possibly might have this verse from the 3d chapter of Daniel, in view, when he wrote the above.

At what time ye hear the found of the cornet, flute, barp, fackbui, Psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship isa golden image, &c.

Or this from the last Pfalm.

Praise him avith the found of the trumpet, praise him with the psaltery and harp: praise him with the timbrel and da ice, praise him with the ftringud inftruments and organs. Praise him upon the lourd cymbals, praise bim npon the bigh-founding cymbals. "Let every thing ikas baih braida traje oke Lord.

General Observation. The tragedy of Coriolanus (says Johnson) is one of the most amuling of our author's performances. The old man's merriment in Menenius ; the lofty lady's dignity in Volumnia; the bridal modeity in Virgilia ; the patrician and military haughti. nefs in Coriolanus; the plebeian malignity and tribunitian infolence in Brutus and Šicinius, make a very pleasing and interesting variety: and the various revolutions of the hero's fortune fill the mind with anxious curiosity. There is, perhaps, too much bustle in the first act, and too little in the last.

Cymbeline.

III.

Cymbeline.

ACT I. SCENE V.

T

1

Parting Lovers.
Imo. HOU should'st have made him

As little as a crow, or less, ere left
To after-eye him.

Pif. Madam, so I did.
Imo. I would have broke mine eye-strings; crackt

’em, but
To look upon him ; (1) till the diminution
Of space, had pointed him sharp as my needle;
Nay, followed him, 'till he had melted from
The smallness of a gnat, to air ; and then
Have turn’d mine eye, and wept: but, good Pifanio,
When shall we hear from him?

Pis. Be assur'd, madam,
With his next vantage.

Imo. I did not take my leave of him, but had
Most pretty things to say; ere I could tell him

How

(1) Till, &c.] There needs no alteration here: Imogen says, " She would not have left to after-eye him, till he was as little as a crow, nay, she would have crackt her eye-strings to look. apon him, till the diminution of space [the lessening of the nace he took up] had pointed him sharp as a needle,” (till the ace he took up seem'd not only small as a bird, but even Tharp a needle's point.)

How I would think of him at certain hours,
Such thoughts, and fuch; or I could make him fwear,
The she's of Italy should not betray
Mine interest, and his honour: or have charg'd him
At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight,
T'encounter me with orisons, (for then
I am in heav'n for him ;) or e'er I could
Give him that parting kiss, (2) which I had set
Betwixt two charming words, contes in my father,
And like the tyrannous breathing of the north,
Skakes all our buds from blowing *
Scene VIII. The Bafeness of Falood to a Wife.

Doubting things go ill often hurts more,
Than to be sure they do; for certainties
Or are past remedies; ortimdy kdowing,
The remedy then borne, difepxceto me
What both you fpur and stop. ****
lach. (3) Had I this cheekado's

To

(2) Which, &c.] Mr. Warburton, in suis note on this paffage, has had the fèlicity to discover what the two chayming words were, between which *Imogen would Live fèt her parting kiss, which Shakespear probably never thought of. He fays, “ without question, by thefegtwo charming Stord, the would be understood to mean,

Adieu, Posthumus: The one religion made so, the other love." Imiogen must have understood tlie etymology of our language very exactly, to find out so much religion in the worri-adieu, whick we use commonly, without fixing any such idea to it; as when we say, such a man has bid adieu to all religion. And on the other side, she must have understood the language of lave very little, if the could find no tenderer expression of it; than the name hy which every body else called her husband: Edward's liai. of Crit. p. 115.

* Blowing, Warb. vulg. growing.
(3) Had I, &c.] He afterwards says,

То

To bathe my lips upon; this hand, whose touch
Whose very touch wou'd force the feeler's foul
To th' oath of loyalty : this object, which
Takes prisoner the wild motion of mine eye,
Fixing it only here ; should I, (damn’d then)
Slaver with lips, as common as the stairs
That mount the capitol ; join gripes with hands
Made hard with hourly falfhood as with 'labour ;
Then glad myself by peeping in an eye,
Base and unlustrious as the smoaky light
That's fed with stinking tallow : it were fit.
That all the plagues of hell should at one time
Encounter such revolt.

Imogen's Bedchamber'; in one Part of it, a large

Trunk.

are weak

Imogen is discovered reading.
Imo.

-Mine

eyes
Fold down the leaf where I have left; to bed-
Take not away the taper, leave it burning :
And if thou canst awake by four o'th'clock,
I prithee call me-Sleep hath seized me wholly.

[Exit Lady. To your protection I commend me, gods,

From

To be partnerid
With tom-boys, hir'd with that self-exhibition
Which your own coffers yield: with diseas'd ventures
That play with all infirmities for gold,
Which rottenness lends nature ! such boil'd stuff

As well might poison poison : be reveng’d, &c.
These lines are well worthy the reflection of all those gent'e.
men, who style themselves Men of Pleasure : if they would duly
weigh the truth of them; their own pride sure would be the.
first thing, to drum them, as Shakespear, fays, from their lafcivious
ports.