How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, And the rude son should strike his father dead: Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, a universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, And, last, eat up himself. EXPECT NOT GRATITUDE FOR PAST FAVOURS: ULYSSES EXHORTS ACHILLES TO QUIT HIS RETIREMENT. TIME hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes : Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done: Perséverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright: To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery. Take the instant way, For honour travels in a strait so narrow, Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path; For emulation hath a thousand sons, That one by one pursue: If you give way, Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank, D Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, Then what they do in present, Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours: That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand; O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was; High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,— More laud than gilt o'er-dusted. The present eye praises the present object: Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late, THERSITES'S HUMOROUS ACCOUNT OF AJAX. Ther. A wonder! Achil. What? Ther. Ajax goes up and down the field, asking for himself. Achil. How so? Ther. He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector; and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling, that he raves in saying nothing. Achil. How can that be? Ther. Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock,—a stride, and a stand: ruminates, like an hostess, that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning: bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should say,There were wit in this head, an 't would out; and so there is; but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking. The man's undone for ever; for if Hector break not his neck i' the combat, he'll break it himself in vainglory. He knows not me: I said, "Good-morrow, Ajax;" and he replies, "Thanks, Agamemnon." What think you of this man, that takes me for the general? He is grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin. CORIOLANUS. MENENIUS RELATES HIS FABLE OF THE BELLY AND THE LIMBS TO THE MUTINOUS CITIZENS. Men There was a time when all the body's members Rebell'd against the belly; thus accused it :That only like a gulf it did remain I' the midst o' the body, idle and inactive, Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing Like labour with the rest; where the other instruments Did see, and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel, And, mutually participate, did minister I send it through the rivers of your blood, Even to the court, the heart,—to the seat o' the brain; The strongest nerves, and small inferior veins, From me receive that natural competency Whereby they live: And though that all at once, You my good friends," (this says the belly,) mark me,— 1 Cit. Ay, Sir; well, well. Men. "Though all at once cannot See what I do deliver out to each; But it proceeds, or comes, from them to you, BRUTUS THUS SPEAKS OF CORIOLANUS. ALL tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights While she chats him: the kitchen malkin pins Clambering the walls to eye him: stalls, bulks, windows, In earnestness to see him: seld-shown flamens JULIUS CÆSAR. RE-ENTER CESAR, AND HIS TRAIN. Bru. The games are done, and Cæsar is returning. Cas. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve; And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you What hath proceeded, worthy note, to-day. The angry spot doth glow on Cæsar's brow, Ant. Cæsar. Cæs. Let me have men about me that are fat; Caes. 'Would he were fatter:-But I fear him not: Yet if my name were liable to fear, I do not know the man I should avoid So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much; Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays, BRUTUS SOLILOQUIZES ON THE NECESSITY OF PUTTING Ir must be by his death: and, for my part, How that might change his nature, there's the question. It is the bright day that brings forth the adder; And that craves wary walking. Crown him?—That ;And then, I grant, we put a sting in him, That at his will he may do danger with. |