How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, wrong 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! A chil. 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 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; And leave me but the bran." What say ye to 't? And you 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 CESAR. RE-ENTER CESAR, AND HIS TRAIN. Bru. The games are done, and Cæsar is returning. Bru. I will do so :-But, look you, Cassius, The angry spot doth glow on Cæsar's brow, Being cross'd in conference by some senators. 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. 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. |