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Patroclus. Out gall!

Thersites. Finch egg! (Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS) To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care: but to be Menelaus,-I would conspire against destiny. Ask me not what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus.-Hey-day! spirits and fires!-Act 5, Sc. 1.

Thersites. O' the other side, The policy of those craftyswearing rascals, that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor; and that same dog-fox, Ulysses,-is not proved worth a blackberry.-Sc. 4.

Hector. What art thou, Greek? art thou for Hector's match?

Art thou of blood, and honour ?

Thersites. No, no :-I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave; a very filthy rogue.

Hector. I do believe thee :-live.

TIMON OF ATHENS.

(Exit.)

The play of "Timon " is a domestic tragedy, and therefore strongly fastens on the attention of the reader. In the plan there is not much art, but the incidents are natural, and the characters various and exact. The catastrophe affords a very powerful warning against that ostentatious liberality, which scatters bounty, but confers no benefits, and buys flattery, but not friendship.-Johnson.

Timon.

the learned pate

Ducks to the golden fool:

This yellow slave

Act 4, Sc. 3.

Timon. I am misanthropos, and hate mankind.

For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog,

That I might love thee something

Alcibiades. Why, fare the well:

Here's some gold for thee.

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Timon. Keep't, I cannot eat it. (Enter APEMANTUS.) More man? Plague! plague!

Were I like thee, I'd throw away myself.

Apemantus. Thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself;

A madman so long, now a fool; What, think'st

That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,

Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these moss'd trees,
That have outliv'd the eagle, page thy heels,

And skip when thou point'st out? Will the cold brook,
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste,

To cure thy o'ernight's surfeit? Call the creatures,—
Whose naked natures live in all the spite

Of wreakful heaven; whose bare unhoused trunks,
To the conflicting elements expos'd,

Answer mere nature,-bid them flatter thee;
O! thou shalt find

. Best state, contentless,

Hath a distracted and most wretched being,
Worse than the worst, content.

Thou should'st desire to die, being miserable.
Timon. Not by his breath, that is more miserable.
Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm
With favour never clasp'd: but bred a dog.
Had'st thou, like us, from our first swath, proceeded
The sweet degrees that this brief world affords
To such as may the passive drugs of it

Freely command, thou would'st have plung'd thyself
In general riot; melted down thy youth
In different beds of lust; and never learn'd
The icy precepts of respect, but follow'd
The sugar'd game before thee. But myself,
Who had the world as my confectionary;

The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men,
At duty more than I could frame employment;
That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves
Do on the oak-have with one winter's brush
Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare
For every storm that blows; -I, to bear this,
That never knew but better, is some burden:

Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time

Hath made thee hard in't. Why should'st thou hate men? They never flatter'd thee: What hast thou given ?—

Poor rogue hereditary. Hence! begone!

If thou had'st not been born the worst of men,

Thou had'st been a knave, and flatterer.

Apemantus. Thou art the cap of all the fools alive.
Timon. Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon.
Apemantus. A plague on thee, thou art too bad to curse.
Timon.
Away,

Thou tedious rogue! I am sorry I shall lose

A stone by thee.

Apemantus. Beast!

(Throws a stone at him.)

Timon. Slave!

Apemantus. Toad!

Timon. Rogue, rogue, rogue !-Id.

Timon. Why should you want? Behold the earth hath roots; Within this mile break forth a hundred springs:

The oaks bear mast, the briars scarlet hips;

The bounteous housewife, Nature, on each bush
Lays her full mess before you.

Want? why want?—Id.

CORIOLANUS.

Menenius. What do you think?

You, the great toe of this assembly?

1st Citizen. I the great toe? Why the great toe? Menenius. For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest, Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost;

Thou rascal, that art worst in blood, to run,
Leads't first, to win some vantage.—

But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs;

Rome and her rats are at the point of battle,

The one side must have bale.-Hail! noble Marcius! (Enter CAIUS MARCIUS.)

Marcius. Thanks.-What's the matter, you dissentious

rogues,

That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion

Make yourselves scabs ?

Go, get you home, you fragments!-Act 1, Sc. 1.

(Alarum, and exeunt Romans and Volces fighting.

The

Romans are beaten back to their trenches. Re-enter MARCIUS.)
Marcius. All the contagion of the south light on you,
You shames of Rome!--you herd of-Boils and plagues
Plaster you o'er; that you may be abhor'd

Further than seen, and one infect another

Against the wind a mile! You souls of geese,
That bear the shapes of men, how have you run
From slaves that apes would beat? Pluto and hell!
All hurt behind; backs red, and faces pale

With flight and agued fear; Mend, and charge home,
Or by the fires of heaven, I'll leave the foe,
And make my wars on you: look to't: Come on;
If you'll stand fast, we'll beat them to their wives,
As they us to our trenches followed.-Sc. 3.

Menenius. You blame Marcius for being proud!
Brutus. We do it not alone, sir.

Menenius. I know you can do very little alone; for your helps are many; or else your actions would grow wondrous single: your abilities are too infant-like, for doing much alone. You talk of pride: O! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves; O! that you could.

Brutus. What then, sir?

Menenius. Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates (alias fools), as any

in Rome.

Sicinius. Menenius, you are known well enough too.

Menenius. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tyber in't; said to be something imperfect, in favouring the first complaint: hasty, and tinder-like, upon too trivial motion: one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning. What I think, I utter; and spend my malice in my breath: Meeting two such wealsmen as you are (I cannot call you Lycurguses), if the drink you give me, touch my palate adversely, I make a crooked face at it. I cannot say, your worships have delivered the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables: and though I must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave men; yet they lie deadly, that tell, you have good faces. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it, that I am known well enough too? What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough too?

Brutus. Come, sir, come, we know you well enough.

Menenius. You know neither me, yourselves, nor any thing. You are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs; you wear out a good wholesome forenoon, in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three-pence to a second day of audience.-You are a pair of strange ones.

Brutus. Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfector giber for the table, than a necessary bencher in the Capitol.

Menenius. Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave, as to stuff a botcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying, Marcius is proud;

who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors,
since Deucalion; though, peradventure, some of the best of
them were hereditary hangmen. Good e'en to your worships;
more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the
herdsman of the beastly plebians: I will be bold to take my
leave of you.-(Enter COMINIUS and TITUS LARTIUS; be-
tween them, CORIOLANUS, crowned with an oaken garland.)
A hundred thousand welcomes: I could weep,

And I could laugh: I am light, and heavy: welcome:
A curse begin at very root of his heart,

That is not glad to see thee!-You are three,

That Rome should dote on: yet, by the faith of men,
We have some old crab-trees here at home, that will not
Be grafted to your relish. Yet welcome, warriors:

We call a nettle but a nettle; and

The faults of fools, but folly.-Act 2, Sc. 1.

Brutus.

Sir, I hope,

My words disbench'd you not.

Coriolanus.

No, sir; yet oft,

When blows have made me stay I fled from words. Sc. 2.
Cominius. Our spoils he kick'd at;

And look'd upon things precious, as they were

The common muck of the world; he covets less
Than misery itself would give; rewards

His deeds with doing them; and is content

To spend the time, to end it.-Id.

Menenius. O! sir, you are not right: have you not known

The worthiest men have done it?

Coriolanus. What must I say ?—

I pray, sir,-Plague upon't! I cannot bring

My tongue to such a pace :-Look, sir!-my wounds!

I got them in my country's service, when

Some certain of your brethren roar'd and ran

From the noise of our own drums.-Sc. 3.

Coriolanus. What custom wills, in all things should we do't. The dust on antique time would lie unswept,

And mountainous error be too highly heap'd

For truth to overpeer.-Id.

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When two authorities are up,

Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter 'twixt the gap of both, and take

The one by the other.-Act 3, Sc. 1.

Coriolanus. I would they were barbarians (as they are, Though in Rome litter'd) not Romans (as they are not,

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