son, modified as it is by the difference of sex, and by her greater age and experience, is exhibited with admirable truth. Volumnia, with all her pride and spirit, has some prudence and self-command; in her language and deportment all is matured and matronly. The dignified tone of authority she assumes towards her son, when checking his headlong impetuosity,-her respect and admiration for his noble qualities, and her strong sympathy even with the feelings she combats, are all displayed in the scene in which she prevails on him to soothe the incensed plebeians. When the spirit of the mother and the son are brought into immediate collision, he yields before her: the warrior who stemmed alone the whole city of Corioli, who was ready to face "the steep Tarpeian death, or at wild horses' heels,-vagabond exile,-flaying," rather than abate one jot of his proud will-shrinks at her rebuke. The haughty, fiery, overbearing temperament of Coriolanus, is drawn in such forcible and striking colours, that nothing can more impress us with the real grandeur and power of Volumnia's character, than his boundless submission to her will-his more than filial tenderness and respect. When his mother appears before him as a suppliant, he exclaims: -My mother bows; As if Olympus to a molehill should In supplication nod. Here the expression of reverence, and the magnificent image in which it is clothed, are equally characteristic both of the mother and the son. Her aristocratic haughtiness is a strong trait in Volumnia's manner and character, and her supreme contempt for the plebeians, whether they are to be defied or cajoled, is very like what I have heard expressed by some high-born and high-bred women of our own day. But the triumph of Volumnia's character, the full dis play of all her grandeur of soul, her patriotism, her strong affections, and her sublime eloquence, are re served for her last scene, in which she pleads for the safety of Rome, and wins from her angry son that peace which all the swords of Italy and her confederate arms could not have purchased. The strict and even literal adherence to the truth of history is an additional beauty. Her famous speech, beginning, "Should we be silent and not speak," is nearly word for word from Plutarch, with some additional graces of expression, and the charms of metre superadded. It is an instance of Shakespeare's fine judgment, that after this magnificent and touching piece of eloquence, which saved Rome, Volumnia should speak no more, for she could say nothing that would not deteriorate from the effect thus left on the imagination. She is at last dismissed from our admiring gaze amid the thunder of grateful exclamations. Behold our patroness,-the life of Rome. |