II. i. 42–44. O that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves. 'The original fable of Æsop, reproduced by Phædrus, IV. 10, was that Jupiter has furnished every man with two wallets, one hanging down on his breast and containing his neighbour's faults, which are always before his eyes, and the other hanging down his back out of sight, and filled with his own faults.' (Arden ed.) A variation of the fable is found in Troilus and Cressida, III. iii. 145 f., where Ulysses says:
'Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.'
II. i. 53, 54. a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in 't. This passage apparently suggested Lovelace's famous lines (To Althea from Prison):
'When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames.'
II. i. 57–59. one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning. Better acquainted with the last hour of the night than the first hour of the morning.
II. i. 63–66. I cannot say your worships have delivered the matter well when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables. I cannot compliment you on your statement of the case against Martius when the larger part of what you say cries out 'ass!' against you—convicts you of asininity.
II. i. 70. the map of my microcosm. My face. Menenius' microcosm or little world was himself and his face the map or chart which summarized its characteristics.
II. i. 72. bisson conspectuities. No other example of 'conspectuities' appears to be known. It is doubtless an intentionally pretentious coinage from Latin
