“There, I see another glimpse of brotherhood in error.”
The march on Rome, the mother’s supplication, the long resistance, the final yielding of bad passions to good, which ever must be the case in a nature worthy the epithet of noble, the rage of Aufidius at what he considered his ally’s weakness, the death of Coriolanus, the final sorrow of his great enemy; all scenes made of condensed truth and strength, came on in succession, and carried with them in their deep, fast flow, the heart and mind of reader and listener.
“Now, have you felt Shakspeare?” asked Caroline, some ten minutes after her cousin had closed the book.
“I think so.”
“And have you felt anything in Coriolanus like you?”
“Perhaps I have.”
“Was he not faulty as well as great?”
Moore nodded. “And what was his fault? What made him hated by the citizens? What caused him to be banished by his countrymen?”
“What do you think it was?”
“I ask again—
‘Whether was it pride,
Which out of daily fortune ever taints
The happy man? whether defect of judgment,
To fail in the disposing of those chances
Which he was lord of? or whether nature,
Not to be other than one thing; not moving
