ABSTRACT
Coriolanus is a storehouse of political common-places. The arguments for and against aristocracy, or democracy, on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a poet, and the acuteness of a philosopher. The insolence of power is stronger than the plea of necessity. The love of power in ourselves, and the admiration of it in others, is both natural to man; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. The whole dramatic moral of Coriolanus is, that those who have little shall have less, and that those who have much shall take all that others have left. Kemble's in the part of Coriolanus was as great as ever. The fidgeting, uneasy, insignificant gestures of Simmons are perhaps a little caricatured; and Kemble's supercilious airs.
