Menenius.

The Augur tells me, we shall have news to-night.

Bru.

Good or bad?

Men.

Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Martius.

Sic.

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

Men.

Pray you, whom does the wolf love?

Sic.

The lamb.

Men.

Ay, to devour him, as the hungry Plebeians would the noble Martius.

Bru.

He's a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear.

Men.

He's a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb. You two are old men, tell me one thing that I shall ask you.

Both.

Well, Sir.

Men.

In what enormity is Martius poor, that you two have not in abundance?

Bru.

He's poor in no one fault, but stor'd with all.

Sic.

Especially in pride.

Bru.

And topping all others in boast.

Men.

This is strange now! do you two know how you are censur'd here in the city, I mean of us o'th' right file, do you?

Bru.

Why—how are we censur'd?

Men.

Because you talk of pride now, will you not be angry?

Both.

Well, well, Sir, well.

Men.

Why 'tis no great matter; for a very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience—give your dispositions the reins, and be angry at your pleasures, (at the least) if you take it as a pleasure to you, in being so—you blame Martius for being proud.

Bru.

We do it not alone, Sir.

Men.

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—oh, that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves. Oh that you could!

Bru.

What then, Sir?

Men.

Why then you should discover a brace of as unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates, alias fools, as any in Rome.

Sic.

Menenius, you are known well enough too.

Men.

I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber 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 weals-men as you are

(I cannot call you Lycurgusses) if the drink you give me touch my palate adversly, I make a crooked face at it. I can say, your worships have deliver'd the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables; and tho' I must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave men, yet they lie deadly that tell you, 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 besom conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough too?

Bru.

Come, Sir, come, we know you well enough.

Men.

You know neither me, your selves, 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 fosset-seller, and then adjourn a controversy of three-pence to a second day of audience.—When you are hearing a matter between a party and party, if you chance to be pinch'd with the cholick, you make faces like mummers, set up the bloody flag against all patience—and in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversie bleeding, the more intangled by your hearing: all the peace you make in their cause, is calling both the parties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones.

Bru.

Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter gyber for the table, than a necessary bencher in the Capitol.

Men.

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 intomb'd in an ass's pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying, Martius 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-een to your worships; more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly Plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave of you.