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 Marcius.

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 Marcius.

Bru.

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

Men.

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

Both.

Well, Sir;—

Men.

In what enormity is Marcius 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 boasting.

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 hand 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 Marcius 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't 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 lye 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 ^{1 note}bisson 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, yourselves, nor any thing; you are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs: ^{2 note}you wear out a good wholesome forenoon, in hearing a Cause between an orange-wife and a fosset-seller, and then adjourn a controversy of three-pence to a second day of audience.—When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinch'd with the colick, 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 of 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, Marcius 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-e'en to your Worships; more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of beastly Plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave of you.