Chapter 21

“O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, That give a _coasting_ welcome ere it comes”—

Should it be “accosting?” “Accost her, knight, accost!” in the _Twelfth Night_. Yet there sounds a something so Shakespearian in the phrase—“give a coasting welcome” (“coasting” being taken as the epithet and adjective of “welcome”), that had the following words been, “ere _they land_,” instead of “ere it comes,” I should have preferred the interpretation. The sense now is, “that give welcome to a salute ere it comes.”

“Coriolanus.”

This play illustrates the wonderfully philosophic impartiality of Shakespeare’s politics. His own country’s history furnished him with no matter but what was too recent to be devoted to patriotism. Besides, he knew that the instruction of ancient history would seem more dispassionate. In _Coriolanus_ and _Julius Cæsar_, you see Shakespeare’s good-natured laugh at mobs. Compare this with Sir Thomas Brown’s aristocracy of spirit.