life,

And thou, most reverend, for thy stretch'd-out
[TO NESTOR.
I give to both your speeches,-which were such,
As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece
Should hold up high in brass; and such again,
As venerable Nestor, hatch'd in silver,
Should with a bond of air (strong as the axletree
On which heaven rides) knit all the Greekish ears
To his experienc'd tongue,-yet let it please
both,―

Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak. AGAM. Speak, prince of Ithaca; and be 't of less expect

jaws,

That matter needless, of importless burden,
Divide thy lips, than we are confident,
When rank Thersites opes his mastiff *
We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.
ULYSS. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been
down,

And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master,
But for these instances.

The specialty of rule hath been neglected:
And look how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.
When that the general is not like the hive,
To whom the foragers shall all repair,
What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,
The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this
centre,

(*) Old text, masticke.

a the brize,-] The horse-fly, or gad.

b Re-chides to chiding Fortune.] The old text has Retires: for which Pope substituted Returns; Hanmer, Replies; and Mr. Dyce, Retorts: the two former are not sufficiently expressive, but the last will perhaps be more readily accepted than the word we have ventured to adopt.

e On which heaven rides) knit all the Greekish ears-] So the quartos: the folic reads,

"In which the Heavens ride, knit all Greekes eares."

d Speak, prince of Ithaca; &c.] This speech is omitted in the quarto.

In evil mixture, to disorder wander,(2)
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shak'd,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,

The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commérce from dividable shores,
The primogenitives and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong
(Between whose endless jar justice resides)
Should lose their* names, and so should justice

too.

power,

Then every thing includes itself in
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And, last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.

And this neglection of degree it is,
That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general's disdain'd
By him one step below; he, by the next;
That next, by him beneath: so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick

Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation:

And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,

Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length, Troy in our weakness stands,* not in her strength. NEST. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover'd The fever whereof all our power is sick.

AGAM. The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,

What is the remedy?

crowns

The sinew and the forehand of our host,—
Having his ear full of his airy fame,
Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent

Lies mocking our designs: with him, Patroclus,
Upon a lazy bed, the livelong day

Breaks scurril jests;

And with ridiculous and awkward action (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,)

He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon, Thy topless deputation he puts on; And, like a strutting player,-whose conceit Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich To hear the wooden dialogue and sound "Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,Such to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested seeming He acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks, "Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquar'd, [dropp'd,

Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon
Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff,
The large Achilles, on his press'd bed lolling,
From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause;
Cries-Excellent !-'t is Agamemnon just !—
Now play me Nestor;-hem, and stroke thy
beard,

As he, being 'dress'd to some oration.
That's done ;-as near as the extremest ends
Of parallels; as like as Vulcan and his wife:
Yet god Achilles still cries, Excellent !

'Tis Nestor right! Now play him me, Patroclus,
Arming to answer in a night alarm.
And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age
Must be the scene of mirth; to cough and spit,
And with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget,
Shake in and out the rivet:—and at this sport

With an imperial voice) many are infect.
Ajax is grown self-will'd; and bears his head
In such a rein, in full as proud a place

As broad Achilles:* keeps his tent like him;
Makes factious feasts; rails on our state of war,
Bold as an oracle; and sets Thersites-

A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint—
To match us in comparisons with dirt;
To weaken and discredit our exposure,
How rank soever rounded-in with danger.

ULYSS. They tax our policy, and call it
cowardice;

Count wisdom as no member of the war;
Forestall prescience, and esteem no act
But that of hand: the still and mental parts,-
That do contrive how many hands shall strike,
When fitness callst them on; and know, by measure
Of their observant toil, the enemies' weight,-
Why, this hath not a finger's dignity:
They call this-bed-work, mappery, closet-war;
So that the ram, that batters down the wall,
For the great swing and rudeness of his poise,
They place before his hand that made the engine,
Or those that with the fineness of their souls
By reason guide his execution.

NEST. Let this be granted, and Achilles' horse Makes many Thetis' sons. [Trumpet sounds. What trumpet? look, Menelaus.

AGAM.

MEN. From Troy.

AGAM.

Speak frankly as the wind;

It is not Agamemnon's sleeping hour:
That thou shalt know, Trojan, he is awake,
He tells thee so himself.

ENE.
Trumpet, blow loud;
Send thy brass voice through all these lazy tents;
And every Greek of mettle, let him know,
What Troy means fairly shall be spoke aloud;
[Trumpet sounds.

We have, great Agamemnon, here in Troy
A prince call'd Hector,-Priam is his father,-
Who in this dull and long-continu'd truce
Is rusty grown; he bade me take a trumpet,
And to this purpose speak.(3) Kings, princes,
lords!

If there be one among the fair'st of Greece,
That holds his honour higher than his ease;
That seeks his praise more than he fears his
peril;

That knows his valour, and knows not his fear;
That loves his mistress more than in confession,
(With truant vows to her own lips he loves)
And dare avow her beauty and her worth
In other arms than hers,—to him this challenge.
Hector, in view of Trojans and of Greeks,
Shall make it good, or do his best to do it,
He hath a lady, wiser, fairer, truer,

Than ever Greek did compass in his arms;
And will to-morrow with his trumpet call,
Mid-way between your tents and walls of Troy,
To rouse a Grecian that is true in love:
If any come, Hector shall honour him;
If none, he'll say in Troy when he retires,
The Grecian dames are sun-burnt, and not worth
The splinter of a lance. Even so much.

AGAM. This shall be told our lovers, lord

Eneas;

If none of them have soul in such a kind,
We left them all at home: but we are soldiers;
And may that soldier a mere recreant prove,
That means not, hath not, or is not in love!
If then one is, or hath, or means to be,
That one meets Hector; if none else, I am he.'

NEST. Tell him of Nestor, one that was a man
When Hector's grandsire suck'd: he is old now;
But if there be not in our Grecian host +
One noble man that hath one spark of fire

b But what the repining enemy commends,

That breath fame blows; that praise, sole pure, transcends.] With the exception of Mr. Collier's annotator, who substitutes the senseless compound soul-pure, for "sole pure," the scholiasts appear to be perfectly satisfied with this passage as it stands in the ancient copies, and it would seem presumptuous, therefore, to disturb the text. At the same time, we entertain a firm conviction that Shakespeare has suffered here, as in other places, by a silly transposition of his words, and that he must have written,

"But what the repining enemy commends,

That breath fame blows; that praise pure Sol transcends."