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 axle-tree On which heaven rides) knit all the Greekish ears To his experienced tongue;-yet let it please both,

Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak. Aga. Speak, prince of Ithaca; and be 't of less expect 1

That matter needless, of importless burden,
Divide thy lips; than we are confident,
When rank Thersites opes his mastiff jaws,
We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.

Ulys. 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 2 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,3
The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this
centre,

1 Expectation. • Masked

Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture,1 course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet, Sc1,
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,

And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans 2 check, to good and bad: but, when th planets,

In evil mixture, to disorder wander,

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 3

The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shaked.
Which is the ladder of all high designs,

The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive 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
The bounded waters

In mere

5 oppugnancy.

1 Constancy.

3 Force up by the roots.

5 Absolute.

2 Without.

4 For divided.

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 tco.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, a universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce a 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.

Nes. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover'd The fever whereof all our power1 is sick.

1 Army.

Aga. The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses, What is the remedy?

Ulys. The great Achilles,—whom opinion crowr 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 pageants1 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,3-
Such to-be-pitied and o'erwrested seeming
He acts thy greatness in; and when he speaks,
'Tis like a chime a mending; with terms unsquared
Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp d
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!-'tis Agamemnon just.-

་

Now play me Nestor ;-hem, and stroke thy beard, As he, being 'dress'd to some oration.'

1 Mimics.

3 The galleries of the theatre. Unadapted to their subject.

2 Supreme,

4 je. beyond the truth.