Ulyss. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down, The specialty of rule hath been neglected: What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded, The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center, 8 Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans check, to good and bad: But, when the planets, What plagues, and what portents? what mutiny? The unity and married calm of states 6 The specialty of rule-] The particular rights of supreme authority. 7 When that the general is not like the hive,] The meaning is, When the general is not to the army like the hive to the bees, the repository of the stock of every individual, that to which each particular resorts with whatever he has collected for the good of the whole, what honey is expected? what hope of advantage? The sense is clear, the expression is confused. JOHNSON. 8 the planets, and this center,] By this center, Ulysses means the earth itself, not the center of the earth. According to the system of Ptolemy, the earth is the center round which the planets move. 9 deracinate] i. c. force up by the roots. Quite from their fixure? O, when degree is shak'd, The enterprize is sick! How could communities, And the rude son should strike his father dead: power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And, last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, And this neglection of degree it is, That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose 2 3 5 brotherhoods in cities,] Corporations, companies, confra dividable shores,] i. e. divided. mere-] Mere is absolute. 4 That by a pace— ] That goes backward step by step. with a purpose It hath to climb.] With a design in each man to aggrandize himself, by slighting his immediate superior. By him one step below; he, by the next; And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, Agam. The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses, What is the remedy? Ulyss. The great Achilles, whom opinion 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 aukward action (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,) He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon, And, like a strutting player, whose conceit To hear the wooden dialogue and sound 'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,9Such to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested seeming1 6 bloodless emulation:] An emulation not vigorous and active, but malignant and sluggish. 7 our power] i. e. our army. 8 Thy topless deputation,-] Topless is that which has nothing topping or overtopping it; supreme; sovereign. 9 'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,] The galleries of the theatre, in the time of our author, were sometimes termed the scaffolds. 1 o'er-wrested seeming —] i. e. wrested beyond the truth. He acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks, That's done; as near as the extremest ends Of parallels3: as like as Vulcan and his wife: Yet good Achilles still cries, Excellent! 'Tis Nestor right! Now play him me, Patroclus, And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age Nest. And in the imitation of these twain unsquar'd,] i. e. unadapted to their subject, as stones are unfitted to the purposes of architecture, while they are yet unsquar'd. Of parallels;] The parallels to which the allusion seems to be made, are the parallels on a map. As like as east to west. In such a rein, in full as proud a place As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him; (A slave, whose gall coins slanders like a mint, 5) To weaken and discredit our exposure, Ulyss. They tax our policy, and call it cowardice; They call this-bed-work, mappery, closet-war : Nest. Let this be granted, and Achilles' horse [Trumpet sounds. What trumpet? look Menelaus. Makes many Agam. still 5 bears his head In such a rein,] That is, holds up his head as haughtily. We of a girl, she bridles. say whose gall coins slanders like a mint,] i. c. as fast as a mint coins money. 6 How rank soever rounded in with danger.] A rank weed is a high weed. 7— by measure] i. e. " by means of their observant toil." |