Her bed is India; there fhe lies, a pearl: Alarum. Enter ENEAS. ENE. How now, prince Troilus? wherefore not afield?7 TRO. Because not there; This woman's answer forts,8 For womanish it is to be from thence. What news, Æneas, from the field to-day? ENE. That Paris is returned home, and hurt. TRO. By whom, Æneas? ENE. Troilus, by Menelaus. TRO. Let Paris bleed: 'tis but a fcar to scorn; Paris is gor❜d with Menelaus' horn. [Alarum. s-Ilium,] Was the palace of Troy. JOHNSON. Ilium, properly fpeaking, is the name of the city; Troy, that of the country. STEEVENS. Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our bark.] So, in The Merry Wives of Windfor: "This punk is one of Cupid's carriers ; Clap on more fails," &c. MALONE. How now, prince Troilus? wherefore not afield?] Shakfpeare, it appears from various lines in this play, pronounced Troilus improperly as a diffyllable; as every mere English reader does at this day. So alfo, in his Rape of Lucrece : 8 "Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds." MALONE. -forts,] i. e. fits, fuits, is congruous. So, in King Henry V: "It forts well with thy fiercenefs." STEEVENS. ENE. Hark! what good fport is out of town to-day! TRO. Better at home, if would I might, were may. But, to the sport abroad ;-Are you bound thither? ENE. In all fwift hafte. Whofe height commands as fubject all the vale, 9 Hector, whofe patience Is, as a virtue, fix'd,] Patience fure was a virtue, and therefore cannot, in propriety of expreffion, be faid to be like We fhould read: one. Is as the virtue fix'd, i. e. his patience is as fixed as the goddess Patience itself. So we find Troilus a little before faying: "Patience herfelf, what goddefs ere the be, "Doth leffer blench at fufferance than I do." It is remarkable that Dryden when he altered this play, and found this false reading, altered it with judgment to— whofe patience "Is fix'd like that of heaven." Which he would not have done had he feen the right reading VOL. XV. R He chid Andromache, and ftruck his armourer; here given, where his thought is fo much better and nobler expreffed. WARBurton. I think the present text may stand. Hector's patience was as a virtue, not variable and accidental, but fixed and conftant. If I would alter it, it fhould be thus: Hector, whofe patience Is all a virtue fix'd, All, in old English, is the intensive or enforcing particle. JOHNSON. I had once almost persuaded myself that Shakspeare wrote, whofe patience Is, as a statue fix'd. So, in The Winter's Tale, fc. ult: "The flatue is but newly fix'd." The fame idea occurs alfo in the celebrated paffage in TwelfthNight: 66 -fat like patience on a monument." The old adage-Patience is a virtue, was perhaps uppermoft in the compofitor's mind, and he therefore inadvertently substituted the one word for the other. A virtue fixed may, however, mean the Stationary image of a virtue. STEEVENS. I husbandry in war,] So, in Macbeth: "There's husbandry in heaven." STEEVENS. Husbandry means economical prudence. Troilus alludes to Hector's early rifing. So, in King Henry V: 66 our bad neighbours make us early flirrers, "Which is both healthful and good husbandry." MALONE. 2 Before the fun rofe, he was harness'd light,] Does the poet mean (fays Mr. Theobald) that Hector had put on light armour? Mean! what elfe could he mean? He goes to fight on foot; and was not that the armour for his purpose? So, Fairfax, in Taffo's Jerufalem: "The other princes put on harness light "As footmen use-." Yet, as if this had been the higheft abfurdity, he goes on, Or does he mean that Hector was Sprightly in his arms even before funrife? or is a conundrum aimed at, in fun rofe and harness'd light? Was any thing like it? But, to get out of this per And to the field goes he; where every flower plexity, he tells us, that a very flight alteration makes all thefe conftructions unnecessary, and fo changes it to harness-dight. Yet indeed the very flightest alteration will, at any time, let the poet's fenfe through the critick's fingers and the Oxford editor very contentedly takes up what is left behind, and reads harness-dight too, in order, as Mr. Theobald well expreffes it, to make all conftruction unneceffary. WARBURTON. : How does it appear that Hector was to fight on foot rather to-day than any other day? It is to be remembered, that the ancient heroes never fought on horseback; nor does their manner of fighting in chariots feem to require less activity than on foot. JOHNSON. It is true that the heroes of Homer never fought on horfe back; yet fuch of them as make a fecond appearance in the Eneid, like their antagonists the Rutulians, had cavalry among their troops. Little can be inferred from the manner in which Afcanius and the young nobility of Troy are introduced at the conclufion of the funereal games; as Virgil very probably, at the expence of an anachronism, meant to pay a compliment to the military exercises inftituted by Julius Cæfar, and improved by Auguftus. It appears from different paffages in this play, that Hector fights on horseback; and it fhould be remembered that Shakspeare was indebted for most of his materials to a book which enumerates Efdras and Pythagoras among the bastard children of King Priamus. Our author, however, might have been led into his mistake by the manner in which Chapman has tranflated several parts of the Iliad, where the heroes mount their chariots or defcend from them. Thus, Book VI. speaking of Glaucus and Diomed: from horse then both defcend." STEEVENS. If Dr. Warburton had looked into The Destruction of Troy, already quoted, he would have found, in every page, that the leaders on each fide were alternately tumbled from their horses by the prowess of their adverfaries. MALONE. 3 - where every flower Did, as a prophet, weep-] So, in A Midfummer-Night's Dream, Vol. IV. p. 406: "And when the weeps, weeps every little flower, STEEVENS. Lamenting" &c. CRES. What was his caufe of anger? ALEX. The noife goes, this: There is among the Greeks A lord of Trojan blood, nephew to Hector; They call him, Ajax. CRES. Good; And what of him? ALEX. They fay he is a very man per fe,4 And ftands alone. CRES. So do all men; unless they are drunk, fick, or have no legs. ALEX. This man, lady, hath robbed many beasts of their particular additions; 5 he is as valiant as the lion, churlish as the bear, flow as the elephant: a man into whom nature hath fo crouded humours, that his valour is crushed into folly, his folly. fauced with difcretion: there is no man hath a 4 per fe,] So, in Chaucer's Teftament of Creffeide: "Of faire Creffeide the floure and a per fe "Of Troie and Greece." Again, in the old comedy of Wily Beguiled: "In faith, my fweet honeycomb, I'll love thee a per fe a." Again, in Blurt Mafter Conftable, 1602: "That is the a per fe of all, the creame of all." - STEEVENS. 5 their particular additions;] Their peculiar and characteristick qualities or denominations. The term in this sense is originally forenfick. MALONE. So, in Macbeth: 6 - whereby he doth receive "Particular addition, from the bill "That writes them all alike." STEEVENS. that his valour is crushed into folly,] To be crushed into folly, is to be confused and mingled with folly, fo as that they make one mafs together. JOHNSON. So, in Cymbeline : "Crush him together, rather than unfold |