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

Ulyss. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
And the great Hector's sword had lacked a master,
But for these instances.

The specialty of rule1 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,2
Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol,
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 check, to good and bad. But when the 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

The unity and married3 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,

4

Peaceful commérce from dividable 5 shores,

The primogenitive and due of birth,

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,

1 The particular rights of supreme authority.

2 i. e. this globe.

3 The epithet married denotes an intimate union.

4 Confraternities, corporations, companies.

5 The termination ble is often thus used by Shakspeare for ed.

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.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
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 neglection1 of degree it is,

2

That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general's disdained
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 discovered
The fever whereof all our power is sick.

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,

1 This uncommon word occurs again in Pericles, 1609.

2 "That goes backward step by step, with a design in each man te aggrandize himself by slighting his immediate superior."

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 stretched footing and the scaffoldage,
Such to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested seeming 2
He acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks,
"Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquared,3
Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropped,
Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff,
The large Achilles, on his pressed 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 dressed to some oration.

That's done;-as near as the extremest ends
Of parallels; as like as Vulcan and his wife ;
Yet good Achilles still cries, Excellent!

'Tis Nestor right! Now play him me, Patroclus,
Arming to answer in a night alarm.

4

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
Sir Valor dies; cries, O!-enough, Patroclus;—
Or give me ribs of steel; I shall split all
In pleasure of my spleen. And in this fashion,
All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,

Severals and generals of grace exact,"

1 Supreme, sovereign.

2 i. e. overstrained, wrested beyond true semblance.

3 i. e. unsuited, unfitted.

4 Paralytic fumbling.

5 Grace exact seems to mean decorous habits.

Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,
Excitements to the field, or speech for truce,
Success, or loss, what is, or is not, serves
As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.

Nest. And in the imitation of these twain,
(Whom, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns
With an imperial voice,) many are infect.
Ajax is grown self-willed; 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 calls 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.

Ene. May one, that is a herald, and a prince, Do a fair message to his kingly ears?

Agam. With surety stronger than Achilles' arm 'Fore all the Greekish heads, which with one voice Call Agamemnon head and general.

Ene. Fair leave, and large security. How may A stranger to those most imperial looks, Know them from eyes of other mortals?1 Agam.

Ene. Ay;

1

I ask, that I might waken reverence,
And bid the cheek be ready with a blush
Modest as morning when she coldly eyes
The youthful Phoebus.

How?

Which is that god in office, guiding men?
Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?

Agam. This Trojan scorns us; or the men of Troy Are ceremonious courtiers.

Ene. Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarmed,

As bending angels; that's their fame in peace. But when they would seem soldiers, they have galls, Good arms, strong joints, true swords; and, Jove's accord ;;

2

Nothing so full of heart. But
But peace, Æneas,
Peace, Trojan; lay thy finger on thy lips!
The worthiness of praise distains his worth,

If that the praised himself bring the praise forth ;
But what the repining enemy commends,

That breath fame follows; that praise, sole pure, transcends.

Agam. Sir, you of Troy, call you yourself Æneas? Ene. Ay, Greek, that is my name.

Agam.

What's your affair, I pray you?

Ene. Sir, pardon; 'tis for Agamemnon's ears. Agam. He hears nought privately that comes from

Troy.

1 And yet this was the seventh year of the war.

2 Theobald's interpretation of this passage is, perhaps, nearly correct:"They have galls, good arms, &c. and Jove's consent :-Nothing is so full of heart as they."