P. 236, 1. 14. My honour keeps the weather of my fate:

If this be not a nautical phrase, which I cannot well explain or apply, perhaps we should read:

Mine honour keeps the weather off my fate: i. e. I am secured by the cause I am engaged in mine honour will avert the storms of fate will protect my life amidst the dangers of the field. A somewhat similar phrase occurs in The Tentpest:

"In the lime grove that weather-fends our

1

cell."

STEEVENS..

P. 236, 1. 15. the dear man] Valuable The modern editions read

man.

brave man. The repetition of the word is in our author's mauner. JOHNSON.

P. 236, 1. 29. 30. you have a vice of mercy hidin you,.

Which better fits a lion, than a man.] The traditions and stories of the darker ages abounded with examples of the lion's generosity. Upon the supposition that these acts of clemency were true, Troilus reasons not improperly, that to spare against reason, by mere instinct of pity, became rather a generous beast than a wise man. pse JOHNSON P. 236, last 1. & P. 237, 1. 1. 2. Shakspeare

seems

not to

of Hector,

studied the Homeric character disposition was by no means in

clined to as we may learn from Andro-r

mache's speech in the 24th Iliad:

A

"For thy stern father never spard a foe

ነበ Thy father, boy, bore never into fight

****A milky mind,

P. 237, I. 16. 17.

nor the hand of Mars Beckoning with fiery truncheon my retire ;] We have here but a modern Mars. Antiquity acknowledges no such ensign of command as a truncheon. The spirit of the passage however is such as might atone for a greater impropriety.

STEEVENS,

P. 237, 1. 19. Their eyes o'ergalled with recourse of tears; } i, e. tears that continue to course one another down the face. WARBURTON.

P. 238, 1. 10. Let me not shame respect;] ie disgrace the respect I owe you, by acting in opposition to your commands. STEEVENS.

P. 238, 1. 20. The interposition and clamorous sorrow of Cassandra were copied by our author from Lydgate. STEEVENS.

P. 239, 1. 11. In the folios and one of the quartos, this scene is continued by the following dialogue between Pandarus and Troilus, which the poet certainly meant to have been inserted at the end of the play, where the three concluding lines of are repeated in the copies already mentioned. There can be no doubt but that the players shuffled the parts backward and forward, ad libitum for the poet would hardly have given us an unnecessary repetition of the same words, nor have dismissed Pandarus twice in the same manner. The conclusion of the piece' will fully justify the liberty which any future commentator may take. in omitting the scene here

7

and placing it at the end, where at present only the few lines already mentioned are to be found. STEEVENS.

Ivdo not conceive that any editor has a right to make the transposition proposed, though it has been done by Mr. Capell. MALONE

P. 259, 1. 23. unless a man were curs'd, i. e. under the influence of a malediction, suchi as mischievous beings have been supposed to proi nounce upon those who had offended them.

1

.. STEEVENS. P. 240, 1. 15. The policy of those crafty swearing rascals;] But in what sense are Nes tor and Ulysses accused of being swearing ras cals? What, or to whom, did they swear? I am positive that sneering is the true readings They had collogued with Ajax, and trimmed him up with insincere praises only in order to have stirred Achilles's emulation. In this, they were the true sneerers; betraying the first, to gain their ends on the latter by that artifice.

TREOBALD.

the Grecians begin

1900

P. 240, 1. 20. 21. claim barbarism, and policy grows into an ill begin to pri opinion. To set up the authority of ignorance, to declare that they will be governed by policy no longer. JoHNSON.

P. 241, 1. 8. Art thou of blood, and ho nour? This is an idea taken from the ancient books of romantick chi valry, as is the following one in the speech of Diomed:

And am her knight by proof."

It appears from Segar on Honor, Military and Civil, folio, 1602, p. 122, that a person of superior birth might not be challenged by san inferior, or if challenged, might refuse the combat.

Alluding to this circumstance Cleopatra says: These hands do lack nobility, that they strike

A meaner than myself."

These punctilios are well ridiculed in Albumazar, Act IV. sc. VII. REED.

1. P. 242, 1. 3.

bastard Margarelon] The introduction of a bastard son of Priam, under

the name of Margarelon, is one of the circumstances taken from the story book of The Three Destructions of Troy. THEOBALD.

譯

- P. 242, 1. 5. — waving his beam,] i. e. his Tance like a weaver's beam, as Goliath's spear is described. STEEVENS.

P. 242, 1. 6. crushed. STEEVENS,

pashed i. e. bruised,

P. 242, 1, 10. 11. — the dreadful Sagittary Appals our numbers;] "Beyonde the royalme of Amasonne came an auncyent Kynges wyse and dyscreete, named Epystrophus, and Brought a M. knyghtes, and a mervayllouse beste that was called SAGITTAYRE, that behynde the myldes was an horse, and to fore, a man; this beste was heery like an horse, and had his eyen rede as a cole, and shotte well with a bowe: this beste made the Grekes s sore aferde, and slewe many of them with his bowe.

The

Three Destructions of Troy, printed by Caxton. THEOBALD.

ある

P. 242, 1. 19. And there they fly, or die, like scaled sculls] Sculls

are great numbers of fishes swimming together. The modern editors not being acquainted with the term, changed it into shoals. My know ledge of this word is derived from a little book called The English Expositor, London, printed by John Legatt, 1616. STEEVENS.

Scaled means here, dispersed, put to flight. This is proved decisively by the original reading of the quarto, scaling, which was either changed by the poet himself to scaled (with the same sense) or by the editor of the folio. If the latter was the case, it is probable that not being sufficiently acquainted with our author's, manner, who frequently uses the active for the passive participle, he supposed that the epithet was merely descriptive of some quality in the thing described. MALONE.

Sculls and shoals, have not only one and the same meaning, but are actually, or at least ori ginally, one and the same word. A scull of herrings (and it is to those fish that the speaker alludes) so termed on the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, is elsewhere called a shoal. RITSON. P. 242, 1. 21. the strawy Greeks,] In the folio it is the straying Greeks. JOHNSON. P. 242, 1. 22. Swath is the quantity of grass single stroke of the mower's

cut down by a scythe. STEEVENS,

1

།།།

P. 243, I. 16. Nest. So, so we e draw toge ther. This remark seems

to be made by Nestor in consequence of the return of Ajax to the field, he having lately re