TROILUS passes over.

Pan. Where? yonder? that's Deiphobus: "Tis Troilus! there's a man, niece! - Hem!— Brave Troilus! the prince of chivalry!

Cres. Peace! for shame; peace!

Pan. Mark him; note him: — O, brave Troilus! -look well upon him, niece; look you how his sword is bloodied, and his helm more hack'd than Hector's; and how he looks, and how he goes.. O, admirable youth! he ne'er saw three and twenty. Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way: had I a sister were a grace, or a daughter a goddess, he should take his choice. O, admirable man! Paris ? - Paris is dirt to him; and I warrant Helen, to change, would give an eye to boot."

So in the quarto: the folio has "give money to boot." Mr Verplanck, to our surprise, thinks there is little to choose be-ween the two readings." ―This description of the Trojan leaders vas probably suggested by a similar scene in Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide, Book ii., part of which we extract. tanza is put into the mouth of Pandarus:

"Of Hector needeth it no more for to tell:
In all this world there n'is a better knight
Than he, that is of worthiness the well,
And he well more vertue hath than might;
This knoweth many a wise and worthy knight:
And the same prise of Troilus I sey;
God elpe me so, I know not suche twey.'

"By God, (quoth she,) of Hector that is sooth,
And of Troilus the same thing trow I;
For, dredelesse, men telleth that he dooth
In armes day by day so worthely,
And beareth him here at home so gently
To every wight, that all prise hath he
Of hem that me were levest praised be.'

"Ye say right sooth, ywis,' (quod Pandarus,)
For yesterday whoso had with him been,
Mighten have wondred upon Troilus;

The first

Forces pass over the Stage.

Cres. Here come more.

Pan. Asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran, chaff and bran! porridge after meat! I could live and die i'the eyes of Troilus. Ne'er look, ne'er look: the eagles are gone; crows and daws, crows and daws! I had rather be such a man as Troilus than Agamemnon and all Greece.

Cres. There is among the Greeks Achilles, a better man than Troilus.

Pan. Achilles? a drayman, a porter, a very camel.

Cres. Well, well.

Pan. Well, well? - Why, have you any discre tion? have you any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?

Cres. Ay, a minc'd man; and then to be bak'd with no date 12 in the pie, - for then the man's date's

out.

12

For never yet so thicke a swarme of been
Ne flew, as Greekes from him gan fleen;
And through the field in every wightes eare
There was no crie, but Troilus is there.'

"Now here, now there he hunted hem so fast,
There was but Greekes blood and Troilus;
Now him he hurt, and him all doun he cast;
Aye where he went it was arraied thus:
He was hir death, and shield and life for us, -
That as the day ther durst him none withstond,
While that he held his bloody swerd in hond." "

13 Dates were an ingredient in ancient pastry of almost every See All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. sc. 1, note 16

kind

Pan. You are such a woman! one knows not at what ward you lie.13

Cres. Upon my back to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend nine honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty; and you, to defend all these and at all these wards I lie, at a thousand watches.

Pan. Say one of your watches.

Cres. Nay, I'll watch you for that; and that's one of the chiefest of them too: if I cannot ward what I would not have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took the blow; unless it swell past hiding, and then it's past watching.

Pan. You are such another!

Enter TROILUS' Boy.

Boy. Sir, my lord would instantly speak with you. Pan. Where?

Boy. At your own house; there he unarms him. Pan. Good boy, tell him I come: [Exit Boy.] I doubt he be hurt. - Fare ye well, good niece. Cres. Adieu, uncle.

Pan. I'll be with you, niece, by-and-by
Cres. To bring, uncle?14

13 A metaphor from the art of defence. See 1 King Henry IV., Act ii. sc. 4, "Thou know'st my old ward; here I lay."

14 Mr. Dyce produces some curious matter in elucidation of this passage, which has commonly been printed with a dash after uncle, as if Cressida were interrupted in the midst of her speech, the editors probably not understanding what is really meant by to bring. Mr. Dyce says, -"The expression, to be with a person to bring, is one of which I can more easily adduce examples than explain the exact meaning." As an instance in point, he quotes the following from Kyd's Spanish Tragedy: "And here I'll have a fling at him, that's flat; and, Balthazar, I'll be with thee to bring, and thee, Lorenzo." Also this from Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady:

Pan. Ay, a token from Troilus.

Cres. By the same token, you are a bawd.

[Exit PANDARUS.

Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love's full sacrifice,
He offers in another's enterprise;

But more in Troilus thousand fold I see
Than in the glass of Pandar's praise may be;
Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing;
Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing:
That she 15 belov'd knows nought, that knows not
this,-

Men prize the thing ungain'd more than it is:
That she was never yet, that ever knew
Love got so sweet, as when desire did sue:
Therefore this maxin out of love I teach,
Achiev'd, men us command; ungain'd, beseech:
Then, though my heart's content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.

[Exit.

16

"E. Love. I would have watch'd you, sir, by your good pa tience, for ferreting in my ground.

"Lady. You have been with my sister?

"Wel. Yes, to bring.

"E. Love. An heir into the world, he means."

Of course Pandarus catches at the word bring, and construes i in the sense which Cressida is commonly misunderstood to in tend by it.

15 That she means that woman.

H.

16 The old copies read, "Achievement is command;" from which the same meaning may indeed be extracted, but the sense is obscure, and the language awkward and unsymmetrical. The misprint, supposing it to be such, was a natural and easy one. The correction was first proposed by the Rev. Mr. Harness. In Mr. Collier's second folio we have, "Achiev'd men still command ;" which, besides not being so good in itself, infers a much less likely misprint.

H.

SCENE III.

The Grecian Camp. Before AGAMEMNON'S Tent.

Trumpets. Enter AGAMEMNON, NESTOR,
ULYSSES, MENELAUS, and Others.

Aga. Princes,

What grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks! The ample proposition, that hope makes

In all designs begun on earth below,

Fails in the promis'd largeness: checks and disas

ters

Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd;
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine, aud divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.
Nor, princes, is it matter new to us,

That we come short of our suppose so far,
That after seven years' siege yet Troy walls stand;
Sith every action that hath gone before,
Whereof we have record, trial did draw,
Bias and thwart, not answering the aim,
And that unbodied figure of the thought

That gav't surmised shape. Why, then, you princes,
Do you with cheeks abash'd behold our wrecks,'

1 The old copies read works nere. The change of works to wrecks is found in Mr. Collier's second folio. The misprint, if it be one, was likely enough to occur; and the sense of the whole passage seems to require a word meaning something suffered, rather than done. Even Mr. Singer, who has much ado to restrain his wrath at Mr. Collier's discoveries, is forced to confess that wrecks "has some appearance of probability, and would be a good conjectural correction of a misprint very likely to occur." All which considerations have brought us to a reluctant admission of the change.

H