Re-enter PATROCLUS.

Nest. No Achilles with him.

Ulys. The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy: his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.13

14

Patr. Achilles bids me say, he is much sorry, If any thing more than your sport and pleasure Did move your greatness and this noble state To call upon him: he hopes it is no other, But, for your health and your digestion sake, An after-dinner's breath."

Aga.

Hear you, Patroclus:

We are too well acquainted with these answers;
But his evasion, wing'd thus swift with scorn,
Cannot outfly our apprehensions.

Much attribute he hath, and much the reason
Why we ascribe it to him; yet all his virtues,
Not virtuously on his own part beheld,
Do in our eyes begin to lose their gloss;
Yea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish,
Are like to rot untasted. Go and tell him,

We come to speak with him: and you shall not sin,
If
you do say, we think him over-proud,

And under-honest; in self-assumption greater

13 It was an old notion that the elephant, "being unable to lie down, slept leaning against a tree, which the hunters observing, do saw it almost asunder; whereon the beast relying, by the fall of the tree, falls also down itself, and is able to rise no more." Thus in The Dialogues of Creatures Moralysed: "The olefawnte that bowyth not the kneys." Thus also in All's Lost by Lust, 1633: "Stubborn as an elephant's leg, no bending in her." The notion continued till the time of Sir Thomas Browne, and is refuted in his Vulgar Errors.

14 This stately train of attending nobles.

16 Breath for breathing; that is, exercise, relaxation.

Than in the note of judgment; and worthier than

himself

Here tend the savage strangeness he puts on;
Disguise the holy strength of their command,
And underwrite in an observing kind 1o
His humorous predominance; yea, watch
His pettish lunes," his ebbs, his flows, as if
The passage and whole carriage of this action
Rode on his tide. Go, tell him this; and add,
That if he overhold his price so much
We'll none of him; but let him, like an engine
Not portable, lie under this report:

66

Bring action hither, this cannot go to war; A stirring dwarf we do allowance give

Before a sleeping giant:" —Tell him so.

Patr. I shall; and bring his answer presently.

Aga. In second voice we'll not be satisfied;

[Exit.

- Ulysses, enter you.

[Exit ULYSSES.

Ajax. What is he more than another?

Aga. No more than what he thinks he is.

Ajax. Is he so much? Do you not think he thinks himself a better man than I am?

Aga. No question.

Ajax. Will you subscribe his thought, and say he is?

Aga. No, noble Ajax ; you are as strong, as val iant, as wise, no less noble, much more gentle, and altogether more tractable.

16 To underwrite is synonymous with to subscribe, which is used by Shakespeare in several places for to yield, to submit.

7 Fitful-lunacies. The quarto reads thus:

"His course and time, his ebbs and flows, and if

The passage and whole stream of his commencement
Rode on his tide."

Ajax. Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I know not what pride is.

Aga. Your mind's the clearer, Ajax, and your virtues the fairer. He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise.

Ajax. I do hate a proud man, as I hate the engendering of toads.

Nest. [Aside.] And yet he loves himself: is't not strange?

Re-enter ULYSSES.

Ulys. Achilles will not to the field to-morrow. Aga. What's his excuse?

Ulys. He doth rely on none; But carries on the stream of his dispose Without observance or respect of any,

In will peculiar and in self-admission.

Aga. Why will he not, upon our fair request, Untent his person, and share the air with us?

Ulys. Things small as nothing, for request's sake

only,

He makes in portant. Possess'd he is with great

ness;

And speaks not to himself but with a pride
That quarrels at self-breath: imagin'd worth
Holds in his blood such swoln and hot discourse,
That, 'twixt his mental and his active parts,
Kingdom'd Achilles in commotion rages,

And batters down himself: What should I say?
He is so plaguy proud, that the death tokens 18 of it
Cry" No recovery."

19 Alluding to the spots appearing on those infected with the

Aga.

Let Ajax go to him.

Dear lord, go you and greet him in his tent: "Tis said he holds you well, and will be led At your request a little from himself.

19

Ulys. O, Agamemnon! let it not be so. We'll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes When they go from Achilles: Shall the proud lord That bastes his arrogance with his own seam,' And never suffers matter of the world Enter his thoughts, save such as do revolve And ruminate himself; -shall he be worshipp'd Of that we hold an idol more than he ? No; this thrice-worthy and right-valiant lord Must not so stale his palm, nobly acquir'd; Nor, by my will, assubjugate his merit, As amply titled as Achilles is,

By going to Achilles :

That were to enlard his fat-already pride;

And add more coals to Cancer, 20 when he burns
With entertaining great Hyperion.

This lord go to him! Jupiter forbid,

And say in thunder

Achilles, go to him."

Nest. [Aside.] O, this is well! he rubs the vein

of him.

Dio. [Aside.] And how his silence drinks up this applause!

plague. Thus Hodges on the Plague: "Spots of a dark com. plexion, usually called tokens, and looked on as the pledges or forewarnings of death." And in Beaumont and Fletcher's Valentinian:

"Now like the fearful tokens of the plague,

Are mere forerunners of their ends."

19 Seam is fat. The grease, fat, or tallow of any animal; bạt chiefly applied to that of a hog.

20 The sign in the zodiac, into which the sun enters June 21

Aja If I go to him, with my armed fist

I'll pash him "1 o'er the face.

Aga. O, no! you shall not go.

Ajax. An 'a be proud with ine, I'll pheeze his pride?

Let me go to him.

Ulys. Not for the worth that hangs upon our

quarrel.

Ajax. A paltry, insolent fellow!

Nest. [Aside.]

Himself!

How he describes

Ajax. Can he not be sociable?
Ulys. [Aside.]

Chides blackness.

Ajax.

The raven

I'll let his humour's blood.22

Aga. [Aside.] He will be the physician, that

should be the patient.

Ajax. An all men were o'my mind,

Ulys. [Aside.]

Wit would be out of fashion.

Ajax. 'A should not bear it so ;

'A should eat swords first: shall pride carry it? Nest. [Aside.] An 'twould, you'd carry half. Ulys. [Aside.]

'A would have ten shares. Ajax. I will knead him; I will make him supple.

21 To pash is to maul, to break, to smash; a word not unfrequently used by the old writers. Thus in Holinshed's account of Becket's death: "They left him not till they had cut and pashed out his braines, and dashed them about upon the church pavement." Also in Chapman's Homer: "That can be cut with any iron, or pasht with mightie stones." And in North's Plutarch: "The poor men half dead were beaten down with clubs, and their heads pashed in pieces."— Pheeze, just below, is to beat down, to humble. See The Taming of the Shrew, Induction, note 1.

H.

22 There is a curious collection of Epigrams, Sat'res, &c., printed in 1600, with this quaint title: "The Letting of Humour's Blood in the Head Vaine."