Should with a bond of air (strong as the axletree On which heaven rides,) knit all the Greekish ears To his experienc'd tongue,*—yet let it please both,Thou great, and wise,-to hear Ulysses speak. Agam. Speak, prince of Ithaca; and be't of less expect, That matter needless, of importless burden, Ulyss. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down, And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master, But for these instances. The specialty of rule hath been neglected: speeches, which were such, As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece knit all the Greekish ears To his experienc'd tongue,] Ulysses begins his oration with praising those who had spoken before him, and marks the characteristick excellencies of their different eloquence,-strength, and sweetness, which he expresses by the different metals on which he recommends them to be engraven for the instruction of posterity. The speech of Agamemnon is such that it ought to be engraven in brass, and the tablet held up by him on the one side, and Greece on the other, to show the union of their opinion. And Nestor ought to be exhibited in silver, uniting all his audience in one mind by his soft and gentle elocution. Brass is the comnion emblem of strength, and silver of gentleness. We call a soft voice a silver voice, and a persuasive tongue a silver tongue. To hatch is a term of art for a particular method of engraving. Hacher, to cut, Fr. The Commentators differ in some respects from this explanation. 5 expect-] Expect for expectation. The specialty of rule-] The particular rights of supreme authority. 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 8 center, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, eye 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 married calm of states Quite from their fixure? O, when degree is shak'd, The enterprize is sick! How could communities, 7 When that the general is not like the hive,] The meaning is,When the general is not to the army like the hive to the bees, the repository of the stock of every individual, that to which each particular resorts with whatever he has collected for the good of the whole, what honey is expected? what hope of advantage? The sense is clear, the expression is confused. JOHNSON. 8 the planets, and this center,] By this center, Ulysses means the earth itself, not the center of the earth. According to the system of Ptolemy, the earth is the center round which the planets move. 9 1 deracinate-] i. e. force up by the roots. brotherhoods in cities,] Corporations, companies, con fraternities. 2 dividable shores,] i. e. divided. The primogenitive and due of birth, And, hark, what discord follows? each thing meets 3 Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, 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, So doubly seconded with will and power, And, last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, Follows the choking. And this neglection of degree it is, 5 That by a pace1 goes backward, with a purpose And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, + That by a pace-] That goes backward step by step. with a purpose It hath to climb.] With a design in each man to aggrandize himself, by slighting his immediate superior. bloodless emulation:] An emulation not vigorous and active, but malignant and sluggish. 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 discover'd 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 Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent Breaks scurril jests; And with ridiculous and aukward action (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,) He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon, And, like a strutting player,-whose conceit Thy topless deputation-] Topless is that which has nothing topping or overtopping it; supreme; sovereign. Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,] The galleries of the theatre, in the time of our author, were sometimes termed the scaffolds. 2 1 o'er-wrested seeming-] i. e. wrested beyond the truth. -unsquar'd,] i. e. unadapted to their subject, as stones are unfitted to the purposes of architecture, while they are yet unsquar'd. Cries-Excellent!-'tis Agamemnon just. Now play me Nestor;-hem, and stroke thy beard, That's done;-as near as the extremest ends And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age Nest. And in the imitation of these twain 4 (A slave, whose gall coins slanders like a mint,') Of parallels;] The parallels to which the allusion seems to be made, are the parallels on a map. As like as east to west. 4 still bears his head In such a rein,] That is, holds up his head as haughtily. We say of a girl, she bridles. whose gall coins slanders like a mint,] i. e. as fast as a mint coins money. |