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364.

dear man] Valuable man. The repetition of the word is in our author's manner. JOHNSON. 375. Which better fits a lion,-] 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.. JOHNSON. 395. --with recourse of tears;] i. e. tears that continue to course one another down the face.

WARBURTON.

425. O farewel, dear Hector!] The interposition and clamorous sorrow of Cassandra were copied by our author from Lydgate. STEEVENS.

429. -shrills her dolours, &c.] So, in Hey. wood's Silver Age, 1613:

"Through all th' abyss I have shrill'd thy daugh

ter's loss, to my concave trump."

STEEVENS.

443. According to the quartos 1609, 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 it 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, and placing it at the end, where at present only the few lines already mentioned are to be found. STEEVENS.

470.0' the other side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals, &c.] But in what sense are Nestor and Ulysses accused of being swearing rascals? What, or to whom, did they swear? I am positive that sneering is the true reading. 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. THEOBALD.

477. -to proclaim barbarism,- -] To set up the authority of ignorance, to declare that they will be governed by policy no longer. JOHNSON. 489. Art thou of blood, and honour?] This is an idea taken from the ancient books of romantick chivalry, as is the following one in the speech of Diomed: "And am her knight by proof." STEEVENS. 498. -take thou Troilus' horse ;] So, in Lydgate: "That Troilus, by maine and mighty force, "At unawares he cast down from his horse ; "And gave it to his squire for to beare

"To Cressida," &c.

505.

STEEVENS.

bastard Margarelon] The introduction of a bastard son of Priam, under the name of Margarelon, is one of the circumstances taken from the

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story-book of The Three Destructions of Troy.

THEOBALD.

The circumstance was taken from Lydgate, p. 194: "Which when the valiant knight, Margarelon, "One of king Priam's bastard children," &c.

512.

-the dreadful Sagittary

Appals our numbers ;

STEEVENS.

-] Beyonde

the royalme of Amasonne came an auncyent kynge, wyse and dyscreete, named Epystrophus, and brought a M. knyghtes, and a mervayllouse beste that was called SAGITTAYRE, that behynde the myddes 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 sore aferde, and slewe many of them with his bowe." The Three Destructions of Troy, printed by Caxton.

THEOBALD

-the dreadful Sagittary] A very circumstantial account of this Sagittary is likewise to be found in Lydgate, p. 174.

STEEVENS.

518. -on Galathe his horse,] From The Three Destructions of Troy is taken this name given to Hector's horse.

THEOBALD.

"Cal'd Galathe (the which is said to have been) "The goodliest horse," &c. Lydgate, p. 142. Again, p. 175.

"And sought, by all the means he could, to take

"Galathe, Hector's horse," &c.

Heywood,

Heywood, in his Iron Age, 1632, has likewise continued the same appellation to Hector's horse:

"My armour, and my trusty Galatee."

Heywood has taken many circumstances in his play from Lydgate. John Stephens, the author of Cinthia's Revenge, 1613, (a play commended by Ben Jonson in some lines prefixed to it) has mounted Hector on an elephant. STEEVENS.

520.

-scaled sculls] Sculls are great numbers of fishes swimming together. The modern editors not being acquainted with the term, changed it into shoals. My knowledge of this word is derived from a little book called The English Expositor, London, printed by John Legatt, 1616. The word likewise occurs in Lilly's Midas, 1592:

"He hath, by this, started a covey of bucks, or roused a scull of pheasants." The humour of this short speech consists in a misapplication of the appropriate terms of one amusement to another. Again, in Milton:

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"With fry innumerable swarms, and shoals
"Of fish, that with their fins and shining scales
"Glide under the green wave, in sculls that oft
"Bank the mid sea."
STEEVENS.

Sculls and shoals have not only one and the same meaning, but are actually, or at least originally, one and the same word. A scull of herrings (and it is to those fish that the speaker alludes) so termed on the

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coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, is elsewhere called a

shoal.

522.

559.

REMARKS.

the strawy Greeks, -] In the folio it is,

-the straying Greeks,

JOHNSON.

you cogging Greeks,--] This epithet has no particular propriety in this place, but the author had heard of Græcia mendax. JOHNSON.

Surely the epithet had propriety in respect of Diomed at least, who had defrauded him of his mistress. Troilus bestows it on both, unius ob culpam. A fraudulent man, as I am told, is still called in the North -a gainful Greek. Cicero bears witness to this cha racter of the ancient Greeks, "Testimoniorum religionem & fidem nunquam ista natio coluit." Again"Græcorum ingenia ad fallendum parata sunt."

STEEVENS. 578. I like thy armour well;] This circumstance is taken from Lydgate's poem, p. 196:

"Guido in his historie doth show

"By worthy Hector's fall, who coveting
"To have the sumptuous armour of that king,
&c.

"So greedy was thereof, that when he had
“The body up, and on his horse it bare,

"To have the spoil thereof such haste he made, "That he did hang his shield without all care "Behind him at his back, the easier

"To pull the armour off at his desire,

"And by that means his breast clean open lay,"

&c.

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