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 beloved 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 maxim out of love I teach:

Achievement is command; ungain'd, beseech;

Then, though my heart's content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.The Grecian Camp. Before AGAMEMNON'S Tent.

Sennet. Enter AGAMEMNON, Nestor, Ulysses, Menelaus, and others.

Agam. 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 promised largeness: checks and disasters

Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd;

As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,

Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course 1 of growth.

1 Tortive is twisted, winding, or crooked; errant, turning aside or deviating; making the timber what we call cross-grained. His for its, as usual.

Nor, princes, is it matter new to us,

That we come short of our suppose 2 so far,

That, after seven years' siege, yet Troy walls stand;
Sith every action that hath gone before,
Whereof we have recórd, trial did draw

Bias and thwart,3 not answering the aim,
And that unbodied figure of the thought

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

Do

you

And call them shames? which are, indeed, nought else
But the protractive trials of great Jove

To find persistive constancy in men.

The fineness of which metal is not found

In fortune's love; for then the bold and coward,

The wise and fool, the artist and unread,

The hard and soft, seem all affined1 and kin :
But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
And what hath mass or matter, by itself
Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.

Nest. With due observance of thy godlike seat,

Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply

Thy latest words. In the reproof 5 of chance

Lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth,

2 Suppose for supposition, or "what we supposed ourselves able to do." In this play, we have divers other words shortened in like manner; as dispose for disposition, exclaim for exclamation, &c.

3 Bias was a term in nine-pins, and meant a weight in one side of a bowl, to turn it from the aim; hence put for any wayward impulse or preference. See vol. x. page 41, note 64.- Thwart is hindrance or defeat; that which crosses, checks, or conflicts with, a given purpose.

Affined is joined by affinity. So in Othello, ii. 3: "If, partially affined or leagued in office, thou dost deliver more or less than truth," &c.

Reproof for disproof or refutation. See vol. xi. page 21, note 33.

How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
Upon her patient breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk!

But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage

The gentle Thetis, and, anon, behold

The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements,

Like Perseus' horse : 6 where's then the saucy boat,
Whose weak untimber'd sides but even now
Co-rivall'd greatness? either to harbour fled,
Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so
Doth valour's show and valour's worth divide
In storms of fortune: for in her ray and brightness
The herd hath more annoyance by the breese7
Than by the tiger; but, when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,

And flies flee under shade, why, then the thing of courage,
As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathize,8

And with an accent tuned in selfsame key

Retorts to chiding fortune.

Ulyss.

Agamemnon,

Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,
Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit,

In whom the tempers and the minds of all

6 When Perseus struck off Medusa's head, there sprang from her blood the famous flying horse called Pegasus. The horse, however, was assigned to Bellerophon, and is commonly spoken of as his. But Shakespeare follows the old Troy Book, where it is said that, "by the flying horse that was engendered of the blood, is understood that of her riches issuing of that realme Perseus made a ship named Pegase; and this ship was likened unto an horse flying." This ship the writer always calls Perseus' flying horse, and says in one place that she "flew on the sea like unto a bird."

7 The breese is the gadfly, the summer torment of cattle. See page 91,

note 7.

8 It used to be said that in storms tigers became stormy, raging and roaring most furiously.

Should be shut up,9 - hear what Ulysses speaks;
Besides th' applause and approbation

The which, most mighty for thy place and sway,

[To NEST.] And thou most reverend for thy stretch'd-out life, — I give to both your speeches; which were such

As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece

Should hold up high in brass; and such again

As venerable Nestor, hatch'd in silver,10

Should with a bond of air

On which heaven rides

strong as the axletree knit all the Greekish ears

To his experienced tongue; 11 yet please it both,
Though great and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.
Agam. Speak, Prince of Ithaca: we no less expect
That matter needless, of importless burden,
Divide thy lips, than we are confident,
When rank Thersites opes his mastiff jaws,
We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.12

9 That is, included or condensed, so as to make him an embodiment and representative of the public mind and cause; the month-piece of all.

10 Hatch'd in silver means the same as what the Poet elsewhere calls 'the silver livery of advised age," that is, white-haired. So in Love in a Maze, 1632: "Thy hair is fine as gold, thy chin is hatch'd with silver." The metaphor is borrowed from the art of design, where a sword-hilt, for instance, was said to be hatched in silver when it was inlaid with threads or lines of that metal.

11 The meaning is, that Agamemnon's speech should gain him a statue of brass, and that venerable Nestor should with his vocal breath rivet the attention of all Greece. The construction of the sentence is somewhat perplexed and obscure. The force of hear, in the preceding member, is continued over applause and approbation. The first As-"As Agamemnon," &c. is the relative pronoun, and the subject of should hold up: instead of the second As, which is merely conjunctive, we should now use that. "Agamemnon and the hand of Greece," and is properly redundant, hand being in apposition with Agamemnon, and standing for executive power. Thus the meaning is, "such as should cause Agamemnon, the hand of Greece, to be honoured with a full-length bronze statue; and such that Nestor ought to enchain the hearing of all the Greeks."

In

12 The meaning, in plain English, is, "we are as sure of a bad speech

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;
And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.
When that the general is not like the hive,
To whom the foragers shall all repair,13

What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,
Th' unworthiest shows as fairly in the masque.

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,1
Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture,15 course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order.
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol

In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose medicinable 16

Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,

eye

And posts, like the commandment of a king,

Sans check, to good and bad: but, when the planets,

In evil mixture, to disorder wander,

14

from you as of a good one from Thersites." Ulysses gives a like specimen of inverted ironical comparison in his second speech below: "As near as the extremest ends of parallels; as like as Vulcan and his wife."

13 That is, when the general is not to the army what the hive is to the swarm of bees, - the spring-head or centre of all their aims and labours.

14" This centre" is the Earth, which, according to the old astronomy, was literally the fixed centre of the planetary motions. See vol. vii. page 167,

note IO.

15 Insisture is, I take it, about the same as position or station, -a sense congruent with its Latin original. Johnson says "constancy or regularity"; Dyce, "fixedness, stability." The word is not found anywhere else.

16 Medicinable for medicinal; the passive form with the active sense. See vol. iv. page 185, note 1. — In the old astronomy the Sun was regarded as one of the planets, but as being enthroned, that is, as having regal pre-eminence, among them.