upon the truth of nature. Several of the scenes in Julius Cæsar, particularly Portia's appeal to the confidence of her husband by shewing him the wound she had given herself, and the appearance of the ghost of Cæsar to Brutus, are, in like manner, taken from the history.
THIS is one of the most loose and desultory of our author's plays: it rambles on just as it happens, but it overtakes, together with some indifferent matter, a prodigious number of fine things in its way. Troilus himself is no character: he is merely a common lover: but Cressida and her uncle Pandarus are hit off with proverbial truth. By the speeches given to the leaders of the Grecian host, Nestor, Ulysses, Agamemnon, Achilles, Shakspeare seems to have known them as well as if he had been a spy sent by the Trojans into the enemy's camp-to say nothing of their being very lofty examples of didactick eloquence. The following is a very stately and spirited declamation :
Ulysses. Troy, yet upon her 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.
**********
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order : And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol, In noble eminence, enthron'd and spher'd Amidst the other, whose med'cinable eye Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad. But, when the planets, In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents? what mutinies? What raging of the sea? shaking of earth? Commotion in the winds? frights, changes, horrours, Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shaken, (Which is the ladder to all high designs) The enterprise is sick! How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenitive and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, (But by degree) stand in authentick place P Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark what discord follows! each thing meets In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters Would lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe: Strength would be lord of imbecility, And the rude son would strike his father dead: Force would be right; or rather, right and wrong (Between whose endless jar Justice resides) Would lose their names, and so would Justice too. Then every thing includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite (an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power) Must make perforce an universal prey, And last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking:
And this neglection of degree it is,
That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose It hath to climb. The general's disdained By him one step below; he, by the next; That next, by him beneath: so every step, Exampled by the first pace that is sick Of his superiour, grows to an envious fever Of pale and bloodless emulation; And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length, Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength."
It cannot be said of Shakspeare, as was said of some one, that he was "without o'erflowing full." He was full, even to o'erflowing. He gave heaped measure, running over. This was his greatest fault. He was only in danger " of losing distinction in his thoughts" (to borrow his own expression)
"As doth a battle when they charge on heaps The enemy flying."
There is another passage, the speech of Ulysses to Achilles, shewing him the thankless nature of popularity, which has a still greater depth of moral observation and richness of illustration than the former. It is long, but worth the quoting. The sometimes giving an entire extract from the unacted plays of our author may, with one class of readers, have almost the use of restoring a lost passage; and may serve to convince another class of criticks, that the poet's genius was not confined to the production of stage effect by preternatural means.
"Ulysses. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion; A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past,
Which are devour'd as fast as they are made, Forgot as soon as done : Persev'rance, dear my lord, Keeps Honour bright: to have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; For Honour travels in a strait so narrow, Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path, For Emulation hath a thousand sons, That one by one pursue; if you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forth-right, Like to an entered tide, they all rush by, And leave you hindmost ;-
Or, like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank, O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present, Tho' less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours: For Time is like a fashionable host, That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand, And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: the Welcome ever smiles, And Farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was; for beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time:
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. That all, with one consent, praise new born gauds, Tho' they are made and moulded of things past. The present eye praises the present object. Then marvel not, thou great and complete man, That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax; Since things in motion sooner catch the eye, Than what not stirs. The cry went out on thee, And still it might, and yet it may again, If thou would'st not entomb thyself alive, And case thy reputation in thy tent."-
The throng of images in the above lines is prodigious; and though they sometimes jostle against one
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