TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 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, Shakespear 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 didactic 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 center, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, And posts, like the commandment of a king, What plagues and what portents? what mutinies? Commotion in the winds frights, changes, horrors, 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 enterprize is sick! How could communities, Take but degree away, untune that string, In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters And the rude son would strike his father dead: (Between whose endless jar Justice resides) So doubly seconded with will and power) And this neglection of degree it is, That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, It cannot be said of Shakespear, 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 "of his greatest fault. He was only in danger 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 Ulys ses to Achilles, shewing him the thankless na ture 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 critics, that the poet's genius was not confined to the production of stage effect by preternatural means. 66 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, Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; That one by one pursue; if you give way, Or, like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank, O'er-run 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 Farewel goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek To envious and calumniating time: One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. The throng of images in the above lines is prodigious; and though they sometimes jostle against one another, they every where raise and carry on the feeling, which is metaphysically true and profound. The debates between the Trojan chiefs on the restoring of Helen are full of knowledge of human motives and character. Troilus enters well into the philosophy of war, when he says in answer to something that falls from Hector, 66 Why there you touch'd the life of our design: Than the performance of our heaving spleens, Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector, |