a fool to stay behind her father; let her to the Greeks; and so I'll tell her the next time I see her: for my part, I'll meddle nor make no more in the matter. TRO. Pandarus, PAN. Not I. TRO. Sweet Pandarus, PAN. Pray you, speak no more to me; I will leave all as I found it, and there an end. [Exit PANDARUS. An Alarum. TRO. Peace, you ungracious clamours! peace, rude sounds! Fools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair, When with your blood you daily paint her thus. I cannot fight upon this argument; It is too starv'd a subject for my sword. But Pandarus-O gods, how do you plague me! I cannot come to Cressid, but by Pandar; ; 1 And he's as tetchy to be woo'd to woo, As she is stubborn-chaste against all suit. Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne's love, What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we? - to stay behind her father;] Calchas, according to Shakspeare's authority, The Destruction of Troy, was "a great learned bishop of Troy," who was sent by Priam to consult the oracle of Delphi concerning the event of the war which was threatened by Agamemnon. As soon as he had made "his oblations and demaunds for them of Troy, Apollo (says the book) aunswered unto him, saying; Calchas, Calchas, beware that thou returne not back again to Troy; but goe thou with Achylles, unto the Greekes, and depart never from them, for the Greekes shall have victorie of the Troyans by the agreement of the Gods." Hist. of the Destruction of Troy, translated by Caxton, 5th edit. 4to. 1617. This prudent bishop followed the advice of the Oracle, and immediately joined the Greeks. MALONE. Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl: Alarum. Enter ENEAS. 6 ENE. How now, prince Troilus? wherefore not afield?" TRO. Because not there; This woman's answer sorts,8 For womanish it is to be from thence. What news, Æneas, from the field to-day? ENE. That Paris is returned home, and hurt. TRO. By whom, Æneas? ENE. Troilus, by Menelaus. TRO. Let Paris bleed: 'tis but a scar to scorn; Paris is gor'd with Menelaus' horn. 5 [Alarum. Ilium,] Was the palace of Troy. JOHNSON. Ilium, properly speaking, is the name of the city; Troy, that of the country. STEEVENS. 6 this sailing Pandar, Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our bark.] So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: "This punk is one of Cupid's carriers; "Clap on more sails," &c. Malone. 7 How now, prince Troilus? wherefore not afield?] Shakspeare, it appears from various lines in this play, pronounced Troilus improperly as a dissyllable; as every mere English reader does at this day. 8 So also, in his Rape of Lucrece: "Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds." -- MALONE. -sorts,] i. e. fits, suits, is congruous. So, in King Henry V: "It sorts well with thy fierceness." STEEVENS. ENE. Hark! what good sport is out of town to-day! TRO. Better at home, if would I might, were may. But, to the sport abroad ;-Are you bound thither? ENE. In all swift haste. Up to the eastern tower, CRES. And whither go they? Whose height commands as subject all the vale, Hector, whose patience Is, as a virtue, fix'd,] Patience sure was a virtue, and therefore cannot, in propriety of expression, be said to be like one. We should read: Is as the virtue fix'd, i.e. his patience is as fixed as the goddess Patience itself. So we find Troilus a little before saying: "Patience herself, what goddess e'er she be, "Doth lesser blench at sufferance than I do." It is remarkable that Dryden when he altered this play, and found this false reading, altered it with judgment to Which he would not have done had he seen the right reading He chid Andromache, and struck his armourer; And, like as there were husbandry in war,1 Before the sun rose, he was harness'd light,2 here given, where his thought is so much better and nobler expressed. WARburton. I think the present text may stand. Hector's patience was as a virtue, not variable and accidental, but fixed and constant. If I would alter it, it should be thus: Hector, whose patience Is all a virtue fix'd, All, in old English, is the intensive or enforcing particle. JOHNSON. I had once almost persuaded myself that Shakspeare wrote, whose patience Is, as a statue fix'd. So, in The Winter's Tale, sc. ult: “The statue is but newly fix'd." The same idea occurs also in the celebrated passage in TwelfthNight: 66 sat like patience on a monument." The old adage-Patience is a virtue, was perhaps uppermost in the compositor's mind, and he therefore inadvertently substituted the one word for the other. A virtue fixed may, however, mean the stationary image of a virtue. STEEVENS. 1 -husbandry in war,] So, in Macbeth: "There's husbandry in heaven." STEEVENS. Husbandry means economical prudence. Troilus alludes to Hector's early rising. So, in King Henry V : 66 our bad neighbours make us early stirrers, "Which is both healthful and good husbandry.” MALONE. * Before the sun rose, he was harness'd light,] Does the poet mean (says Mr. Theobald) that Hector had put on light armour? Mean! what else could he mean? He goes to fight on foot; and was not that the armour for his purpose? So, Fairfax, in Tasso's Jerusalem: "The other princes put on harness light "As footmen use-." Yet, as if this had been the highest absurdity, he goes on, Or does he mean that Hector was sprightly in his arms even before sunrise? or is a conundrum aimed at, in sun rose and harness'd light? Was any thing like it? But, to get out of this per And to the field goes he; where every flower plexity, he tells us, that a very slight alteration makes all these constructions unnecessary, and so changes it to harness-dight. Yet indeed the very slightest alteration will, at any time, let the poet's sense through the critick's fingers: and the Oxford editor very contentedly takes up what is left behind, and reads harness-dight too, in order, as Mr. Theobald well expresses it, to make all construction unnecessary. Warburton. How does it appear that Hector was to fight on foot rather to-day than any other day? It is to be remembered, that the ancient heroes never fought on horseback; nor does their manner of fighting in chariots seem to require less activity than on foot. JOHNSON. It is true that the heroes of Homer never fought on horseback; yet such of them as make a second appearance in the Eneid, like their antagonists the Rutulians, had cavalry among their troops. Little can be inferred from the manner in which Ascanius and the young nobility of Troy are introduced at the conclusion of the funereal games; as Virgil very probably, at the expence of an anachronism, meant to pay a compliment to the military exercises instituted by Julius Cæsar, and improved by Augustus. It appears from different passages in this play, that Hector fights on horseback; and it should be remembered that Shakspeare was indebted for most of his materials to a book which enumerates Esdras and Pythagoras among the bastard children of King Priamus. Our author, however, might have been led into his mistake by the manner in which Chapman has translated several parts of the Iliad, where the heroes mount their chariots or descend from them. Thus, Book VI. speaking of Glaucus and Diomed: 66 -from horse then both descend." STEEVENS. If Dr. Warburton had looked into The Destruction of Troy, already quoted, he would have found, in every page, that the leaders on each side were alternately tumbled from their horses by the prowess of their adversaries. MALONE. 3 - where every flower Did, as a prophet, weep-] So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Vol. IV. p. 406: "And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, |