Achil.

What, am I poor of late?

'Tis certain, greatness, once fallen out with fortune,
Must fall out with men too: What the declin'd is,
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others,
As feel in his own fall: for men, like butterflies,
Show not their mealy wings, but to the summer;
And not a man, for being simply man,

Hath any honour; but honour for those honours
That are without him, as place, riches, favour,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit :

Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that lean'd on them as slippery too,
Do one pluck down another, and together
Die in the fall. But 'tis not so with me:
Fortune and I are friends; I do enjoy
At ample point all that I did

possess,

Save these men's looks: who do, methinks, find out
Something not worth in me such rich beholding
As they have often given. Here is Ulysses;
I'll interrupt his reading.-

How now, Ulysses?

Ulyss.

Now, great Thetis' son?

Achil. What are you reading? Ulyss. A strange fellow here Writes me, That man-how dearly ever parted 5, How much in having, or without, or in,Cannot make boast to have that which he hath, Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;

5 However excellently endowed, with however dear or precious parts enriched. So in Massinger's Great Duke of Florence:And I, my lord, chose rather

To deliver her better parted than she is,
Than to take from her.'

Thus in a subsequent passage:

no man is the lord of any thing

(Though in and of him there is much consisting),
Till he communicate his parts to others.'

As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them, and they retort that heat again
To the first giver.

Achil.

This is not strange, Ulysses.
The beauty that is borne here in the face
The bearer knows not, but commends itself
To others' eyes: nor doth the eye itself
(That most pure spirit of sense), behold itself,
Not going from itself; but eye to eye oppos'd
Salutes each other with each other's form.
For speculation turns not to itself,

Till it hath travell'd, and is married there
Where it may see itself: this is not strange at all.
Ulyss. I do not strain at the position,

It is familiar; but at the author's drift:
Who, in his circumstances, expressly proves-
That no man is the lord of any thing

(Though in and of him there be much consisting),
Till he communicate his parts to others:
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught
Till he behold them form'd in the applause
Where they are extended; which9, like an arch,
reverberates

The voice again; or like a gate of steel
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
His figure and his heat. I was much rapt in this ;
And apprehended here immediately

6 Thus in Julius Cæsar :

'No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself
But by reflection; by some other things.'

7 Speculation has here the same meaning as in Macbeth :-
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes

Which thou dost glare with.'

8 Detail of argument.

9 The old copies read:- who, like an arch, reverberate ;' which may mean, They who applaud reverberate. The elliptick mode of expression is in the poet's manner.

alteration.

Rowe made the

The unknown Ajax 10.

Heavens, what a man is there! a very horse;

That has he knows not what. Nature, what things there are,

Most abject in regard, and dear in use!

What things again most dear in the esteem,
And poor in worth! Now shall we see to-morrow,
An act that very chance doth throw upon him,-
Ajax renown'd. O heavens, what some men do,
While some men leave to do!

How some men creep in skittish fortune's hall,
Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!
How one man eats into another's pride,
While pride is fasting in his wantonness!
To see these Grecian lords!—why, even already
They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder;
As if his foot were on brave Hector's breast,
And great Troy shrieking 11.

Achil. I do believe it: for they passed by me, As misers do by beggars: neither gave to me Good word, nor look: What, are my deeds forgot? Ulyss. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion 12,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past: which are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

10 i. e. Ajax, who has abilities which were never brought into view or use.

The folio reads shrinking. The following passage in the subsequent scene seems to favour the reading of the quarto :'Hark, how Troy roars; how Hecuba cries out;

How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth
And all cry-Hector, Hector's dead.'

12 This image is literally from Spenser :-

'And eeke this wallet at your backe arreare—

And in this bag, which I behinde me don,
I put repentaunce for things past and gone.'

;

F. Q. b. vi. c. viii. st. 24.

As done: Perséverance, 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 forthright,
Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost:

Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank 13,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,

O'er-run and trampled on: Then what they do in present,

Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours:
For time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand;
And with his arms out-stretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: 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 gawds 14,
Though they are made and moulded of things past;
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,

More laud than gilt o'er-dusted 15.

13 The quarto wholly omits the simile of the horse, and reads thus:

And leave you hindmost, then what they do at present.' 14 New-fashioned toys.

15 Gilt, in this second line, is a substantive. See Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. 3. Dust a little gilt means ordinary performances, VOL. VII.

M M

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 once 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;

Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,
Made emulous missions 16 'mongst the gods them-

selves,

And drave great Mars to faction.

Achil.

I have strong reasons.

Of this my privacy

But 'gainst your privacy

Ulyss.
The reasons are more potent and heroical:
'Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love
With one of Priam's daughters 17.

Achil.

Ulyss. Is that a wonder?

Ha! known?

The providence that's in a watchful state,
Knows almost every grain of Plutus' gold;
Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps;
Keeps place with thought 18, and almost, like the gods,

which have the gloss of novelty. Gilt o'er-dusted means splendid actions of preceding ages, the remembrance of which is weakened by time.

16 i. e. the descent of deities to combat on either side. Shakspeare probably followed Chapman's Homer: in the fifth book of the Iliad Diomed wounds Mars, who on his return to heaven is rated by Jupiter for having interfered in the battle. disobedience is the faction alluded to.

This

17 Polyxena, in the act of marrying whom he was afterwards killed by Paris.

18 There is in the providence of a state, as in the providence of the universe, a kind of ubiquity. It is possible that there may be some allusion to the sublime description of the Divine omnipresence in the 139th Psalm.