Patr. You rascal!

Ther. Peace, fool; I have not done. Achil. He is a privileged man.-Proceed, Thersites.

Ther. Agamemnon is a fool; Achilles is a fool: Thersites is a fool; and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool.

Achil. Derive this; come.

Ther. Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles; Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon; Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool; and Patroclus is a fool positive.

Patr. Why am I a fool?

Ther. Make that demand of the prover.-It suffices me, thou art. Look you, who comes here!

Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, NESTOR, DIOMEDES, and AJAX.

Achil. Patroclus, I'll speak with nobody :-Come in with me, Thersites.

[Exit.

Ther. Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery! all the argument is, a cuckold, and a whore; a good quarrel, to draw emulous7 factions, and bleed to death upon! Now the dry serpigo on the subject! and war, and lechery, confound all! [Exit.

Agam. Where is Achilles?

8

Patr. Within his tent; but ill dispos'd, my lord. Agam. Let it be known to him, that we are here, He shent9 our messengers; and we lay by Our appertainments, visiting of him:

6 The grammatical allusion is still pursued, the first degree of comparison is here alluded to.

7 See Act ii. Sc. 2, note 25.

The serpigo is a kind of tetter. See vol. i. p. 50, note 7. 9 Rebuked, reprimanded. See Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. ii. note the last. Instead of shent the folio reads sent: the quarto, sate.

Let him be told so; lest, perchance, he think
We dare not move the question of our place,

Or know not what we are.

Patr.

I shall say so to him.

[Exit. Ulyss. We saw him at the opening of his tent; He is not sick.

Ajax. Yes, lion-sick, sick of proud heart: you may call it melancholy, if you will favour the man; but, by my head, 'tis pride: But why, why? let him show us a cause. A word, my lord.

[Takes AGAMEMNON aside. Nest. What moves Ajax thus to bay at him? Ulyss. Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him. Nest. Who? Thersites?

Ulyss. He.

Nest. Then will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument.

Ulyss. No; you see he is his argument, that has his argument; Achilles.

Nest. All the better; their fraction is more our wish, than their faction: But it was a strong composure 10, a fool could disunite.

Ulyss. The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie. Here comes Patroclus.

Re-enter PATROCLUS.

Nest. No Achilles with him.

Ulyss. The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy: his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure 11.

10 The folio reads counsel.

11 It was one of the errors of our old Natural History, to assert that an elephant, 'being unable to lie down, slept leaning against a tree, which the hunters observing, do saw it almost asunder; whereon the beast relying, by the fall of the tree, falls also down itself, and is able to rise no more.' Thus in The Dia

Patr. Achilles bids me say he is much sorry, If any thing more than your sport and pleasure Did move your greatness, and this noble state 12, To call upon him; he hopes, it is no other, But, for your health and your digestion sake, An after-dinner's breath 13.

Agam.

Hear you, Patroclus;We are too well acquainted with these answers: But his evasion, wing'd thus swift with scorn, Cannot outfly our apprehensions.

Much attribute he hath; and much the reason
Why we ascribe it to him; yet all his virtues,-
Not virtuously on his own part beheld,—
Do, in our eyes, begin to lose their gloss;
Yea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish,
Are like to rot untasted. Go and tell him,
We come to speak with him: And you shall not sin,
If you do say we think him over-proud,

And under-honest; in self-assumption greater,
That in the note of judgment; and worthier than

himself

Here tend the savage strangeness 14 he puts on;
Disguise the holy strength of their command,
And underwrite 15 in an observing kind

logues of Creatures Moralysed, blk 1. before cited:- The olefawnte that bowyth not the kneys.' Thus also in All's Lost by Lust, 1633

Is she pliant?

Stubborn as an elephant's leg, no bending in her.'

12 This stately train of attending nobles.

13 Breath for breathing; i. e. exercise, relaxation.
'It is the breathing time of the day with me.'

14 i. e. attend upon the brutish distant arrogance or rude haughtiness he assumes. Thus in Proverbs, xxi. 8:-'The way of man is froward and strange.'

15 To underwrite is synonymous with to subscribe, which is used by Shakspeare in several places for to yield, to submit. Thus in King Lear:

'You owe me no subscription.'

And in All's Well that Ends Well, Act v. Sc. 3:

His humorous predominance; yea, watch
His pettish lunes 16, his ebbs, his flows, as if
The passage and whole carriage of this action
Rode on his tide. Go, tell him this; and add,
That, if he overhold his price so much,
We'll none of him; but let him, like an engine
Not portable, lie under this report-

Bring action hither, this cannot go to war:
A stirring dwarf we do allowance 17 give
Before a sleeping giant:-Tell him so.
Patr. I shall; and bring his answer presently.

[Exit. Agam. In second voice we'll not be satisfied, We come to speak with him.-Ulysses, enter. [Exit ULYSSEs. Ajax. What is he more than another?

Agam. No more than what he thinks he is. Ajax. Is he so much? Do you not think, he thinks himself a better man than I am?

Agam. No question.

Ajax. Will you subscribe his thought, and say— he is?

Agam. No, noble Ajax; you are as strong, as valiant, as wise, no less noble, much more gentle, and altogether more tractable.

Ajax. Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I know not what pride is.

Agam. Your mind's the clearer, Ajax, and your

'I stood engag'd: but when I had subscrib'd ́
To mine own fortune, and inform'd her fully
I could not answer,' &c.

The word occurs again in this sense several times in this play.
In an observing kind, is in an attentive manner.

16 Fitful lunacies. The quarto reads:

'His course and time, his ebbs and flows, and if
The passage and whole stream of his commencement
Rode on his tide.'

17 Allowance is approbation. See vol. i. p. 223, note 20,

virtues the fairer. He that is proud, eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle: and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise 18.

Ajax. I do hate a proud man, as I hate the engendering of toads 19.

Nest. And yet he loves himself: Is it not strange?

Re-enter ULYSSES.

[Aside.

Ulyss. Achilles will not to the field to-morrow. Agam. What's his excuse?

Ulyss. He doth rely on none; But carries on the stream of his dispose, Without observance or respect of any, In will peculiar and in self-admission.

Agam. Why will he not, upon our fair request,
Untent his person, and share the air with us?
Ulyss. Things small as nothing, for request's sake
only,

He makes important: Possess'd he is with greatness;
And speaks not to himself, but with a pride
That quarrels at self-breath: imagin'd worth
Holds in his blood such swoln and hot discourse,
That, 'twixt his mental and his active parts,
Kingdom'd Achilles in commotion rages 20,

18 We have this sentiment before in Act i. Sc. 3, p.
'The worthiness of praise distains his worth,

344:

If that the prais'd himself the praise bring forth.' Malone has cited a passage from Coriolanus in both instances, which has nothing in it of similar sentiment, and which he could neither comprehend nor explain. See Coriolanus, Activ. Sc. 7. 19 See Goldsmith's History of the Earth and Animated Nature, vol. vii. p. 92, 93.

20 The genius and the mortal instruments

Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection.'--Julius Cæsar