Cres. Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord, With the first glance that ever-Pardon me;If I confess much, you will play the tyrant. I love you now; but not, till now, so much But I might master it:—in faith, I lie;

My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
Too headstrong for their mother: See, we fools!
Why have I blabb'd? who shall be true to us,
When we are so unsecret to ourselves?

But, though I lov'd you well, I woo'd you not;
And yet, good faith, I wish'd myself a man;
Or that we women had men's privilege

Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue;
For, in this rapture, I shall surely speak
The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,
Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
My very soul of counsel: Stop my mouth.

Tro. And shall, albeit sweet musick issues thence.
Pan. Pretty, i'faith.

Cres. My lord, I do beseech you pardon me; 'Twas not my purpose, thus to beg a kiss:

I am asham'd;-O heavens! what have I done?For this time will I take my leave, my lord.

Tro. Your leave, sweet Cressid?

Pan. Leave! an you take leave till to-morrow morning,

Cres. Pray you, content you.

Tro.

What offends you, lady?

You cannot shun

Cres. Sir, mine own company.

Tro.

Yourself.

Cres.

Let me go and try:

I have a kind of self resides with you;
But an unkind self, that itself will leave,

To be another's fool. I would be

gone:

Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.

Tro. Well know they what they speak, that

speak so wisely.

Cres. Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love;

And fell so roundly to a large confession,

To angle for your thoughts: But you are wise;
Or else you love not; For to be wise, and love,
Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above12.

Tro. O, that I thought it could be in a woman, (As, if it can, I will presume in you),

To feed for aye13 her lamp and flames of love;
To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind

That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
Or, that persuasion could but thus convince me,-
That my integrity and truth to you

Might be affronted 14 with the match and weight
Of such a winnow'd purity in love;

How were I then uplifted! but, alas,
I am as true as truth's simplicity,
And simpler than the infancy of truth.

12 Cressida's meaning appears to be, Perchance I fell too roundly to confession, in order to angle for your thoughts; but you are not so easily taken in; you are too wise, or too indifferent; for to be wise, and love, exceeds man's might.' The thought originally belongs to Publius Syrus :-'Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur.' Spenser has it in his Shepherd's Calendar, March:

To be wise and eke to love

Is granted scarce to gods above.'

It is to be found in Taverner's translation of Publius Syrus, at the end of Catonis Disticha, 1532.

13 Troilus alludes to the perpetual lamps, which were supposed to illuminate sepulchres.

lasting flames, that burn

To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn.'

See Pericles, Act ii. Sc. 1.

14 Met with and equalled. See Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 1 :—

O virtuous fight,

15

Cres. In that I'll war with you.
Tro.
When right with right wars who shall be most right!
True swains in love shall, in the world to come,
Approve their truths by Troilus: when their rhymes,
Full of protest, of oath, and big compare
Want similes of truth, tir'd with iteration 16,
As true as steel, as plantage to the moon 17,
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
As iron to adamant, as earth to the centre,-
Yet, after all comparisons of truth,

As truth's authentick author to be cited,
As true as Troilus shall crown up 18 the verse,
And sanctify the numbers.

Cres.

Prophet may you be! If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,

When time is old and hath forgot itself,

When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing; yet let memory,

From false to false, among false maids in love, Upbraid my falsehood! when they have said- -as false

As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,
As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer's calf,
Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son;

15 Comparisons.

15 In the old copy this line stands :

'Wants similes truth tird with iteration.'

The emendation was proposed by Mr. Tyrwhitt.

17 Plantage is here put for any thing planted, which was thought to depend for its success upon the influence of the moon. 'The poore husbandman perceiveth that the increase of the moone maketh plants fruitfull; so as in the full moone they are in their best strength; decaieing in the wane; and in the conjunction do utterlie wither and vade.'-Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft.

18 i. e. conclude it. Finis coronat opus,

Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood, As false as Cressid.

Pan. Go to, a bargain made: seal it, seal it: I'll be the witness.-Here I hold your hand; here, my cousin's. If ever you prove false one to another, since I have taken such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between be called to the world's end after my name, call them all— Pandars; let all constant 19 men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars! say, amen.

Tro. Amen.

Cres. Amen.

Pan. Amen.

Whereupon I will show you a chamber and a bed, which bed, because it shall not speak of your pretty encounters, press it to death: away.

And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here,
Bed, chamber, Pandar, to provide this geer!

[Exeunt.

SCENE III. The Grecian Camp.

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

you,

Cal. Now, princes, for the service I have done The advantage of the time prompts me aloud To call for recompense. Appear it to your mind, That, through the sight I bear in things, to Jove1

19 Hanmer altered this to inconstant men;' but the poet seems to have been less attentive to make Pandarus talk consequentially, than to account for the ideas actually annexed to the three names in his own time.

1 The old copies all concur in reading

That through the sight I bear in things to love.

Which Steevens thinks may be explained :- No longer assisting Troy with my advice, I have left it to the dominion of love,

I have abandon'd Troy, left my possession,
Incurr'd a traitor's name; expos'd myself,
From certain and possess'd conveniences,
To doubtful fortunes; séquest'ring from me all
That time, acquaintance, custom, and condition,.
Made tame and most familiar to my nature;

And here, to do you service, am become

2

As new into the world, strange, unacquainted:
I do beseech you, as in way of taste,
To give me now a little benefit,

Out of those many register'd in promise,
Which you say, live to come in my behalf.

Agam. What would'st thou of us, Trojan? make demand.

Cal. You have a Trojan prisoner, call'd Antenor, Yesterday took; Troy holds him very dear. Oft have you (often have you thanks therefore), Desir'd my Cressid in right great exchange, Whom Troy hath still denied: But this Antenor, I know, is such a wrest3 in their affairs,

to the consequences of the amour of Paris and Helen.' The present reading of the text is supported by Johnson and Malone; to which Mason makes this objection: That it was Juno and not Jove that persecuted the Trojans. Jove wished them well, and though we may abandon a man to his enemies, we cannot, with propriety, say that we abandon him to his friends.' Some modern editions have the line thus :

"That through the sight I bear in things to come.' Which is an emendation to which I must confess I incline: for, as Mason observes, the speech of Calchas would have been incomplete, if he had said he abandoned Troy, from the sight he bore of things, without explaining it by adding the words to come."

The merit of Calchas did not merely consist in having come over to the Greeks; he also revealed to them the fate of Troy, which depended on their conveying away the palladium, and the horses of Rhesus, before they should drink of the river Xanthus.

2 Into for unto; a common form of expression in old writers. Thus in the Paston Letters, vol. ii. p. 5: And they that have justed with him into this day, have been as richly beseen,' &c.

3 A wrest is an instrument for tuning harps, &c. by drawing