• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 19446 0

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.—

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,

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 forth-right,

Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,

And leave you hindmost;—

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 with his arms out-stretch'd, as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer: the 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 gauds,

Tho' they are made and moulded of things past.

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 out 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.—

The throng of images in the above lines is prodigious; and though they sometimes jostle against one another, they everywhere raise and carry on the feeling, which is metaphysically true and profound. The debates beween 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:

Why there you touch'd the life of our design:

Were it not glory that we more affected,

Than the performance of our heaving spleens,

I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood

Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,

She is a theme of honour and renown,

A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds.

The character of Hector, in the few slight indications which appear of it, is made very amiable. His death is sublime, and shows in a striking light the mixture of barbarity and heroism of the age. The threats of Achilles are fatal; they carry their own means of execution with them.

Come here about me, you my Myrmidons,

Mark what I say.—Attend me where I wheel:

Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath;

And when I have the bloody Hector found,

Empale him with your weapons round about:

In fellest manner execute your arms.

Follow me, sirs, and my proceeding eye.

He then finds Hector and slays him, as if he had been hunting down a wild beast. There is something revolting as well as terrific in the ferocious coolness with which he singles out his prey: nor does the splendour of the achievement reconcile us to the cruelty of the means.

The characters of Cressida and Pandarus are very amusing and instructive. The disinterested willingness of Pandarus to serve his friend in an affair which lies next his heart is immediately brought forward. 'Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way; had I a sister were a grace, or a daughter were a goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris, Paris is dirt to him, and I warrant Helen, to