The cignet's down is harsh, 4 and spirit of sense
Hard as the palm of ploughman! This thou tell'st me,
As true thou tell’st me, when I say, I love her ;
But saying thus, instead of oil and balm,
Thou lay'st, in every galh that love hath given me,
The knife that made it.

Pan. I speak no more than truth.
Troi. Thou dost not speak so much.

Pan. Faith, I'll not meddle in't. Let her be as she is : if she be fair, 'tis the better for her; an she be not, s she has the mends in her own hands.

Troi. Good Pandarus! how now, Pandarus ?

Pan. I have had my labour for my travel ; ill thought on of her, and ill thought on of you: gone between and between, but small thanks for my

labour. Trci. What, art thou angry, Pandarus? what, with me?

Pan. Because she is kin to me, therefore she's not so fair as Helen : an she were not kin to me, she would be as fair on Friday, as Helen is on Sunday. But what care I? I care not, an fhe were a blacka-moor; 'tis all one to me.

Troi. Say I, she is not fair ?

and spirit of sense Hard as the palm of ploughman!-] In comparison with Cressid's hand, says he, the spirit of sense, the utmost degree, the most exquisite power of sensibility, which implies a soft hand, since the sense of touching, as Scaliger says in his Exercitations, resides chiefly in the fingers, is hard as the callous and insensible palm of the ploughman. WARBURTON reads,

SPITE of Jense ; HANMER,

to th' spirit of Jense. It is not proper to make a lover profefs to praise his mistress in Site of fenje; for though he often does it in spite of the sense of others, his own senses are subdued to his delires. Johnson.

5 --lhe has the mends-] She may mend her complexion by the afliilance of cosmeticks. JOHNSON.

I believe it rather means-She may make the best of a bad bargain. STEEVENS.

Pan.

Pan. I do not care whether you do or no. She's 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.

Troi. PandarusPan. Not I. Troi. Sweet PandarusPan. Pray you, speak no more to me. I will leave all as I found it, and there's an end. [Exit Pandarus.

[Sound alarm. Troi. 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; And he's as teachy to be woo'd to woo, As she is stubborn chaste against all suit. Tell me, Apollo, by thy Daphne's love, What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we : Her bed is India ; there she lies, a pearl: Between our Ilium, and where she resides, Let it be calld the wild and wandering flood; Ourself the merchant; and this failing Pandar, Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our bark.

[ Alarm.] Enter Eneas. Æne. How now, prince Troilus? wherefore not

a field ?
Troi. Because not there. This woman's answer forts,
For womanith it is to be from thence.
What news, Æneas, from the field to-day ?

Æne. That Paris is returned home, and hurt.
Troi. By whom, Æneas ?
Æne. Troilus, by Menelaus.

Troi. Let Paris bleed : 'tis but a scar to scorn; Paris is gor'd with Menelaus' horn. Alarm.

Ene.

Æne. Hark, what good sport is out of town to

day! Troi. Better at home, if would I might, were mayBut to the sport abroad :--Are you bound thither?

Æne. In all swift hafte.
Troi. Come, go we then together. [Exeunt.

Enter Cressida, and Alexander ber servant.
Cre. Who were those went by ?
Serv. Queen Hecuba and Helen.
Cre. And whither go they?

Serv. Up to the eastern tower,
Whose height commands as subject all the vale,
To see the fight. Hector, whose patience
Is, as a virtue, fix'd, to-day was mov'd :

one.

· Hector, whose patience

Is, as A VIRTUE, fix'd,] Patience sure was a virtue, and therefore cannot, in propriety of expreslion, be said to be like

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 ere the be,

Doth lesser blench at sufferance than I do. It is remarkable that Dryden, when he alter'd this play, and found this false reading, altered it with judgment to,

-whole patience Is fix'd like that of heaven. Which he would not have done had he seen the right reading here given, where his thought is so much better and nobler expressed. WARBURTON.

I think the prefent text may ftand. 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,-
A!, in old English, is the intenfive or enforcing particle.

JOHNSON.

Не

He chid Andromache, and struck his armourer
And, like as there were husbandry in war,
2 Before the sun rose, he was harness'd light,
And to the field goes he; where every flower
Did, as a prophet, weep what it foresaw
In Hector's wrath.

Cre. What was his cause of anger?

? Before the sun rose, he was harness'd light,] Does the poet mean (says Mr. Theobald) that He&tor had put on light armour ? mean! what elfe could be mean? He goes to fight on foot ; and was not that the armour for his purpose ? So Fairfax in Tolo's Jerufalem :

as The other princes put on harness LIGHT

“ As footmen useYet, as if this had been the highest absurdity, he goes on, Or does he mean that Hector was sprightly in his arms even before Jun-rise? or is a conundrum aimed at, in fun rose and harnest light? Was any thing like it? Bat to get out of this perplexity, he tells us, that a very Night alteration makes all these conftructions unnecessary, and so changes it to harness-dight. Yet indeed the very flightest alteration will at any time let the poet's sense through the critic's fingers : and the Oxford Editor very contentedly takes up with what is left behind, and reads harnessdigbt 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 on 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 Æneid, appear to have had cavalry among them, as well as their antagonists the Rutulians. Little can be inferred from the manner in which Ascanius and the young nobility of Troy are introduced at the conclusion of the funeral games, as Virgil very probably, at the expence of an anachronism, meant to pay a compliment to the military exercisos instituted by Julius Cesar, and improved by Auguftus. It appears from several passages in this play, that Hector fights on horseback; and it thould be remembered, that Shakespeare was indebted for many of his materials to a book which pronounces both the prophet Efdras and Pythagoras to have been bastard children of king Priamus. STEEVENS

Serv. The noise goes thus : there is among the

Greeks
A lord of Trojan blood, nephew to Hector ;
They call him Ajax.

Cre. Good; and what of him?

Serv. They say, he is a very man 3 per fe, and stands alone.

Cre. So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs.

Serv. This man, lady, hath robb’d many beasts of their particular additions; he is as valiant as the lion, churlith as the bear, slow as the elephant: a man into whom nature hath so crowded humours, 4 that his valour is crushed into folly, his folly fauced with difcretion: there is no man hath a virtue, that he has not a glimpse of; nor any man an attaint, but he carries some stain of it. He is melancholy without cause, and merry against the hair: he hath the joints of every thing; but every thing so out of joint, that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use; or purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight.

Cre. But how should this man, that makes me smile, make Hector angry?

Serv. They say, he yesterday cop'd Hector in the battle, and struck him down; the disdain and shame whereof hath ever since kept Hector fasting and waking

Enter Pandarus.
Cre. Who comes here?
Serv. Madam, your uncle Pandarus.
Cre. Hector's a gallant man.
Sert. As may be in the world, lady.

1

2

3

-- per se,-) So in Chancer's Tefiament of Crefeide :
". Of faire Cresseide the floure and a per je

" Or Troie and Greece." STEEVENS.
- To be cruffed inio folly, is to be confujid and mingled with
felly, so as that they make cne mass together. JOHNSON.

Pan.