What plagues, and what portents? what mutiny?
What raging of the sea? shaking of earth?
Commotion in the winds? frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states5

"For that same golden fleecy ram, which bore
"Phrixus and Helle from their stepdames feares,
"Hath now forgot where he was plast of yore,
"And shouldred hath the bull which fayre Europa bore.
"And eke the bull hath with his bow-bent horne
"So hardly butted those two twins of Jove,

"That they have crush'd the crab, and quite him borne "Into the great Nemæan lion's grove.

"So now all range, and do at random rove

"Out of their proper places far

away,

"And all this world with them amisse doe move, "And all his creatures from their course astray, "Till they arrive at their last ruinous decay."

Fairy Queen, B. V. c. i. STEEVENS. The apparent irregular motions of the planets were supposed to portend some disasters to mankind; indeed the planets themselves were not thought formerly to be confined in any fixed orbits of their own, but to wander about ad libitum, as the etymology of their names demonstrates. ANONYMOUS.

4

deracinate-] i. e. force up by the roots. So again, in King Henry V:

66

the coulter rusts

"That should deracinate such savag'ry." STEEVENS.

5 married calm of states-]

The epithet married,

which is used to denote an intimate union, is employed in the same sense by Milton:

Again:

66

-Lydian airs

"Married to immortal verse."

"Wed your divine sounds."

Again, in Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas's Eden:

66 shady groves of noble palm-tree sprays,
"Of amorous myrtles and immortal bays;

"Never unleav'd, but evermore they're new,

Self-arching, in a thousand arbours grew.

"Birds marrying their sweet tunes to the angels' lays, "Sung Adam's bliss, and their great Maker's praise."

8

Quite from their fixure? O, when degree is shak'd,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
The enterprize' is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commérce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentick place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe :2
Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong, (Between whose endless jar justice resides,)

The subject of Milton's larger poem would naturally have led him to read this description in Sylvester. The quotation from him I owe to Dr. Farmer.

Shakspeare calls a harmony of features, married lineaments, in Romeo and Juliet, Act I. sc. iii. See note on this passage. STEEVENS.

6

O, when degree is shak'd,] I would read:
So, when degree is shak'd. JOHNSON.

7 The enterprize-] Perhaps we should read:
Then enterprize is sick !-

9

JOHNSON.

Corporations, companies, con

dividable shores,] i. e. divided. So, in Antony and

Cleopatra, our author uses corrigible for corrected. Mr. M. Mason has the same observation. STEEVENS.

1

66

mere oppugnancy:] Mere is absolute. So, in Hamlet: things rank and gross in nature "Possess it merely." STEEVENS.

* And make a sop of all this solid globe:] So, in King Lear : I'll make a sop o'the moonshine of you."

66

STEEVENS.

Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and

power,

Must make perforce an universal prey,

And, last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, This chaos, when degree is suffocate,

Follows the choking.

And this neglection of degree it is,

That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general's disdain'd
By him one step below; he, by the next;
That next, by him beneath: so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation:"

And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.
NEST. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover'd
The fever whereof all our power" is sick.

3

this neglection-] This uncommon word occurs again in Pericles, 1609:

66

if neglection

"Should therein make me vile,-."

MALONE.

↑ That by a pace-] That goes backward step by step.

with a purpose

JOHNSON.

It hath to climb.] With a design in each man to aggrandize himself, by slighting his immediate superior. JOHNSON.

6

Thus the quarto. Folio-in a purpose. MALONE.

-

bloodless emulation:] An emulation not vigorous and active, but malignant and sluggish. JOHNSON.

- 7

our power-] i. e. our army. So, in another of our author's plays:

"Who leads his power ?" STEEvens.

AGAM. The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses, What is the remedy?

ULYSS. The great Achilles,-whom opinion

crowns

The sinew and the forehand of our host,-
Having his ear full of his airy fame,8
Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
Lies mocking our designs: With him, Patroclus,
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day,

Breaks scurril jests;

And with ridiculous and aukward action (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,)

He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon,
Thy topless deputation he puts on;

And, like a strutting player,-whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,'——
Such to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested seeming

his airy fame,] Verbal elogium; what our author, in Macbeth, has called mouth honour. See p. 264, note.

2

MALONE.

Thy topless deputation-] Topless is that which has nothing topping or overtopping it; supreme; sovereign.

So, in Doctor Faustus, 1604:

JOHNSON.

"Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
"And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ?"

Again, in The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, 1598:

"And topless honours be bestow'd on thee." STEEVENS. ''Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,] The galleries of the theatre, in the time of our author, were sometimes termed the scaffolds. See The Account of the ancient Theatres, Vol. III. MALONE.

2-o'er-wrested seeming-] i. e. wrested beyond the truth; overcharged. Both the old copies, as well as all the modern editions, have-o'er-rested, which affords no meaning.

VOL. XV.

T

MALONE.

He acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks, 'Tis like a chime a mending;3 with terms un

squar'd,*

Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd,
Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff,
The large Achilles, on his press'd bed lolling,
From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause;
Cries-Excellent!-'tis Agamemnon just.-

Now play me Nestor;-hem, and stroke thy beard,
As he, being 'drest to some oration.

That's done;-as near as the extremest ends
Of parallels; as like as Vulcan and his wife:

5

Yet good Achilles still cries, Excellent!

'Tis Nestor right! Now play him me, Patroclus, Arming to answer in a night alarm.

And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age Must be the scene of mirth; to cough, and spit, And with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget,

6

Over-wrested is-wound up too high. A wrest was an instrument for tuning a harp, by drawing up the strings. See Mr. Douce's note on Act III. sc. iii. STEEevens.

3a chime a mending;] To this comparison the praise of originality must be allowed. He who, like myself, has been in the tower of a church while the chimes were repairing, will never wish a second time to be present at so dissonantly noisy an operation. STEEVENS.

-unsquar'd,] i. e. unadapted to their subject, as stones are unfitted to the purposes of architecture, while they are yet unsquar'd. STEEVENS.

5

as near as the extremest ends

Of parallels;] The parallels to which the allusion seems to be made, are the parallels on a map. As like as east to west.

6

JOHNSON.

"a palsy fumbling-] Old copies gives this as two distinct words. But it should be written palsy-fumbling, i. e. paralytick fumbling. TYRWHITT.

Fumbling is often applied by our old English writers to the speech. So, in King John, 1591: