There is another passage, the speech of Ulysses to Achilles, showing
him the thankless nature of popularity, which has a still greater
depth of moral observation and richness of
illustration than the former. 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:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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