With the description thus given we may with utmost appropriateness compare Shakespeare’s noble commendation of order and good government, into which, by way of contrast, he introduces the evils and miseries of lawless power. The argument is assigned to Ulysses, in the _Troilus and Cressida_ (act i. sc. 3, l. 75, vol. vi. p. 144), when the great chieftains, Agamemnon, Nestor, Menelaus, and others are discussing the state and prospects of their Grecian confederacy against Troy. With great force of reasoning, as of eloquence, he contends,— “Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down, And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master. But for these instances. bloodes. The specialty of rule hath been neglected: And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions. When that the general is not like the hive, To whom the foragers shall all repair, What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded, The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre, Observe degree, priority and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office and custom, in all line of order: And therefore is the glorious planet Sol In noble eminence enthroned and sphered Amidst the other; . . . . . . but when the planets In evil mixture to disorder wander, 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 states Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked, Which is the ladder to all high designs, Then enterprise is sick! How could communities, Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenitive and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels. But by degree, stand in authentic 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: 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, Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf.