We shall do no excess of violence to the difference of the times if we call this a staff officer’s view; and, all things considered, I think it goes near to be Shakespeare’s own, or at least that which he conceived to be the better opinion among those who had served in the wars of the Low Countries: as who should say ‘We can beat the Spaniard with any fair proportion of numbers, but you are not to think it is to be done without brains.’ Doubtless the opposite opinion, that of the rule-of-thumb soldier who thinks meanly of scientific warfare, made itself heard too, perhaps more loudly, at the Mermaid and elsewhere, and Shakespeare gives us a glimpse of it when Iago sneers at Michael Cassio as a great arithmetician who knows nothing of real fighting. But if Shakespeare had thought it sound he could have put it in a better mouth. The more familiar phrase of Mercutio’s dying speech: ‘a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic,’ is remote from this context as it belongs not to the art of war at large but to the contrast between the old English sword-play and the tricks of the new fangled Italian rapier: a topic which, I think, interested both Shakespeare and his audience more. In the same scene of ‘Troilus and Cressida’ we may find other military aphorisms: Nestor speaks of the uses of disappointment in war:— ‘In the reproof of chance Lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth, How many shallow bauble boats dare sail Upon her patient breast, making their way With those of nobler bulk—’ and he almost anticipates the doctrine, now proverbial, that victory is for the side that makes fewest mistakes:— ‘Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.’ There may just possibly be an allusion here to the ‘Islands Voyage’ and other poorly managed expeditions against the Spanish West Indies, then fairly recent. Nestor has also a sharp word for Thersites the professional pessimist:— ‘A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint.’ We cannot all be as wise as Nestor; but we can at least refuse to lend our ears to Thersites. In this connexion we may note some lines given to the Messenger at the opening of ‘King Henry VI.,’ which may have been touched by Shakespeare’s revising hand, though I would not vouch for it:— ‘Amongst the soldiers this is muttered, That here you maintain several factions, And while a field should be dispatch’d and fought, You are disputing of your generals: One would have lingering wars with little cost; Another would fly swift, but wanteth wings; A third[5] thinks, without expense at all, By guileful fair words peace may be obtain’d.’