darkling soul mocks us with scorn, and laughs with abundant laughter at the madman's sorrows, alas! alas! and with him Atreus' two royal sons hearing them.

TEC. Then let them laugh and joy over the woes of Ajax. P Perhaps, mark me! though when alive they desired him not, they will mourn him dead, in the needful time of battle. For the weak-minded, while they hold in their hands aught good, knew it not, ere some one have cast it from him. More bitter has his death been to me than sweet to them, but delightful to himself. For all that he longed to possess he gained for himself, the very death he wished. How then could they laugh out against him? By the Gods he died, not by them,-no. Then let Ulysses, with empty

r

P See Brunck's note.

For it so falls out,

That what we have, we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it: but being lacked and lost,"
Why then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not shew us
Whiles it was ours."

"

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, Act 4. sc. 1.

4 Maλλor is understood. Thus Homer:

Βούλομ ̓ ἐγὼ λαὸν σόον ἔμμεναι, ἢ ἀπολέσθαι.

B. I. v. 117.

To fall by the hands of an enemy worthy of them, was often a consolation to the dying warriors of antiquity, and is so used by Philoctetes to Neoptolemus, on his hearing of Achilles' death. Thus Turnus in Virgil:

Non me tua fervida terrent

Dicta, ferox: Di me terrent, et Jupiter hostis."

EN. XII. 894.

[vaunts,] be insolent: for they have Ajax no longer; no, but having bequeathed to me sorrows and lamentations, he is departed.

Ah me! me!

TEUCER.

CHO. Be silent; for methinks I hear the voice of Teucer, crying out in a tone fit to preside o'er this calamity.

TEU. O dearest Ajax! O person of my brother! hast thou then dealt with thyself even as report prevails? CHO. Teucer, the man is no more! of this be assured.

TEU. Then woe is me, for my heavy affliction !
CHO. Since it is so-

TEU. Unhappy me! unhappy!

CHO. 'Tis time to groan.

TEU. O deep and dire calamity!

CHO. TOO much so, Teucer.

TEU. Ah, hapless! But what of his child? Where in this Trojan land is he?

CHO. Alone at the tents.

TEU. Wilt not thou with all speed bring him hither, lest any of his foes lay hold of him, as the whelp of a widowed lioness? Go, bestir thyself, bear àid. All, mark me! are wont to deride the fallen dead."

CHO. Nay, moreover, while yet alive, O Teucer, the

⚫ Of this savage custom among the ancients, Homer has left us many examples, and none more striking than in the case of the fallen Hector, which passage Pope has in his translation explained away. IL. B. XXII.

hero left a charge that thou shouldst care for Eurysaces, even as now thou art caring.

TEU. Oh thou, of all spectacles to me the most painful that I have ever with mine eyes beheld; thou too, a journey that of all journies hast surely most anguished my heart, even that which I have now come, O dearest Ajax, when I heard thy fate, following up and tracing it step by step: for the report concerning thee, swift as if some God were the agent, pervaded all the Greek host, how that thou wert dead and gone. Which I miserable hearing, while I was absent from it, was inwardly groaning, but now that I see it, am utterly undone. Ah me! Come, uncover, that I may see the whole evil. O sight dreadful to look on, and of bitter daring, of how many pangs having deeply sown the seeds for me, dost thou wither! For whither can I betake myself, to what manner of people, I that no where aided thee in thy troubles? * Doubtless will Telamon, thy father as he is mine, receive me with kind aspect, and, haply, with mild air, me, returning without thee. For how should he not, whose wont it is not, even when fortunate, to wear a smile of more than common pleasure? What will be suppress ? What reproach will he not utter? That I, "the spurious offspring of his captive in war; that I have by

+ Ironically.

■ Teucer, as he himself afterwards states, was the son of Telamon, by Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, who had been selected by Hercules as a reward to the king of Salamis for his services in that hero's expedition to Troy. The event justified these apprehensions of Teucer, and to avoid his father's indignation, he fled to Cyprus, where he founded Salamis.

cowardice and effeminacy betrayed thee, dearest Ajax, or in treason, that I might possess thy sovereignty and patrimony when dead. Such words will he, a man of passionate temper, morose with age, vent forth, angered to strife by a mere nothing. And in the end shall I, repulsed, be an outcast from my country, noted in story as a slave, and no freeman. Thus much at home but here, at Troy, many are my foes, and little is there to profit me. And all this have I incurred by thy death. Ah me! what shall I do? how shall I tear thee off from this thy fierce and hasty sword, the destroyer whereby thou didst expire? Knewest thou how in time Hector, even though dead, was doomed to be thy destruction? Observe ye, by the Gods I ask, the fate of these two men. Hector, having been fast bound with the very girdle, wherewith he was presented from Ajax, the steed-drawn car was ever racked and mangled until he breathed out his life: while Ajax, possessing this, the gift of Hector, perished by its means from a mortal fall. And was it not a Fury that forged this scimitar, and Hades the other, that fierce artificer? I then would say that the Gods devised both this and every thing else for ever to mankind. But to whomsoever in opinion this is not pleasing, let him fondly cling to other, and me to this.

CHO. Extend no length of speech, but bethink thee how thou wilt commit to the tomb thy brother, and what thou presently wilt parley. For I descry a foeman, and haply he may, as would a villain, come forth to laugh at our misfortunes.

* This is not found in Homer's account.

TEU. But what man from the army is it that thou

seest?

CHо. Menelaus, for whom, in fact, we undertook this voyage.

TEU. I see him, for, near as he is, he is not hard to recognize.

MENELAUS.

Ho thou! to thee I speak. See thou lay not out with thine hands this corpse, but leave it as it is.

TEU. For what purpose hast thou spent thus much in words?

MEN. As my pleasure, and his who sways the host. TEU. Wilt thou not then say what cause alleging ?

MEN. Because that, having hoped we should bring him from home both friend and ally to Greeks, we have, on inquiry, found him out to be more hostile than the Phrygians; who having plotted destruction to the whole army at once, went forth armed by night against it to subdue it with his spear. And had not some God baffled this his attempt, we had lain victims to the very fate himself hath met, murdered by a

y Probably by his haughty air and step.

""Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait,
He rises on the toe; that spirit of his

In aspiration lifts him from the earth."

TROILUS AND Cressida, Act 4, sc. 5.

This is in accordance with Aristotle's rule, who, in his enumeration of those towards whom anger is felt, mentions friends before enemies, as the injury, being unexpected, is the greater. Rhet. B. II. c. ii.