SCENE V.

The fame.

Enter DIOMED, and a Servant.

Dio. Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus' horse;

Present the fair steed to my lady Cressid:
Fellow, commend my service to her beauty;
Tell her, I have chaftis'd the amorous Trojan,

And am her knight by proof..

SERV.

I go my lord.

Enter AGAMEMNON.

[Exit Servant.

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AGAM. Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamus Hath beat down Menon: bastard Margarelon Hath Doreus prifoner;

And stands colossus-wife, waving his beam,

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3

take thou Troilus' horse;) So, in Lydgate:
"That Troilus by maine and mighty force
"At unawares, he cast down from his horse,
"And gave it to his squire for to beare
"To Creffida," &c. STEEVENS.

bastard Margarelon-] The introduction of a bastard fon of Priam, under the name of Margarelon, is one of the circumstances taken from the story book of The Three Destructions of Troy. THEOBALD.

The circumftance was taken from Lydgate, p. 194:
"Which when the valiant knight, Margareton,
"One of king Priam's bastard children," &c.

STEEVENS.

4-waving his beam,] i. e. his lance like a weaver's beam,

Upon the pashed 4 corses of the kings
Epiftrophus and Cedius: Polixenes is flain;
Amphimachus, and Thoas, deadly hurt;
Patroclus ta'en, or flain; and Palamedes
Sore hurt and bruis'd: the dreadful Sagittary
Appals our numbers; haste we, Diomed,
To reinforcement, or we perish all.

as Goliath's spear is described. So, in Spenser's Faery Queen, B. III. vii. 40:

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"All were the beame in bignes like a mast." STEEVENS. pashed-] i. e. bruised, crushed. So, before, Ajax says: "I'll past him o'er the face." STEEVENS.

the dreadful Sagittary

Appals our numbers;] Beyonde the royalme of Amasonne came an auncyent kynge, wyse and dyscreete, named Epystrophus, and brought a M. knyghtes, and a mervayllouse beste that was called SAGITTAYRE, that behynde the myddes was an horse, and to fore, a man: this beste was heery like an horse, and had his eyen rede as a cole, and shotte well with a bowe: this befte made the Grekes fore aferde, and flewe many of them with his bowe." The Three Destructions of Troy, printed by Caxton. THEOBALD.

A more circumstantial account of this Sagittary is to be found in Lydgate's Auncient Historie &c. 1555:

"And with hym Guydo sayth that he hadde
"A wonder archer of syght meruaylous,
"Of fourme and shap in maner monftruous:
"For lyke myne auctour as I reherse can,
"Fro the nauel vpwarde he was man,
"And lower downe lyke a horfe yshaped:
"And thilke parte that after man was maked,
" Of skinne was black and rough as any bere
" Couered with here fro colde him for to were.

Passyng foule and horrible of syght,
"Whose eyen twain were sparkeling as bright
"As is a furneis with his rede leuene,

"Or the lyghtnyng that falleth from ye heauen;
"Dredeful of loke, and rede as fyre of chere,

"And, as I reade, he was a goode archer;
"And with his bowe both at euen and morowe

Upon Grekes he wrought moche forrowe, "And gasted them with many hydous loke:

"So sterne he was that many of them quoke," &c.

STEEVENS..

Enter NESTOR.

NEST. Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles;
And bid the snail-pac'd Ajax arm for shame.-
There is a thousand Hectors in the field:
Now here he fights on Galathe his horfe,
And there lacks work; anon, he's there afoot,
And there they fly, or die, like scaled sculls

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on Galathe his horse,] From The Three Destructions of Troy is taken this name given to Hector's horse. THEOBALD. "Cal'd Galathe (the which is said to have been) "The goodliest horse," &c. Lydgate, p. 142.

Again, p. 175:

"And fought, by all the means he could, to take
"Galathe, Hector's horfe," &c.

Heywood, in his Iron Age, 1632, has likewise continued the fame appellation to Hector's horse :

My armour, and my trusty Galatee."

Heywood has taken many circumstances in his play from Lydgate. John Stephens, the author of Cinthia's Revenge, 1613, (a play commended by Ben Jonson in some lines prefixed to it,) has mounted Hector on an elephant STEEVENS.

7fcaled sculls-] Sculls are great numbers of fishes swimming together. The modern editors not being acquainted with the term, changed it into shoals. My knowledge of this word is derived from a little book called The English Expofitor, London, printed by John Legatt, 1616. The word likewife occurs in Lyly's Midas, 1592: "He hath, by this, started a covey of bucks, or roused a Scull of pheasants." The humour of this short speech consists in a misapplication of the appropriate terms of one amusement, to another. Again, in Milton's Paradife Loft, B. VII. v. 399, &c.

each bay.

" With fry innumerable swarms, and shoals

"Of fish, that with their fins and shining scales
"Glide under the green wave, in fculls that oft
"Bank the mid sea."

Again, in the 26th fong of Drayton's Polyolbion :

My filver-fcaled sculs about my streams do sweep."

STEEVENS.

Scaled means here, dispersed, put to flight. See Vol. IV. p. 292, n. 2; and Vol. XII. p. 9, n. 9. This is proved decisively by the Before the belching whale; then is he yonder, And there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge, Fall down before him, like the mower's swath:* Here, there, and every where, he leaves, and takes; Dexterity so obeying appetite,

original reading of the quarto, scaling, which was either changed by the poet himself to scaled (with the same sense) or by the editor of the folio. If the latter was the case, it is probable that not being fufficiently acquainted with our author's manner, who frequently uses the active for the paffive participle, he supposed that the epithet was merely defcriptive of some quality in the thing described. The passage quoted above from Drayton does not militate againft this interpretation. There the added epithet filver shews that the word fealed is is used used in its common sense; as the context here (to say nothing of the evidence arifing from the reading of the oldeft copy) afcertains it to have been employed with the less usual fignification already ftated.

"The cod from the banks of Newfoundland (fays a late writer) pursues the whiting, which flies before it even to the fouthern shores of Spain. The cachalot, a species of whale, is said, in the same manner, to pursue a shoal of herrings, and to fwallow hundreds in a mouthful." Knox's History of Fish, 8vo. 1787. The throat of the cachalot (the species of whale alluded to by Shakspeare) is fo large, that, according to Goldsmith, he could with ease swallow an ox. MALONE.

Sculls and shoals, have not only one and the fame meaning, but are actually, or at least originally, one and the fame word. A fcull of herrings (and it is to those fish that the speaker alludes) fo termed on the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, is elsewhere called a hoal. RITSON.

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the belching whale ;] So, in Pericles :
the belching whale,

" And humming water must o'erwhelm thy corse."

Homer alfo compares Achilles to a dolphin driving other fithes before him, Iliad XXI. v.22:

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Ὡς δ ̓ ὑπὸ δελφίνος μεγακήτεος ἰχθύες ἄλλοι

Φεύγοντες, &c. STEEVENS.

- the strawy Greeks,

Greeks. JOHNSON.

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In the folio it is the firazing

- the mower's swath:] Swath is the quantity of grafs cut

down by a fingle stroke of the mower's scythe. So, Tuffer: "With toffing and raking, and fetting on cocks,

"Grafs, lately in Swathes, is meat for an ox." STEEVENS.

That what he will, he does; and does so much,
That proof is call'd impossibility.

Enter ULYSSES.

ULrss. O, courage, courage, princes! great Achilles

Is arming, weeping, curfing, vowing vengeance:
Patroclus' wounds have rous'd his drowsy blood,
Together with his mangled Myrmidons,
That nofeless, handless, hack'd and chipp'd, come

to him,

Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend,
And foams at mouth, and he is arm'd, and at it,
Roaring for Troilus; who hath done to-day
Mad and fantastick execution;

Engaging and redeeming of himself,
With such a careless force, and forceless care,
As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,
Bade him win all.

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Enter ACHILLES.

ACHIL.

Where is this Hector?

we draw together.) This remark seems to be made by Neftor in confequence of the return of Ajax to the field, he having lately refused to co-operate or draw together with the Greeks, though at present he is roused from his fullen fit by the lofs of a friend. So, in Cynthia's Revels, by Ben Jonfon: " "Tis the swaggering coach-horse Anaides, that draws with him there."

STEEVENS.