Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation;
And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength.’
It cannot be said of Shakespear, as was said of some one, that he was ‘without o’erflowing full.’ He was full, even to o’erflowing. He gave heaped measure, running over. This was his greatest fault. He was only in danger ‘of losing distinction in his thoughts’ (to borrow his own expression)
‘As doth a battle when they charge on heaps
The enemy flying.’
There is another passage, the speech of Ulysses to Achilles, shewing 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 argument 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.—