The scalps of many, almost hid behind,
To jump up higher seemed to mock the mind.

Here one man's hand leaned on another's head,
His nose being shadowed by his neighbor's ear;
Here one being thronged bears back, all boll'n 1 and

red;

2

Another smothered seems to pelt and swear;
And in their rage such signs of rage they bear,
As, but for loss of Nestor's golden words,

It seemed they would debate with

1

angry swords.

spear,

For much imaginary work was there ;
Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,3
That for Achilles' image stood his
Griped in an arméd hand; himself, behind,
Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind:
A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,
Stood for the whole to be imaginéd.

And from the walls of strong besiegéd Troy
When their brave hope, bold Hector, marched to field,

Stood many Trojan mothers, sharing joy

To see their youthful sons bright weapons wield;
And to their hope they such odd action yield,

That through their light joy seeméd to appear
(Like bright things stained) a kind of heavy fear.

And, from the strond of Dardan where they fought, To Simois' reedy banks, the red blood ran,

Whose waves to imitate the battle sought

1 Boll'n, swollen.

2 Pelt, to be clamorous, to discharge hasty words as pellets. 3 Kind, natural.

With swelling ridges; and their ranks began
To break upon the galléd shore, and than1
Retire again, till meeting greater ranks

They join, and shoot their foam at Simois' banks.

To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come
To find a face where all distress is stel'd.2
Many she sees where cares have carvéd some,
But none where all distress and dolor dwelled,
Till she despairing Hecuba beheld,

Staring on Priam's wounds with her old eyes,
Which bleeding under Pyrrhus' proud foot lies.

In her the painter had anatomized

Time's ruin, beauty's wrack, and grim care's reign; Her cheeks with chaps and wrinkles were disguised;

1 Than, used for then. This is another example (we had one before in hild) of changing a termination for the sake of rhyme. In Fairfax's "Tasso " there is a parallel instance:—

"Time was, (for each one hath his doting time,
These silver locks were golden tresses than,)
That country life I hated as a crime,

And from the forest's sweet contentment ran.

2 Stel'd. A passage in the twenty-fourth Sonnet may explain the lines in the text:

"Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath stel'd
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart."

The word stel'd, in both instances, has a distinct association with something painted but to stell is interpreted as to fix, from stell, a fixed place of abode. It appears to us that the word is connected in Shakspeare's mind with the word stile, the pencil by which forms are traced and copied. The application does not appear forced, when we subsequently find the poet using the expression of "pencilled pensiveness." We constantly use the term stile as applied to painting; but we all know that stile, as describing the manner of delineating forms, is derived from the instrument by which characters were anciently written. Stel'd is probably then stil'd, the word being slightly changed to suit the rhyme.

Of what she was no semblance did remain:

Her blue blood, changed to black in every vein, Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had

fed,

Showed life imprisoned in a body dead.

On this sad shadow Lucrece spends her eyes,
And shapes her sorrow to the beldame's woes,
Who nothing wants to answer her but cries,
And bitter words to ban her cruel foes:
The painter was no God to lend her those;
And therefore Lucrece swears he did her wrong,
To give her so much grief and not a tongue.

"Poor instrument," quoth she, "without a sound,
I'll tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue;
And drop sweet balm in Priam's painted wound,
And rail on Pyrrhus that hath done him wrong,
And with my tears quench Troy that burns so long;
And with my knife scratch out the angry eyes
Of all the Greeks that are thine enemies.

"Show me the strumpet that began this stir,
That with my nails her beauty I may tear.
Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur
This load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear;
Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here:

And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye,
The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter die.

1

"Why should the private pleasure of some one
Become the public plague of many mo? 1
Let sin, alone committed, light alone

1 Mo, more.

Upon his head that hath transgresséd so.
Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe:
For one's offence, why should so many fall,
To plague a private sin in general?

2

1

"Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies,
Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds:
Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies,
And friend to friend gives unadviséd wounds,
And one man's lust these many lives confounds: 3
Had doting Priam checked his son's desire,
Troy had been bright with fame, and not with
fire."

Here feelingly she weeps Troy's painted woes:
For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell,
Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes;
Then little strength rings out the doleful knell:
So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell

To pencilled pensiveness and colored sorrow;
She lends them words, and she their looks doth
borrow.

She throws her eyes about the painting, round,
And whom she finds forlorn she doth lament:
At last she sees a wretched image bound,
That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent;
His face, though full of cares, yet showed content:

Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,
So mild that Patience seemed to scorn his woes.

1 Swounds, swoons. It is probable that the word was so usually pronounced. In Drayton swound rhymes to wound.

2 Unadvised, unknowing.

3 Confounds is here used in the sense of destroys.

In him the painter labored with his skill
To hide deceit, and give the harmless show
An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still,
A brow unbent, that seemed to welcome woe;
Cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so
That blushing red no guilty instance gave,
Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have.

But, like a constant and confirméd devil,
He entertained a show so seeming just,
And therein so ensconced his secret evil,
That jealousy itself could not mistrust
False-creeping craft and perjury should thrust
Into so bright a day such black-faced storms,
Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.

The well-skilled workman this mild image drew
For perjured Sinon, whose enchanting story
The credulous old Priam after slew;

Whose words, like wildfire, burnt the shining glory
Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,

And little stars shot from their fixéd places, When their glass fell wherein they viewed their faces.1

This picture she advisedly 2 perused,

And chid the painter for his wondrous skill;
Saying, some shape in Sinon's was abused,

1 Malone objects to this image of Priam's palace being the mirror in which the fixed stars beheld themselves. Boswell has answered Malone by quoting Lydgate's description of the same wonderful edifice :

"That verely when so the sonne shone
Upon the golde meynt amonge the stone,
They gave a lyght withouten any were,
As doth Apollo in his mid-day sphere.'

Advisedly, attentively.