VI PORTRAITS.— PERSONAL. PICTURES. Who will not honor noble numbers, when NESTOR TO HECTOR. Nestor. I have, thou gallant Trojan, seen thee oft, Laboring for destiny, make cruel way Through ranks of Greekish youth: and I have seen thee, As hot as Perseus, spur thy Phrygian steed, Despising many forfeits and subduements, When thou hast hung thy advanced sword i' the air, Not letting it decline on the declined: That I have said to some my stand ers-by, Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing life! And I have seen thee pause, and take thy breath When that a ring of Greeks have hemmed thee in, Like an Olympian wrestling: This have I seen But this thy countenance, still locked in steel, I never saw till now. Let an old man embrace thee: And, worthy warrior, welcome to our tents. Cominius. SHAKSPEARE. CORIOLANUS. -- I shall lack voice; the deeds of Coriolanus Should not be uttered feebly. It is held, That valor is the chiefest virtue, and Most dignifies the haver: if it be, The man I speak of cannot in the world Be singly counterpoised. At sixteen years, When Tarquin made a head for Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight When with his Amazonian chin he drove The bristled lips before him: he bestrid An o'erpressed Roman, and in the consul's view Slew three opposers: Tarquin's self he met, And struck him on his knee: in that day's feats, When he might act the woman in the scene, He proved best man of the field, and for his meed Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age The king is full of grace and fair regard. Ely. And a true lover of the holy church. Cant. The courses of his youth promised it not. The breath no sooner left his father's body, But that his wildness, mortified in him, Seemned to die too; yea, at that very moment, Consideration like an angel came, And whipped the offending Adam out of him; Leaving his body as a paradise, To envelop and contain celestial spirits. Never was such a sudden scholar made: Never came reformation in a flood, With such a heady current, scouring faults; Nor never hydra-headed wilfulness So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, As in this king. Hear him but reason in divinity, And, all-admiring, with an inward wish You would desire, the king were made a prelate; Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, You would say, it hath been allin-all his study: List his discourse of war, and you shall hear A fearful battle rendered you in music: Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences; So that the air and practic part of life Must be the mistress to this theoric: Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it, Since his addiction was to courses vain: His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow; His hours filled up with riots, ban- And never noted in him any study, To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares; To eate thy heart through comfortless despairs; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, To to run, spend, to give, to want, to be undone. SPENSER. |