(Between whose endless jar Justice resides)
Would lose their names, and so would Justice too. 
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite (an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power)
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last, eat up himself.  Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking: 
And this neglection of degree it is,
That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose
It hath to climb.  The general’s disdained
By him one step below; he, by the next;
That next, by him beneath:  so every step,
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 Shakespeare, 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, showing 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 extract 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.—­

   Ulysses.  Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
     Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion;
     A great-siz’d monster of ingratitudes: 
     Those scraps are good deeds past,
     Which are devour’d as fast as they are made,
     Forgot as soon as done:  Persev’rance, dear my lord,
     Keeps Honour bright:  to have done, is to hang
     Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
     In monumental mockery.  Take the instant way;
     For Honour travels in a strait so narrow,
     Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path,
     For Emulation hath a thousand sons,
     That one by one pursue; if you give way,
     Or hedge aside from the direct forth-right,
     Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
     And leave you hindmost;—­
     Or, like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank,
     O’er-run and trampled on:  then what they do in present,
     Tho’ less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours: 
     For Time is like a fashionable host,
     That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’ hand,