The specialty of rule hath been neglected:
And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.
When that the general is not like the hive,
To whom the foragers shall all repair,

What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,
The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.

The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre,
Observe degree, priority and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order:
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other;

but when the planets

In evil mixture to disorder wander,

What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,

Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,

Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,

And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets

In mere oppugnancy: The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe :
Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,

Between whose endless jar justice resides,

Should lose their names, and so should 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, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general's disdain'd
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 stands, not in her strength."

At a hasty glance the two passages may appear to have little more connection than that of similarity of subject, leading to several coincidences of expression; but the Emblem of Chaos, given by Whitney, represents the winds, the waters, the stars of heaven, all in confusion mingling, and certainly is very suggestive of the exact words which the dramatic poet uses,—

Discord as one of the great causes of confusion is also spoken of with much force (1 Henry VI., act iv. sc. 1, 1. 188, vol. v. p. 68),—

"No simple man that sees

This jarring discord of nobility,

This should'ring of each other in the court,

This factious bandying of their favourites,

But that he doth presage some ill event.

'Tis much, when sceptres are in children's hands;
But more when envy breeds unkind division;

There comes the ruin, there begins confusion."

The Paris edition of Horapollo's Hieroglyphics, 1551, subjoins several to which there is no Greek text (pp. 217-223). Among them (at p. 219) is one that figures, The thread of life, a common poetic idea.

Hominis exitum innuentes, fufum pingebant, & fili extremum refectum, quafi à colo diuulfum, finguntur fiquidem à poetis Parcæ hominis vitam nere: Clotho quidem colum geftans: Lachefis quæ Sors exponitur, nens: Atropos verò inconuertibilis feu inexorabilis Latinè redditur, filum abrumpens.

The question is asked, "How do they represent the death or end of man?" Thus answered,-" To intimate the end of man they paint a spindle, and the end of the thread cut off, as if broken from the distaff: so indeed by the poets the Fates are feigned to spin the life of man: Clotho indeed bearing the distaff; Lachesis spinning whatever lot is declared; but

Atropos, breaking the thread, is rendered unchangeable and inexorable."

This thread of life Prospero names when he speaks to Ferdinand (Tempest, act iv. sc. 1, l. 1, vol. i. p. 54) about his daughter,- .

"If I have too austerely punish'd you,

Your compensation makes amends; for I

Have given you here a thread* of mine own life

Or that for which I live."

"Their thread of life is spun," occurs in 2 Henry VI. (act iv. sc. 2, 1. 27).

So the "aunchient Pistol," entreating Fluellen to ask a pardon for Bardolph (Henry V., act iii. sc. 6, 1. 44, vol. iv. p. 544), says,

"The duke will hear thy voice;

And let not Bardolph's vital thread be cut
With edge of penny cord and vile reproach.

Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite."

The full application of the term, however, is given by Helena in the Pericles (act i. sc. 2, l. 102, vol. ix. p. 325), when she says to the Prince of Tyre,—

"Antiochus you fear,

And justly too, I think, you fear the tyrant,
Who either by public war or private treason
Will take away your life.

Therefore, my lord, go travel for a while,

Till that his rage and anger be forgot,

Or till the Destinies do cut his thread of life."

The same appendix to Horapollo's Hieroglyphics (p. 220) assigns a burning lamp as the emblem of life; thus,

"A third," in the modern sense of the word, is just nonsense, and therefore we leave the reading of the Cambridge edition, and abide by those critics who tell us that thread was formerly spelt thrid or third. See Johnson and Steevens' Shakspeare, vol. i, ed. 1785, p. 92.

Vitam innuentes ardentem lampada pingebant: quòd tantifper dum accenfa lampas eft, luceat, extincta verò tenebras offundat. ita & anima corpore foluta, & afpectu & luce caremus.

"To intimate life they paint a burning lamp; because so long as the lamp is kindled it gives forth light, but being extinguished spreads darkness; so also the soul being freed from the body we are without seeing and light."

This Egyptian symbol Cleopatra names just after Antony's death (Antony and Cleopatra, act iv. sc. 15, 1. 84, vol. ix. p. 132),"Ah, women, women, look

Our lamp is spent, it's out."

Similar the meaning when Antony said (act iv. sc. 14, 1. 46, vol. ix. p. 123),

"Since the torch is out,

Lie down and stray no farther."

Of the Emblems which depict moral qualities and æsthetical principles, scarcely any are more expressive than that which denotes an abiding sense of injury. This we can trace through Whitney (p. 183) to the French of Claude Paradin (fol. 160), and to the Italian of Gabriel Symeoni (p. 24). It is a sculptor, with mallet and chisel, cutting a memorial of his wrongs into a block