was predicted that the city of Troy could not be captured without the death of Achilles. His mother, hearing this, placed him in the dress of a female, amongst the ladies of the court of a certain king. Ulixes[1], suspecting the stratagem, loaded a ship with a variety of wares; and beside the trinkets of women, took with him a splendid suit of armour. Arriving at the castle in which Achilles dwelt, among the girls, he exposed his goods for sale. The disguised hero, delighted with the warlike implements upon which he gazed, seized a lance, and gallantly brandished it. The secret was thus manifested[2], and Ulixes
- ↑ Meaning thereby Ulysses.
- ↑ How far this stratagem would be successful is very doubtful: and probability is opposed to it. Habit is too mighty to be conquered in an instant; and man, who is the creature of habit, may as soon discard his nature, as the con- firmed prejudices of youth. In fact, they become his nature; and Achilles, like Lucio, in "Love's Cure," delineated by Beaumont and Fletcher, under similar circumstances, would much more reasonably be expected to say:
"Go, fetch my work. This ruff was not well starched,
So tell the maid; 't has too much blue in it:
And look you, that the partridge and the pullen
