But to measure your weakness with him makes you wince. How adroitly Ulysses "rubs the vein" of Ajax's pride! As soon as the first ripple of Ulysses's blarney reaches his feet, he begins to float like a bladder of rapture, and goes bobbing enormously into the net they have spread for him.
When the plot begins to affect him, Thersites observes that "he goes up and down the field asking for himself." As Douglas Jerrold would say: "He stalks as though Colossus had quitted Rhodes to head a company." "He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling, that he raves in saying nothing." Then he describes him as a veritable Malvolio in armor. Is he really in Olivia's garden, with Sir Toby and the rest on the watch? "Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock; a stride, and a stand; ruminates like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning; bites his lip with a politic regard,[1] as who should say, 'There were wit in this head, an't would out.' The man's undone for ever; for if Hector break not his neck in the combat, he'll break't himself in vain-glory. He knows not me. I said, 'Good morrow, Ajax;' and he replies, 'Thanks, Agamemnon.' What think you of this man that takes me for the general? He's grown a very land-fish, lan-*
- ↑ A clear trace of Shakspeare. Malvolio says, "A demure travel of regard," when he imagines the state-humor he will put on; and when he will send for Toby he expects to quench his familiar smile "with an austere regard of control." The "Twelfth Night" was first acted in February, 1602.
