e play, when Cressida has sunk into
infamy below retrieval and beneath hope, the same will, which had been the
substance and the basis of his love, while the restless pleasures and
passionate longings, like sea-waves, had tossed but on its surface,--this
same moral energy is represented as snatching him aloof from all
neighbourhood with her dishonour, from all lingering fondness and
languishing regrets, whilst it rushes with him into other and nobler
duties, and deepens the channel, which his heroic brother's death had left
empty for its collected flood. Yet another secondary and subordinate
purpose Shakespeare has inwoven with his delineation of these two
characters,--that of opposing the inferior civilisation, but purer morals,
of the Trojans to the refinements, deep policy, but duplicity and sensual
corruptions of the Greeks.

To all this, however, so little comparative projection is given,--nay, the
masterly group of Agamemnon, Nestor, and Ulysses, and, still more in
advance, that of Achilles, Ajax, and Thersites, so manifestly occupying
the fore-ground, that the subservience and vassalage of strength and
animal courage to intellect and policy seems to be the lesson most often
in our poet's view, and which he has taken little pains to connect with
the former more interesting moral impersonated in the titular hero and
heroine of the drama. But I am half inclined to believe, that
Shakespeare's main object, or shall I rather say his ruling impulse, was
to translate the poetic heroes of paganism into the not less rude, but
more intellectually vigorous, and more _featurely_, warriors of Christian
chivalry,--and to substantiate the distinct and graceful profiles or
outlines of the Homeric epic into the flesh and blood of the romantic
drama;--in short, to give a grand history-piece in the robust style of
Albert Durer.

The character of Thersites, in particular, well deserves a more careful
examination, as the Caliban of demagogic life;--the admirable portrait of
intellectual power deserted by all grace, all moral principle, all not
momentary impulse;--just wise enough to detect the weak head, and fool
enough to provoke the armed fist of his betters;--one whom malcontent
Achilles can inveigle from malcontent Ajax, under the one condition, that
he shall be called on to do nothing but abuse and slander, and that he
shall be allowed to abuse as much and as purulently as he likes, that is,
as he can;--in short, a mule,--quarre