From Malvolio and Dogberry to the famous Ajax may seem a stride fit only for such a blundering giant to contemplate; but the apparent distance is due to the quantity of Ajax, and not to any distinction in his quality. Malvolio's conceit is Turveydropian and runs to deportment. Even when he grows flighty with the fancy of being Olivia's husband, he still meditates what his great air must be. "I will be point-de-vice the very man: to have the humor of state, and after a demure travel of regard, to ask for my kinsman, Toby. I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard of control." Standing thus posed, if he should undertake to bow, Toby might believe he "saw creases come into the whites of his eyes."
Dogberry's consequence affects inconsequential phrases, and his days on earth are a series of _non-sequiturs_. Ajax has quite as good an opinion of himself as both these worthies, yet he says he knows not what pride is. "Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I do hate a proud man as I hate the engendering of toads." "Yet he loves himself," says Nestor. Ulysses and Nestor avail themselves of his monstrous sense of superiority to flatter him into fighting Hector in the place of Achilles. This is to pique Achilles and break up his lethargy. Ajax is "a man into whom Nature hath so crowded humors, that his valor is crushed into folly." He sulks in his tent because he feels as valorous as Achilles, and must therefore sport the Achillean moods. He despises the strategy of Ulysses, calls it closet-war, because his own _forte_ is nothing but giving and taking knocks, and his want of thought feels superior to all thinking. You have to behave very gingerly with such a person; if your deference once turns its back, the offence is mortal, and you may make your will. And these people are outrageously touchy; before you have time to make all snug, their conceit has assumed a vortical movement threatening to suck up into its spout every thing in the way. Fire shots at it if you please, but they will not make it tumble. Your only tact is to tack and give it a wide berth. So we see that when Ajax fails to attract any notice he becomes abusive and violent; and he is constantly trying to get somebody to concede that he is a man of as pretty parts as any other Greek. Achilles, forsooth! Who set him up to feel so big, and a better man than I? "If I go to him, with my armed fist I'll pash him o'er the face." "Oh, no, you shall not go." "An a' be proud with me, I'll pheeze his pride." Of course, for of all our pretexts for hating each other there is none so apt as our mutual conceits. We can pardon villainy sooner, for that only affronts an abstract conscience. But a man's conceit is the particular cherished bunion for another man's foot to inadvertently outrage. A straight blow in the chest, hit out from the shoulder, is a signal to measure your strength with another man. 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.