yet, when he was distributing the public money to our tribe, and I asked him for my share, he declared he did not know me." The fourth is Thrasycles, a philosopher, of whom Timon speaks thus: "This fellow, if you meet him in the morning, shall be well clad, modest and humble, and will talk to you by the hour about piety and virtue, condemn luxury and praise frugality; but, when he comes to supper in the evening, will forget all he has said in the morning, devour everything before him, crowd his neighbors, and lean upon the dishes, as if he expected to find the virtue he talked so much of at the bottom of them. Then he gets drunk, dances, sings, scolds, and abuses everybody; always talking in his cups, and haranguing others about temperance, though himself so drunk as to be the laughingstock of all about him. Even when sober, he is the most sordid, impudent, lying fellow on earth; the meanest of flatterers, notorious for oaths, insolence, and imposture; and, on the whole, a most perfect character." To these succeed Laches, Blepsias, Gniphon, and "a whole heap of scoundrels"; and all of them are treated to thwackings with the spade or pelting with stones, till they are content to leave him alone; whereupon the dialogue closes. It may be observed that neither Lucian nor Plutarch furnishes any hint towards the banquet which Timon gets up for his false friends. In the old anonymous play, mentioned above, Timon is represented as inviting them to a feast, and setting before them stones painted to look like artichokes, with which he afterwards pelts them and drives them out. How Shakespeare's Timon came to resemble the other in respect of this incident, is a question for those who have the curiosity and the leisure to pursue it. On the other hand, the resemblance between Lucian and Shakespeare is especially close in the apostrophe of Timon upon finding the gold; and as the anonymous play has no such resemblance, this argues that the Poet's borrowings from Lucian were not made through that medium. In the Shakespearean gallery of art, the Timon of Athens forms a distinct class by itself. Of dramatic merit, the piece, as already observed, has very little, though probably as much as could well be made out of the subject. Nevertheless, the play is one that we would not willingly be without; and its chief value in respect of the Poet lies in that it exhibits him in an entirely new character, and yields fresh argument of the seemingly-unlimited scope and variety of his genius; displaying in him a set of powers which he has elsewhere kept unused, but which, even though possessed in a lower degree, have sufficed to render several other writers immortal. "The satirist's terrible scourge" has been often wielded with a power that still defies the eatings of time; divers authors live and will live, whose greatest excellence stands in this: in Shakespeare it is among the least, if not the least; yet literature has nothing that comes up to Timon in the eloquence of invective and denunciation; wherein we have satire idealized up to the highest pitch of sublimity and awfulness, yet so glorified with the interfusings of imagination as to charm and fascinate while it causes to shudder. The life of the play is almost wholly concentrated in Timon himself; indeed there is little else that deserves to be regarded as a representation of character, unless an exception should be made in favor of Apemantus. The character of Timon was substantially formed from the Poet's own mind acting upon hints and materials drawn from the sources we have indicated; so that the whole cast and impression of it is original. His bearing, at first, is full of manly grace and nobleness, showing the spirit of an accomplished, high-minded, most disinterested gentleman. His free-heartedness and open-handedness, though undiscriminating, are without any touch of selfishness; he is ready, and even eager, to knit himself into a friendship with any or with all, who hold out an occasion for the lavishing of his bounty, regardless of their personal qualities. But his profuse and unrespective liberality proceeds altogether upon an ideal and perhaps somewhat self-willed view of mankind: he speaks and acts like one whose powers of experience are overborne by the impulses of an undis ciplined imagination; thus evermore attributing, not finding, the character which he loves: so that perhaps the worst we can say of him is, that he seems to be moved by an ambition such as would have the reasons or the causes of his generosity rest entirely in himself, and not in any worthiness in the receiver thereof. And because his love thus proceeds upon ideal grounds, therefore, when the revulsion comes, he is equally undiscriminating and self-willed in his hate: both growing purely from an imaginative, not from an experimental source, there is of course as little respect of persons in the one as in the other. In either case, the causes of his action are wholly in himself, and not at all in the objects of it: for even so, where one's life is thus "of imagination all compact," the first crossings and thwartings of personal experience are apt to upset and revolutionize his whole scheme and conception of human character: as his confidence is without any real ground in the experienced differences of men, so he has nothing to rescue him from the ideal consequences of a single disappointment. This is evidently the true root and basis alike of his overflowing bounties and his all-withering imprecations. Hence, when the occasion comes, he flies at once from one extreme to its farthest opposite: in hatred as in love, he must still be treating men as if there were nothing to choose between them; and when the exception of his faithful Steward is forced upon him, he prefers to die rather than retreat from the extreme ground of imagination to the medium ground of experience. Nevertheless, in his misanthropy we can discover no signs of a reaction, (if it ought not rather to be called a continuation,) such as not seldom occurs in actual life, from a profligate and unprincipled companionship. For his unrespective blastings of reproof are poured forth, fresh and full of spirit, from the depths of an enraged imagination; and have nothing of the stale and musty sourness which often supervenes upon the fermentings of a beastly and sensual life. The character of Apemantus seems designed, in part, on purpose to illustrate the difference between the intense hearty misanthropy of Timon and the low vulgar cynicism of an outworn profligate or superannuated debauchee. For in Apemantus we have a specimen of the cynic proper, who finds his pastime in a sort of scowling buffoonery and malignant slang; at first setting himself to practice the arts of a snarling scorner of men, because this feeds his distempered conceit; and then by dint of such exercise gradually working himself up into a corresponding passion. For it is easy to see that the cynicism which now forms his character originated in sheer affectation. Timon justly despises the sincere cant of one who thus drives contempt of mankind as a trade; for he knows it to be the offspring of disappointed vanity, seeking to indemnify its own baseness by making reprisals on others. He sees that Apemantus never had in himself a single touch of the goodness, the alleged want of which he so much delights to bark at; and that his superiority to the common passions of men is all because he has not virtue enough left to be vicious. COMMENTS By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS TIMON AND THE STEWARD The scene between Timon and the steward is unquestionably from the master-hand of our poet. The character of Timon as his ruin is approaching him is beautifully developed. His reproach of his steward, slightly unjust as it is, is in a tone perfectly in accordance with the kindness of his nature; and his rising anger is forgotten in a moment in his complete conviction of the integrity of that honest servant. His entire reliance upon the gratitude of his friends is most touching. Thoroughly Shakesperean is the steward's description of the coldness of the senators; and Timon's answer is no less characteristic of the great interpreter of human feelings.—KNIght, Pictorial Shakespeare. APEMANTUS But Apemantus, who is intended as a foil to Timon, is despicable where Timon is only weak; he is incapable even of the selfishness of isolation from evil; he is born a misanthrope, Timon has misanthropy thrust upon him. Timon may be weak and morbid, but he is at least sincere and pure; Apemantus is a sham, and wallows withal in the mire.-LUCE, Handbook to Shakespeare's Works. SHAKESPEARE'S METHOD In the character of Timon, Shakspere gained dramatic remoteness from his own personality. It would have been contrary to the whole habit of the dramatist's genius to |