Do't in your parents' eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast; On Athens, ripe for ftroke! Thou cold Sciatica, Take thou that too, with multiplying banns. 9-i'th brothel.] So Hanmer. The old copies read, o'th' brothel. -yet confufion] Hanmer reads, let confufion; but the meaning may be, though by fuch confufion all things feem to haften to affolution, yet let not diffolution come, but the mijeries of confusion continue, SCENE 1 Serv. Changes to TIMON's Houfe. * Enter Flavius, with two or three fervants. EAR you, good master steward? Where's our master? HEAR Are we undone, caft off, nothing remaining? Flav. Alack, my fellows, what should I fay to you? Let me be recorded by the righteous Gods, I am as poor as you. 1 Serv. Such a Houfe broke! So noble a master fall'n! all gone! and not 2 Serv. As we do turn our backs From our companion, thrown into his grave, With his difeafe of all fhun'd poverty, Walks, like Contempt, alone.-More of our fellows. Enter other fervants. Flav. All broken implements of a ruin'd house! 3 Serv. Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery, That fee I by our faces; we are fellows still, Serving alike in forrow. Leak'd is our bark, And we poor mates, ftand on the dying deck, Hearing the furges threat; we must all part Into the fea of air. * Enter Flavius,] Nothing contributes more to the exaltation of Timon's character than the zeal and fidelity of his fervants. Nothing but real virtue can be honoured by domesticks; no thing but impartial kindness can gain affection from dependants. 2 from his buried for une] The old copies have to instead of from. The correction is idan m.r's. Q4 Fiav. Flav. Good fellows all, The latest of my wealth i'll fhare amongst you. We have feen better days. Let each take fome; [Giving them money, -Nay put out all your hands-not one word more. Thus part we rich in forrow, parting poor. [They embrace, and part feveral ways. Oh, the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us! Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt, Since riches point to mifery and contempt? Who'd be fo mock'd with glory, as to live But in a dream of friendship, To have his Pomp, and all what State compounds, Nor has he with him to fupply his life, beft will; I'll ever ferve his mind with my [Exit, 3 -frange unufual blood,] introduction. I know not what Of this parage, I fuppofe, every to propofe. Perhaps, reader would with for a correction; but the word, harsh as it is, ftands fortified by the rhyme, to which, perhaps, it owes its frange unusual mood, may, by fome, be thought better, and by others worse, SCENE Find Bleffed, breeding Sun, draw from the earth Rotten humidity; below thy fifter's orb Infect the air. Twinn'd brothers of one womb, Scarce is dividant, touch with feveral fortunes; 6 To whofe uninterrupted courfe of fucceffes, as we learn from history, turned his head, and made him fancy himself a God, and contemn his human origin. The Poet fays, ev'n nature, meaning nature in its greatest perfection: And Alexander is represented by the ancients as the most accomplish'd perfon that ever was, both for his qualities of mind and body, a kind of masterpiece of nature. He adds, To whom all fores lay fiege,i.e. Although the imbecility of the human condition might eafily have informed him of his error. Here Shakespear seems to have had an eye to Plutarch, who, in his life of Alexander, tells us, that it was that which stagger'd him in his fober moments concerning the belief of his Divinity. Ἔλεγεν δὲ μάλισα συνιέναι θνητὸς ὢν ἐκ τὸ καθεύδειν καὶ συνεσίαζειν· ὡς ἀπὸ μιᾶς ἐ[γινόμενον αἰσθενείας τῇ φύσει καὶ τὸ πονῦν καὶ τὸ ἠδό r. ως WARB. To whom all fores lay fiege, can bear great fortune But by contempt of nature. 7 Raife me this beggar, and denude that Lord, The fenator fhall bear contempt hereditary, The beggar native honour. It is the Paftour lards the brother's fides, I have preferved this note rather for the fake of the commentator than of the authour. How nature, to whom all fores lay fiege, can fo emphatically exprefs nature in its greatest perfection, I fhall not endeavour to explain. The meaning I take to be this: Brother when his fortune is inlarged will feern brother; for this is the general depravity of human nature, which befuged as it ts by mifery, admonished as it is of want and imperfection, when elevated by fortune, will defpife beings of nature like its own. 7 Raife me this Beggar, and deny't that Lord,] Where is the fenfe and English of deny't that Lord? Deny him what? What preceding Noun is there to which the pronoun It is to be referr'd? And it would be abfurd to think the Poet meant, deny to raise that Lord. The Antithefis muft be, let fortune raise this beggar, and let her ftrip and defpoil that lord of all his pomp and ornaments, &. which fenfe is compleated by this flight alteration, -and denude that lord. So lord Rea in his relation of M. Hamilton's plot, written in 1630, All thefe Hamiltons had denuded themselves of their fortunes and eftates. And Charles the First, in his meffage to the parliament, The fays, Denude ourselves of all. Clar. Vol. 3. p. 15. Octavo Edit. WARBURTON. 8 It is the Pafture lards the Beggar's fides,] This, as the editors have order'd it, is an idle repetition at the beft; fup. pofing it did, indeed, contain the fame fentiment as the foregoing lines. But Shakespear meant a quite different thing: and having, like a fenfible writer, made a fmart obfervation, he illuftrates it by a fimilitude thus: It is the Pafture lards the Weather's fides, The Want that makes him lean. And the fimilitude is extremely beautiful, as conveying this fatírical reflexion; there is no more difference between man and man in the esteem of fuperficial or corrupt judgments, than between a fat sheep and a lean one. |