Enter Senators on the walls.

Till now you have gone on, and fill'd the time
With all licentious measure, making your wills
The scope of justice; till now, myself, and such
As slept within the shadow of your power,

Have wander'd with our travers'd arms, and breath'd
Our sufferance vainly: Now the time is flush,'
When crouching marrow, in the bearer strong,
Cries, of itself, No more: now breathless wrong
Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease;
And pursy insolence shall break his wind,
With fear, and horrid flight.

1 Sen. Noble, and young,

When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit,
Ere thou hadst power, or we had cause for fear,
We sent to thee; to give thy rages balm,
To wipe out our ingratitude with loves
Above their quantity.3

2 Sen. So did we woo
Transformed Timon to our city's love,

By humble message, and by promis'd means;
We were not all unkind, nor all descrve
The common stroke of war.

1 Sen. These walls of ours

Were not erected by their hands, from whom

You have receiv'd your griefs: nor are they such,
That these great towers, trophies, and schools should fail

For private faults in them.

2 Sen. Nor are they living,

Who were the motives that you first went out;

Shame, that they wanted cunning, in excess

Hath broke their hearts.

Travers'd arms, arms across.

March, noble lord,

JOHNSON.

bird is flush when his feathers are grown, and he can leave the nest. Flush is mature.

JOHNSON.

[2] The marrow was supposed to be the original of strength. The image is from a camel kneeling to take up his load, who rises immediately when he finds he has as much laid on as he can bear.

[8] Their refers to griefs.

MALONE.

WARBURTON.

Into our city with thy banners spread :
By decimation, and a tithed death,
(If thy revenges hunger for that food,

Which nature loaths,) take thou the destin'd tenth;
And by the hazard of the spotted die,
Let die the spotted.

1 Sen. All have not offended;

4

For those that were, it is not square, to take,
On those that are, revenges: crimes, like lands,
Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman,
Bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage:
Spare thy Athenian cradle, and those kin,
Which, in the bluster of thy wrath, must fall
With those that have offended: like a shepherd,
Approach the fold, and cull the infected forth,
But kill not all together.

2 Sen. What thou wilt,

Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile,
Than hew to't with thy sword.

1 Sen. Set but thy foot

Against our rampir'd gates, and they shall ope;
So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before,
To say, thou'lt enter friendly.

2 Sen. Throw thy glove,

Or any token of thine honour else,

That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress,
And not as our confusion, all thy powers
Shall make their harbour in our town, till we
Have seal'd thy full desire.

Alcib. Then there's my glove ;

Descend, and open your uncharg'd ports ;
Those enemies of Timon's, and mine own,
Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof,
Fall, and no more: and,-to atone your fears
With my more noble meaning,—not a man
Shall pass his quarter, or offend the stream
Of regular justice in your city's bounds,
But shall be remedied, to your public laws
At heaviest answer."

Both. 'Tis most nobly spoken.

Alcib. Descend, and keep your words.

[The Senators descend, and open the gates.

14] Not reguluar, not equitable.

[5] Uncharged means unattacked.

JOHNSON.
MASON.

[6] Not a soldier shail quit his station, or be let loose upon you; and, if any com

mits violence, tre shall answer it regularly to the law.

JOHNSON,

Enter a Soldier.

Sol. My noole general, Timon is dead; Entomb'd upon the very

hem o'the sea:

And, on his grave-stone, this insculpture; which
With wax I brought away, whose soft impression
Interprets for my poor ignorance.

Alcib. [Reads.] Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft:

Seek not my name: A plague consume you wicked caitiffs left!

Here lie I Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate :
Pass by, and curse thy fill; but pass, and stay not here thy

gait."

These well express in thee thy latter spirits:

Though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs,

Scorn'dst our brain's flow, and those our droplets which
From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit
Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep
for aye
On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead
Is noble Timon; of whose memory
Hereafter more.-Bring me into your city,
And I will use the olive with my sword:

Make war breed peace; make peace stint war; make each
Prescribe to other, as each other's leech.3—anti

Let our drums strike.

[Exeunt.

[7] This epitaph is in sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, with the difference of one word only, wretches instead of caitiff's.

STEEVENS.

[8] Physician

STEEVENS.