And made us speak like friends; '-this man was riding From Alcibiades to Timon's cave,

With letters of entreaty, which imported

His fellowship i' the cause against your city,
In part for his sake moved.

1 Sen.

Enter Senators from TIMON.

Here come our brothers. 3 Sen. No talk of Timon; nothing of him expect.— The enemies' drum is heard, and fearful scouring Doth choke the air with dust. In and prepare; Ours is the fall, I fear, our foes, the snare.

Exeunt.

SCENE IV. The Woods. Timon's Cave, and a Tombstone seen.

Enter a Soldier, seeking Timon.

Sol. By all description this should be the place.
Who's here? speak, ho!-No answer?-What is this?
Timon is dead, who hath outstretched his span:
Some beast reared this; there does not live a man.
Dead, sure; and this his grave.-

What's on this tomb I cannot read; the character
I'll take with wax.

Our captain hath in every figure skill;

An aged interpreter, though young in days:
Before proud Athens he's set down by this,
Whose fall the mark of his ambition is.

[Exit.

1 This passage, Steevens, with great reason, considers corrupt; the awkward repetition of the verb made, and the obscurity of the whole, countenance his opinion. Might we not read,

"Yet our old love had a particular force,

And made us speak like friends?"

2 The old copy has "Some beast read this." The emendation is Warburton's.

SCENE V. Before the Walls of Athens.

Trumpets sound. Enter ALCIBIADES, and Forces. Alcib. Sound to this coward and lascivious town Our terrible approach. [A parley sounded.

Enter Senators on the walls.

2

Till now you have gone on, and filled 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 wandered with our traversed arms,1 and breathed
Our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush,
When crouching marrow,3 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 of fear,
We sent to thee; to give thy rages balm,

To wipe out our ingratitude with loves

Above their quantity.*

2 Sen.

So did we woo

Transformed Timon to our city's love,

By humbled message, and by promised means;
We were not all unkind, nor all deserve

The common stroke of war.

1 Sen.

These walls of ours

Were not erected by their hands, from whom

1 Traversed arms are arms crossed.

2 Flush is mature, ripe, or come to full perfection.

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

4 Their refers to griefs. "To give thy rages balm," must be considered as parenthetical.

You have received your griefs; nor are they such, That these great towers, trophies, and schools should

fall

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. March, noble lord,
Into our city with thy banners spread.
By decimation, and a tithed death,

(If thy revenges hunger for that food,

Which nature loathes,) take thou the destined tenth; And by the hazard of the spotted die,

Let die the spotted.

1 Sen.

All have not offended;

3

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 rampired 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 honor else,

1 i. e. those who made the motion for your exile.

2 Cunning is used in its old sense of skill or wisdom: extremity of shame that they wanted wisdom in procuring your banishment hath broke their hearts. Theobald had nearly thus interpreted the passage; and Johnson thought he could improve it by reading

"Shame that they wanted, coming in excess

Hath broke their hearts."

3 i. e. not regular.

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

Alcib. Then there's my glove; Descend, and open your uncharged ports.1 Those enemies of Timon's and mine own, Whom you yourself shall set out for reproof, Fall, and no more; and—to atone 2 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.3

Both.

'Tis most nobly spoken. Alcib. Descend, and keep your words.

The Senators descend, and open the gates.
Enter a Soldier.

Sol. My noble general, Timon is dead;
Entombed upon the very hem o' the sea:
And on his gravestone, 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.

caitiffs left!

A plague consume you wicked

Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate. Pass by, and curse thy fill; but

thy gait.*

pass, and

stay not here

1 i. e. unattacked gates. According to Johnson, unguarded.

2 i. e. to reconcile them to it.

3 All attempts to extract a meaning from this passage, as it stands, must be vain. We should, perhaps, read :

--

It is evident that the context requires a word of this import: remunded might serve. The comma at remedied is not in the old copy. Johnson's explanation will then serve, " Not a soldier shall quit his station, or commit any violence, but he shall answer it regularly to the law."

66

4 This epitaph is formed out of two distinct epitaphs in North's Plu

These well express in thee thy latter spirits.
Though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs,

Scorn'dst our brains' 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.

Is noble Timon; of whose memory

Dead

Hereafter more.-Bring me into your city,
And I will use the olive with my sword.

2

Make war breed peace; make peace stint war; make

each

Prescribe to other, as each other's leech.

Let our drums strike.

[Exeunt.

tarch. The first couplet is there said to have been composed by Timon himself; the second by the poet Callimachus. The epithet caitiffs was probably suggested by another epitaph, to be found in Kendal's Flowers of Epigrammes, 1577, and in the Palace of Pleasure, vol. i. Nov. 28. 1 So in Drayton's Miracles of Moses :

2 Stop.

"But he from rocks that fountains can command
Cannot yet stay the fountains of his brain."

THE play of Timon is a domestic tragedy, and therefore strongly fastens on the attention of the reader. In the plan there is not much art, but the incidents are natural, and the characters various and exact. The catastrophe affords a very powerful warning against that ostentatious liberality, which scatters bounty, but confers no benefits; and buys flattery, but not friendship.

In this tragedy are many passages perplexed, obscure, and probably corrupt, which I have endeavored to rectify or explain with due diligence; but, having only one copy, cannot promise myself that my endeavors shall be much applauded.

JOHNSON.