2 Lord. All covered dishes!

1 Lord. Royal cheer, I warrant you.

3 Lord. Doubt not that, if money, and the season can yield it.

1 Lord. How do you? What's the news?

3 Lord. Alcibiades is banished: Hear you of it? 1&2 Lord. Alcibiades banished!

3 Lord. 'Tis so, be sure of it.

1 Lord. How? how?

2 Lord. I pray you, upon what?

Tim. My worthy friends, will you draw near? 3 Lord. I'll tell you more anon.

feast toward 3.

2 Lord. This is the old man still.

3 Lord. Will't hold? will't hold?

Here's a noble

2 Lord. It does: but time will-and so3 Lord. I do conceive.

Tim. Each man to his stool, with that spur as he would to the lip of his mistress: your diet shall be in all places alike. Make not a city feast of it, to let the meat cool ere we can agree upon the first place: Sit, sit. The gods require our thanks.

You great benefactors, sprinkle our society with thankfulness. For your own gifts, make yourselves praised: but reserve still to give, lest your deities be despised. Lend to each man enough, that one need not lend to another: for, were your godheads to borrow of men, men would forsake the gods. Make the

c. 46: Many are caught ought of their fellows hands, if they bestirre not themselves the better.' Thus also Virgil:

6

oblitos famæ melioris amantes.'

3 i. e. near at hand, or in prospect. So in Romeo and Juliet:-We have a foolish trifling banquet towards.'

In all places alike.' This alludes to the mode in which guests were formerly placed at table according to rank. See note on The Winter's Tale, vol. iv. p. 17.

meat be beloved, more than the man that gives it. Let no assembly of twenty be without a score of villains: If there sit twelve women at the table, let a dozen of them be—as they are.—The rest of your lees, O gods, the senators of Athens, together with the common lag of people,—what is amiss in them, you gods, make suitable for destruction. For these my present friends, as they are to me nothing, so in nothing bless them, and to nothing they are wel

come.

Uncover, dogs, and lap.

[The dishes uncovered are full of warm water. Some speak. What does his lordship mean? Some other. I know not.

Tim. May you a better feast never behold, You knot of mouth-friends! smoke, and lukewarm

water

Is your perfection". This is Timon's last;
Who stuck and spangled you with flatteries,
Washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces

[Throwing water in their faces. Your reeking villany. Live loath'd, and long, Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites, Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears, You fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time's flies 7, Cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks!

5 Warburton and Mason say we should read foes instead of fees, which is the reading of the old copy. I have ventured to substitute lees, a more probable word to be misprinted fees, the long f and 1 being easily mistaken for each other. Timon means to call the senators the lees and dregs of the city, Sordes et fax urbis, on account of their vile propensities.

6 i. e. the highest of your excellence.

7 i. e. flies of a season. Thus before :

—one cloud of winter showers, These flies are couch'd.

8 Minute-jacks are the same as jacks of the clock-house, auto

Of man, and beast, the infinite malady

Crust you quite o'er!-What, dost thou go?
Soft, take thy physick first-thou too,-and thou;-
[Throws the dishes at them, and drives them out.
Stay, I will lend thee money, borrow none.-.
What, all in motion? Henceforth be no feast,
Whereat a villain's not a welcome guest.

Burn, house; sink, Athens! henceforth hated be
Of Timon, man, and all humanity!

lords 9?

[Exit.

Re-enter the Lords, with other Lords and Senators. 1 Lord. How now, my 2 Lord. Know you the quality of Lord Timon's

fury?

3 Lord. Pish! did you see my cap?

4 Lord. I have lost my gown.

3 Lord. He's but a mad lord, and nought but humour sways him. He

gave me a jewel the other day, and now he has beat it out of my hat:-Did

you see my jewel?

4 Lord. Did you see my cap?

2 Lord. Here 'tis.

4 Lord. Here lies my gown.

1 Lord. Let's make no stay.

2 Lord. Lord Timon's mad.

3 Lord.

I feel't upon my bones.

4 Lord. One day he gives us diamonds, next day

stones 10.

[Exeunt.

maton figures appended to clocks: but the term was used for.

time serving busy-bodies, who had their oar in every man's boat, or hand in every man's dish.' See King Richard III. Act iv. Sc. 2, p. 114.

9 This and the next speech is spoken by the newly arrived lords.

10 In the old MS. play of Timon painted stones are introduced as part of this mock banquet. It seems probable that Shakspeare was acquainted with this ancient drama. Timon has thrown nothing at his guests, but warm water and dishes.

SCENE I.

ACT IV.

Without the Walls of Athens.

Enter TIMON.

Tim. Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall, That girdlest in those wolves! Dive in the earth, And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent; Obedience fail in children! slaves, and fools, Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench, And minister in their steads! to general filths 1 Convert o'the instant, green virginity!

Do't in your parents' eyes; bankrupts, hold fast;
Rather than render back, out with
your knives,
And cut your trusters' throats! bound servants, steal!
Large handed robbers your grave masters are,
And pill by law: maid, to thy master's bed;
Thy mistress is o'the brothel! son of sixteen,
Pluck the lin❜d crutch from the old limping sire,
With it beat out his brains! piety, and fear,
Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestick awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
Degrees, observances, customs, and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries 2,
And yet confusion live!-Plagues, incident to men,

1 Steevens explains this common sewers,' which is quite ludicrous, unless he meant it metaphorically. General filths means common strumpets: filthiness and obscenity were synonymous with our ancestors.

2 i. e. contrarieties, whose nature it is to waste or destroy each other.

Your potent and infectious fevers heap
On Athens, ripe for stroke! thou cold sciatica,
Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt
As lamely as their manners! lust and liberty3
Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth;
That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,
And drown themselves in riot! itches, blains,
Sow all the Athenian bosoms; and their crop
Be general leprosy! breath infect breath;
That their society, as their friendship, may
Be merely poison! Nothing I'll bear from thee,
But nakedness, thou détestable town!

Take thou that too, with multiplying banns *!
Timon will to the woods; where he shall find
The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.
The gods confound (hear me, you good gods all),
The Athenians both within and out that wall!
And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow
To the whole race of mankind, high, and low!
Amen.

SCENE II.

Athens. A Room in Timon's House.

[Exit.

Enter FLAVIUS, with two or three Servants.

1 Serv. Hear you, master steward, where's our master?

Are we undone? cast off? nothing remaining?

Flav. Alack, my fellows, what should I say to you? Let me be recorded by the righteous gods, I am as poor as you.

3 Liberty here means licentiousness or libertinism. So in the Comedy of Errors :

'And many such like liberties of sin.'

4 i. e. accumulated curses. Multiplying for multiplied, the active participle with a passive signification.