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"All USE of quittance"-" Use" is, I think, here employed for usury, in its ancient sense-i. e. interest, whether high or low. "It exceeds all interest ever paid in acquittal of a debt."

SCENE II.

"But 'yond man is EVER angry"-Knight retains and defends the original very; but the antithesis of the brief fury with "ever angry" seems necessary, and the typographical change of very for "ever" is of the most com

mon occurrence.

"at thine APPERIL"-Stevens and others, not understanding this, have altered it to our peril; but "apperil," in the same sense, occurs three times in Ben Jonson, and is also used by Middleton.

"I myself would have no power; pr'ythee, let my meat make thee silent"-"Timon (says Tyrwhitt) like a polite landlord, disclaims all power over his guests. His meaning is, 'I myself would have no power to make thee silent; but, pr'ythee, let my meat perform that office.""

“— they should invite them without KNIVES"-Every guest in our author's time brought his own knife, which he occasionally whetted on a stone that hung behind the

door.

"My lord, IN HEART"-We must suppose Timon here pledging one of his guests. "In heart" is a very old English phrase for heartily, sincerely.

"Much good DICH thy good heart"-So printed in all the old copies; an apparent corruption of d'it, for do it. It is remarkable that "dich" has been found in no other writer, nor is it traced in any provincial dialect.

"we should think ourselves for ever PERFECT"Not meaning in moral excellence, but in secure happiness; as Macbeth uses the word-"I had been perfect else."

11 - THE EAR,

Taste, touch, smell, pleas'd from thy table rise," etc. This is Warburton's ingous emendation of a difficult passage, which in the old copies runs thus :

There taste, touch, all pleas'd from thy table rise. Warburton's restoration of the text makes four of the senses to be gratified at Timon's table, while the sight is to be delighted by the coming mask. Coleridge, (in his 66 Literary Remains,") adverting to Warburton's change, says, "This is indeed an excellent emendation." "-he'd be CROSS'D' then"-Theobald and Stevens say, that "an equivoque is here intended, in which "cross'd" means having his hand crossed with money, or having money in his possession, and to be crossed, or thwarted. So in As You LIKE IT:-"Yet I should bear no cross, if I did bear you;" many coins being marked with a cross on the reverse.

"-wretched for his MIND"-Johnson and others say this means "for his nobleness of soul." It rather seems

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to convey the sense of for having his mind on any thing."

"I'll call To you"-The modern reading is, “I'll call on you." The old reading is retained, as the ancient idiomatic phrase for call on.

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"Can SOUND his state in safety"-So the old copies; the meaning being, that no reason can sound Timon's state and find it in safety. The usual reading has been found, which is not more intelligible than "sound.” Thus Collier, with whose text I concur, but not with his explanation. "Sound" rather seems to be taken as in HENRY VIII., for proclaim—“ Pray Heaven he sound not my disgrace."

"—his FRACTED DATES"-i. e. His bonds, or obligations, broken by not being paid at the date when due.

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Was [made] to be unwise, [in order] to be so kind. Conversation (as Johnson observes) affords many examples of similar lax expression.

"Good even, VARRO"-The old stage-direction is, "Enter Caphis, Isidore, and Varro." Caphis we know, was the servant of the senator who was Timon's creditor, and the other two appear to have been servants of Isidore and Varro, although addressed by the names of their respective masters, and so designated in the prefixes of all the folios. "Good even," or good den was the usual salutation from noon, the moment that "good morrow" became improper.

"With clamorous demands of DEBT, broken bonds"So the old copies uniformly. Malone altered the text to "date-broken bonds," which agrees with the "fracted dates" of the preceding scene. Yet the old text is well enough as it stands.

"GRAMERCIES, good fool"-This word, from the French grand merci, is usually employed in the singular; as a little further on in this scene.

"I have retir'd me to a wasteful cock"-This is an obscure and perhaps misprinted phrase, which has divided the commentators. Pope boldly cut the knot by substituting "a lonely room." Hanmer and Warburton explain it to be a cockloft, or garret lying in waste, or put to no use. But, as Johnson well says, "there is no evidence that cock was ever used for cockloft, or waste for lying in waste." Others say that it means what we now call a waste-pipe; a pipe continually running, and carrying off superfluous water-a very strange place for the steward to retire to, as he hardly needed the waste-pipe's aid (as the critics say it operated) "to keep the idea of Timon's increasing prodigal ity in his mind." Nares (Glossary) gives the most intelligible interpretation. He takes "cock" to mean the usual contrivance for drawing liquor from a cask. The preceding lines intimate that many of these were left to run to waste, in the riot of a prodigal house, “with drunken spilth of wine." He retires to one of these scenes of waste, and, stopping the vessel, sets his eyes to flow instead. This is probably the sense intended, the thought being hastily and imperfectly expressed.

"And try the ARGUMENT of hearts by borrowing”— The contents of a poem or play were formerly called the "argument." If I would (says Timon) by borrowing try of what men's hearts are composed-what they have in them," etc.

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ACT III.-SCENE I.

"Here's three SOLIDARES for thee"-"Where Shakespeare found this odd word (says Mr. Nares) is uncertain. 'Solidata' is, in low Latin, the word for the daily pay of a common soldier; and solidare' the verb expressing the act of paying it-whence comes the word soldier itself. From one or the other of these, some writer had formed the English word. Or the true reading may be solidate, which is precisely solidata made English."

"Unto THIS HOUR"-The old copies read, "Unto his honour." As there seems no honour in an ingrate in having his benefactor's feast still undigested within him, this appears to be certainly a misprint; and "this hour" is a most probable correction.

SCENE II.

"—had he mistook him, and sent to me"-i. e. "Had he (Timon) mistaken himself and sent to me, I would ne'er, etc. He means to insinuate that it would have been a kind of mistake in Timon to apply to a person who had received such trifling favours from him, in preference to Lucullus, who had received much greater; but if Timon had made that mistake, he should not have denied him so many talents."-M. MASON.

"Had he mistook him' means, had he by mistake thought him under less obligations than me, and sent to me accordingly."—HEATH.

"SO MANY talents"-i. e. A certain amount of money, referring, it may be presumed, to the letter or note requesting the loan. Some editors have boldly changed it into "fifty talents." But Malone has well shown that this use of the indefinite was the phraseology of the age. Similar idioms have not gone out of use in Scotland, as " he sold so much of the estate,”—i. e. he sold a certain part of the estate.

"that I should purchase the day before for a little PART"-"Part" has been pronounced to be a misprint, as Johnson thinks for park; according to Theobald for dirt-M. Mason says for port, (i. e. for a little pomp.) Yet the sense of the old text is well enough. He says he purchased what could give but a small "part" of honour, and lost a great deal of it.

"every flatterer's SPIRIT"-The folio has, "every flatterer's sport." But it gives no distinct meaning, while the antithesis of the "world's soul" to the "flatterer's spirit" shows that this was the word meant; and it gives the best sense.

"—in respect of HIS"-i. e. "In respect of his fortune: what Lucius denies to Timon is in proportion to what Lucius possesses, less than the usual alms given by good men to beggars."-JOHNSON.

"I would have put my wealth into donation,

And the best half should have return'd to him," etc. That is, "I would have treated my wealth as if it had been a donation from him, and then returned him half of that for which I thus conceive myself indebted for his bounty." This seems to me very clear, and is the explanation generally received; though Mr. Singer, whose judgment is entitled to great respect, prefers another interpretation, and objects to this. He interprets it, "I would have put my wealth into the form of a gift, and sent him the best half of it." To this the word "return'd" seems irreconcileable.

SCENE III.

"They have all been TOUCH'D"-i. e. Tried; alluding to the touchstone. So in KING RICHARD III. :O Buckingham, now do I play the touch, To try, if thou be current gold, indeed.

"Have Ventidius and Lucullus denied him"-As the line here halts more than usual, some of the editors have

proposed to insert the name of Lucius, and to recast the line:

Have Lucius and Ventidius and Lucullus
Denied him all?

I rather think that the line is as originally written, but that the Poet made an error in his accent, (as he sometimes does, both in foreign and in classical names,) by pronouncing Lucullus with the accent on the first syllable.

"THRICE give him over"-The old copies read, "Thrive give him over," which Stevens explains to mean, that Timon's friends, who have thriven by him, give him over, like physicians, after they have been enriched by the fees of the patient. The misprint was, however, a very easy one, and " thrice" (which Johnson introduced) is supported by the fact that the three friends of Timon, Ventidius, Lucullus, and Lucius, had given him over, and by the three of a previous line.

"the villainies of man will set him clear"—" The devil's folly in making man politic is to appear in this; that he will, at the long run, be too many for his old master, and get free of his bonds. The villainies of man are to set himself clear, not the devil, to whom he is supposed to be in thraldom."-RITSON.

This sense appeared to me perfectly obvious till I found a mass of commentary understanding the words otherwise. Servilius is said to mean that "man's villainies are such that they will make the devil seem guiltless in comparison, and so clear him from punishBut why this should cross the devil is not ap

ment."

parent.

"Who cannot keep his wealth must keep his HOUSE”— i. e. Keep within doors, for fear of duns. So in MEASURE FOR MEASURE, (act ii. scene 2:)" You will turn good husband now, Pompey; you will keep the house."

SCENE IV.

"Else, surely, his had equall'd"-i. e. "Your master's confidence exceeded my master's, or my master's demand had been equal to your master's;" as Timon's extravagance had no limits. "Above mine" for above that of mine is an inaccuracy justifiable enough colloquially.

"Knock me down with 'em : cleave me to the girdle”— This is a bitter angry play on the double sense of the word bill-the tradesman's account, and the old weapon of that name; and, though a quibble, it is not out of character in the excited mood in which Timon speaks. It may be observed in real life that, in violent anger and vexation, the mind often flies, as if for relief, to a poor joke and a forced laugh.

"Lucius, Lucullus, and Sempronius; ULLORXA""The folio (1632) omits Ullorxa,' and it is certainly superfluous as regards the measure, and a name (as Stevens observes) 'unacknowledged by Athens or Rome.' Nevertheless, it is found in the folio, (1623,) and, as it does not in any way affect the sense, we insert it. Shakespeare has allowed himself great license in the names of many of the characters, which (as Johnson remarks) are Roman, and not Grecian; and in the first scene of this act he has spoken of coins, ('solidares,') of the existence of which we have no knowledge." COLLIER.

SCENE V.

"He did BEHAVE his anger"-There have been doubts as to the reading and sense here, the folio having "behoove his anger." But there seems no reason to doubt that Rowe hit upon the true word in printing behave, as used in the transitive sense, found in old poets, for to manage, to govern, to use; as in Spenser, just before our Poet's time:

- who his limbs with labours, and his mind
Behaves with cares.

And in Davenant, in 1630:

How well my stars behave their influence.

We have the evidence of this original sense in the phrase, "behave himself," 79 66 behave ourselves," etc.-i. e. govern himself well or ill.

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"if BEARING carry it”—i. e. If submission carry away the prize. 'Carry it" was a common idiom in this sense, and it is in this sense that we still speak of carrying the day.

"-by MERCY"-He attests "mercy" to the justice of a homicide in self-defence.

"'Tis INFERR'D to us"-i. e. It is brought, or produced to us. Shakespeare not unfrequently uses the verb to infer in this sense. Thus in HENRY VI. (Part III. :)

Inferring arguments of mighty force.

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"—and LAY for hearts"—i. e. Lay out for hearts, as we now express it. Thus Ben Jonson says, Lay for some petty principality." To "lay" was of old used for way-lay. Thus, in Middleton's "Chaste Maid in Cheapside," we have " lay the water-side," and "lay the common-stairs." In Mayne's "City Match," Quartfield says:

The country has been laid, and warrants granted
To apprehend him.

SCENE VI.

"Upon that were my thoughts TIRING"-To tire on is to fasten on, like a bird of prey pecking at its victim; and in this sense it is used in the WINTER'S TALE, and VENUS AND ADONIS. Yet it is quite possible that Z. Jackson is right in thinking "tiring" a misprint for stirring.

"Who stuck and spangled you with flatteries"-This being the reading of all editions, ancient and modern, and giving a fair sense, I have not cared to disturb it, though I incline strongly to believe that the Poet wrote thus:

Who stuck and spangled with your flatteries,
Washes it off.

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

Plutarch records the circumstance which converted the generous Timon into a misanthrope. We subjoin, from North's translation, the entire passage relating to Timon:

"Antonius forsook the city (Alexandria) and company of his friends, and built him a house in the sea, by the isle of Pharos, upon certain forced mounts which he caused to be cast into the sea, and dwelt there, as a man that banished himself from all men's company-saying that he would lead Timon's life, because he had the like wrong offered him that was afore offered unto Timon; and that for the unthankfulness of those he had done good unto, and whom he took to be his friends, he was angry with all men, and would trust no man. This Timon was a citizen of Athens, that lived about the war of Peloponnesus, as appeareth by Plato, and Aristophanes' comedies; in the which they mocked him, calling him a viper, and malicious man unto mankind, to shun all other men's companies but the company of young Alcibiades, a bold and insolent youth, whom he would greatly feast, and make much of, and kissed him very gladly. Apemantus pondering at it, asked him the cause what he meant to make so much of that young man alone, and to hate all others. Timon answered him'I do it (said he) because I know that one day he shall do great mischief unto the Athenians.' This Timon sometimes would have Apemantus in his company, because he was much like to his nature and conditions, and also followed him in manner of life. On a time when they solemnly celebrated the feasts called Choa, at Athens, (to wit, the feasts of the dead, where they made sprinklings and sacrifices for the dead,) and that they two then seated together by themselves, Apemantus said unto the other, O, here is a trim banquet, Timon.' Timon answered again, 'Yea, (said he,) so thou wert not here.' It is reported of him also, that

this Timon on a time (the people being assembled in the market-place about despatch of some affairs) got up into the pulpit for orations, where the orators commonly used to speak unto the people; and silence being made, every man listening to hear what he would say, because it was a wonder to see him in that place; at length he began to speak in this manner:- My lords of Athens, I have a little yard in my house where there groweth a fig-tree, on the which many citizens have hanged themselves; and because I mean to make some building upon that place, I thought good to let you all understand it, that before the fig-tree be cut down, if any of you be desperate, you may there in time go hang yourselves.' He died in the city of Thales, and was buried upon the sea-side. Now chanced So, that the sea getting in, it compassed his tomb round about, that no man could come to it; and upon the same was written this epitaph:

Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft,

Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked wretches left. It is reported that Timon himself, when he lived, made this epitaph; for that which was commonly rehearsed was not his, but made by the poet Callimachus: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."

"One day he gives us diamonds, next day stones”Timon, in his mock banquet, has thrown nothing at his guests but warm water and the dishes that contained it. The mention of "stones," in the passage cited, may be thus plausibly accounted for:-Stevens states that Mr. Strutt, the engraver, was in possession of a manuscript play on this subject, which is supposed to have been an older drama than Shakespeare's. There is a scene in it resembling the banquet given by Timon in the present play. Instead of warm water, he sets before his false friends stones painted like artichokes, and afterwards beats them out of the room. He then retires to the woods, attended by his faithful steward. In the last act, he is followed by his fickle mistress, etc., after being reported to have discovered a treasure by digging. Stevens pronounces it to be a wretched composition, although apparently the work of an academic. It is pos sible that this production may have been of some service to Shakespeare. It has since been printed (1842) by the Shakespeare Society.

ACT IV. SCENE I.

"And fence not Athens"-" This passage is printed, in all modern editions, as follows:

Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall,

That girdlest in those wolves! Dive in the earth,
And fence not Athens!

We follow the punctuation of the original. When Timon
says,
"Let me look back upon thee," he apostrophizes
the city generally-the seat of his splendour and his
misery. To say nothing of the metrical beauty of the
pause after thee, there is much greater force and propri-
ety in the arrangement which we adopt."-KNIGHT.

"CONVERT o' the instant"—"Convert" is here used in the sense of turn-turn yourself "green virginity." So in Ben Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels:"

O which way shall I first convert myself? Gifford, in a note on this passage, mentions that the word occurs, in this sense, in the old translation of the Bible:"Howbeit, after this Jeroboam converted not from his wicked ways."

"CONFOUNDING contraries"-i. e. Contrarieties whose nature it is to waste or destroy each other. So in HENRY V.:

as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base. "-with multiplying BANS"-i. e. Curses. To ban is to curse.

SCENE II.

"So noble a master fallen"—"Nothing contributes

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"It is the pasture lards the ROTHER's sides"-The original reading is thus:

It is the pastour lards the brother's sides;
The want that makes him leave.

Former commentators have filled many pages in striving to restore the true reading, and to explain not only these lines, but the context. After all their labours, the reader was still left to say, with Johnson, "the obscurity is still great, though we should admit the emendation." But a late happy discovery of Mr. Singer's throws unexpected light on the whole, by restoring the true reading of a single word, and changing a single letter. The preceding lines are well explained by Knight:

"Touch the 'twinn'd brothers' with 'several fortunes,' (i. e. with different fortunes,) and 'the greater scorns the lesser.' The Poet then interposes a reflection that man's nature, obnoxious as it is to all miseries, cannot bear great fortune without contempt of kindred nature. The greater and the lesser brothers now change places:

Raise me this beggar, and 'deny't' that lord. This word deny't' was changed by Warburton into denude. Coleridge says, Deny is here clearly equal to withhold; and the it (quite in the genius of vehement conversation, which a syntaxist explains by ellipses and subauditurs in a Greek or Latin classic, yet triumphs over as ignorances in a contemporary) refers to accidental and artificial rank or elevation, implied in the verb raise."

We agree with Mr. Collier in inserting "rother," (instead of brother, as it stands in the folios, and all other editions,) at the instance of Mr. Singer. The suggestion was made in a letter published in the "Athenæum," in April, 1842, in which the writer truly observed, that to change brother to "rother" removed the whole difficulty of a passage, regarding which commentators had so much disputed. Warburton recommended wether, with a near approach to the meaning of the line; but a "rother" is a horned beast, such as oxen or cows; and in Golding's Ovid's "Metamorphoses," (1567,) we meet with the expression of "herds of rother-beasts." But Shakespeare must have been well acquainted with the word from his own youthful experience, for in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon (as indeed is stated in Holloway's "General Provincial Dictionary") is what is still called a rother-market. The word "rother" is also found in the statute-book. (Jacob's "Law Dictionary," stat. 21. Jac. I. chap. 18.)

This reading, and the use and meaning of "rother," is still further confirmed by a discovery of the Shakespeare Society, of an old entry in the original records of Stratford-upon-Avon, directing that "the beast-market be holden in the Roder street, and in no other place."

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"Gold? yellow, glittering, precious gold"—This whole passage bears too close a resemblance to Lucian to have been accidental. There was no English translation in Shakespeare's day, nor is there any probability whatever that he was a Greek scholar. My only solution of the mystery, upon which the English critics have thrown no satisfactory light, is, that he must have got at Lucian's general sense through the ordinary Latin translation commonly accompanying the original, or through an Italian or French translation. Franklin thus translates the parallel passage of the Greek satirist :-"Timon in digging finds gold, and thus addresses it-'It is, it must be gold; fine, yellow, noble gold, sweet to behold. Burning like fire, thou shinest night and day: what virgin would not spread forth her bosom to receive so beautiful a lover!" etc.

"I am no idle VOTARIST"-i. e. "I am no insincere or inconstant supplicant. Gold will not serve me instead of roots."-JOHNSON.

"You clear heavens"-i. e. "Clear" as undarkened by guilt or shame; as opposed to man stained with crime. So in LEAR-" the clearest gods;" and in the RAPE OF LUCRECE:

Then Collatine again by Lucrece' side,
In her clear bed might have reposed still.

(i. e. her unpolluted bed.)

"Pluck STOUT men's pillows from below their heads""Stout" means here in health. There was a notion that the departure of the dying was rendered easier by removing the pillow from under their heads.

"This yellow slave"-This single eloquent phrase, falling on a poetical mind, brought by personal circumstances into a mood of feeling somewhat like Timon's, kindled into one of the most intensely poetical and beautiful shorter poems of our language-the late Dr. Leyden's address to "the vile yellow slave," the "slave of the dark and dirty mine," for whose vile radiance he had sacrificed health and probably life, and certainly domestic happiness; and who now came to mock with his presence his victim's hours of pain and disease.

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we prevent

The loathsome misery of age, beguile

The gout, the rheum, that in lag hours attend
For gray approachers: we come toward the gods
Young and unwapper'd, not halting under crimes
Many and stale.

Grose, in his provincial Glossary,' cites wappered as a Gloucestershire word, and explains it restless or fatigued, (perhaps worn out with disease,) as spoken of a sick person.'. Stevens cites a passage from Middleton's and Decker's Roaring Girl,' in which wappening and niggling are said to be all one. Niggling, in cant language, was company-keeping with a woman. 'Wed' is used for wedded. It is gold that induces some one to accept in marriage this 'wappen'd widow,' that the inhabitants of a spital-house, or those afflicted with ulcerous sores, would cast the gorge at, (i. e. reject with loathing,) were she not gilded over by wealth.'"SINGER.

"To the APRIL DAY again"-The "April day" is not the fool's day, as Johnson imagined; but the springtime of life. Shakespeare himself has, in a sonnet:Calls back the lovely April of her prime.

"I will not kiss thee"-"This alludes to an opinion in former times, generally prevalent, that the venereal affection transmitted to another left the infecter free. I will not (says Timon) take the rot from thy lips, by kissing thee."-JOHNSON.

"—through the window-bars bore at men's eyes”— No satisfactory explanation has been given of this liue,

and some as yet incorrigible error of the press appears probable. One of the conjectures is ingenious. Tyrwhitt would read, widow's barb-the barb being a common old word for some part of female dress. Chaucer describes Cressida as wearing a barbe. Yet this does not well suit the context. Singer explains thus:

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"By 'window-bars' the Poet probably means the partlet, gorget, or kerchief, which women put about their neck, and pin down over their paps,' sometimes called a niced, and translated mamillare, or fascia pectoralis; and described as made of fine linen. From its semi-transparency arose the simile of window-bars.' The younger Boswell thought that windows were used to signify a woman's breasts, in a passage he has cited from Weaver's Plantagenet's Tragical Story;' but it seems doubtful. The passage hardly warrants Johnson's explanation:-The virgin shows her bosom through the lattice of her chamber,'"

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"I'll trust to your CONDITIONS"-" You need not swear to continue whores; I will trust to your inclinations."-JOHNSON.

"Conditions" was often used by the older writers, as Bacon, Raleigh, and the contemporary poets, for quali ties, characteristics, general disposition.

"— Yet may your pains, six months"-The meaning of this passage appears to be as Stevens explains it"Timon had been exhorting them to follow constantly their trade of debauchery, but he interrupts himself, and imprecates upon them that for half the year their pains may be quite contrary-that they may suffer such punishment as is usually inflicted upon harlots. He then continues his exhortations."

"Be quite CONTRARY"-The metre shows that "contrary" is to be accented on the second syllable, which was the English pronunciation till the beginning of the last century, since which it has become a vulgarism.

"—and thatch your poor thin roofs With burdens of the dead," etc.

The Poet can seldom refrain from enlarging on his especial dislike of wigs, or artificial hair, as common in his day as in this, with both sexes. His own practice was at least consistent. The engraved portraits of him, at different ages, show that, though early bald, he constantly refused to "thatch" his fair high front with artificial youth.

"HOARSE the flamen"-The original reading is, "hoar the flamen,"-make the priest gray, or hoary; and this, Stevens says, refers to the hoar leprosy previously mentioned. But the whole context refers to the effect of disease upon the voice-(“crack the lawyer's voice;")-and then passes to the priest's, "that scolds against" vice, to which his becoming gray has no reference, and administers no rebuke. Though the editors generally, including Messrs. Knight and Collier, retain hoar, I have no doubt that the Poet wrote "hoarse,”—a verb formed by himself, and in his own manner. The amendment is that of Upton, a wellknown editor of the old English poets.

"-that his particular to FORESEE"-"The metaphor is apparently incongruous, but the sense is good. To foresee his particular, is to provide for his private advantage, for which he leaves the right scent of public good. In hunting, when hares have crossed one another, it is common for some of the hounds to smell from the general weal,' and 'foresee' their own particular.' Shakespeare, who seems to have been a sportsman, and has often alluded to falconry, perhaps alludes here to hunting."-JOHNSON.

"And ditches GRAVE you all"-To "grave," and to ungrave, were expressive old words for to bury, and to disinter, frequently used by old poets, which it is to be

regretted have become quite obsolete. Thus, in Chap man's "Homer's Iliad:"

The throats of dogs shall grave
His manly limbs.

The misanthropist imprecates on them all the loss of decent funeral rites, by finding their graves in "ditches."

"Common mother, thou"-Was it, as Warburton suggests, from any knowledge of the poetical idea of pagan statuary, or rather from going beyond it to the original poetical idea which gave it birth, that, in his "infinite breast," Shakespeare has addressed the earth with the epithet which the Greeks gave to the Ephesian Dianathe "Many-breasted Diana," considered as "varied nature, the mother of all ?" Many coins, medals, etc., have come down to us, thus representing Diana.

"—below CRISP heaven"-" Crisp," often used for curled, or winding, in old poetic diction, is here still more boldly employed for bent, curved, vaultedthough Stevens refers it to the curled clouds.

"That from it all consideration slips"-This line, as it is printed in all the folios, indicates that Timon was interrupted by the entrance of Apemantus, which is lost in the punctuation of the ordinary editions.

"— a nature but INFECTED"-i. e. Not thy real nature, but one poisoned by adversity. It is the original reading, and, I think, both clear and Shakespearian. But very many editions adopt Rowe's alteration-“a nature but affected;" which does not agree with the context, for the nature is not falsely assumed. Besides, the word in this sense is hardly of the Elizabethan age. Affected would then mean either loved, or else operated upon, influenced; as the eye is affected by light.

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Will these Moss'D trees"-The folio has moist trees, but the epithet seems so out of place, and "moss'd" so well applies to the trees "that have outliv'd the eagle," and so resembles the Poet's own phrase in As YOU LIKE IT, ("Under a tree whose boughs were moss'd with age,") that the correction (suggested by Hanmer) seems self-evident. But Collier and Knight both retain moist-the latter on the ground of Whiter's ingenious theory of association:

"Warm and moist were the appropriate terms, in the days of Shakespeare, for what we should now call an aired and a damp shirt. So John Florio, ('Second Frutes,' 1591,) in a dialogue between the master Torquato and his servant Ruspa:

T. Dispatch, and give me a shirt!
R. Here is one with ruffs.

T. Thou dolt, seest thou not how moyst it is?
R. Pardon me, good sir, I was not aware of it.
T. Go into the kitchen and warme it.

Can the reader doubt (though he may perhaps smile at the association) that the image of the chamberlain putting the shirt on warm, impressed the opposite word moist on the imagination of the Poet?"

"-is crown'd before"-i. e. Arrives sooner at the completion of its wishes. So in a former scene of this play:

:

And in some sort these wants of mine are crowned,
That I account them blessings.

And more appositely in CYMBELINE:—

My supreme crown of grief.

"Worse than the worst content"-i. e. "Best states contentless have a wretched being-a being worse than that of the worst of states that are content."-JOHNSON.

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