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ACT IV

After this last dinner, Timon leaves Athens and goes to the woods to live "where he shall find the unkindest beast more kinder than mankind." One day in digging roots for food, he finds some buried gold, but it gives him no pleasure. As he is looking at it, an Athenian named Alcibiades, who had been banished, passes that way to make war on the city. Timon gives him some of the gold to pay his soldiers, not because he loves Alcibiades, but because he desires to see Athens punished. Flavius seeks out his old master, who acknowledges his former servant as the one honest man in the world and bestows on him some of his gold, but tells him never to let him see him again.

ACT V

As Alcibiades approaches Athens, the senators remember Timon and send a delegation, asking him to return to the city and to take the captaincy of all their forces with absolute power. So they hope to drive back Alcibiades, but Timon answers them that he cares not if Alcibiades sack fair Athens, and that he has no pity either for old age or for youth. Unable to win his aid, the senators return to Athens, which place they are soon forced to surrender to Alcibiades. As the city falls word is brought the conqueror of Timon's death.

THE LIFE OF

TIMON OF ATHENS

ACT FIRST

SCENE I

Athens. A hall in Timon's house.

Enter Poet, Painter, Jeweler, Merchant, and others, at several doors.

Poet. Good day, sir.

Pain.

I am glad you 're well.

Poet. I have not seen you long: how goes the

world?

Pain. It wears, sir, as it grows.

Poet.

Aye, that's well known:
But what particular rarity? what strange,
Which manifold record not matches? See,
Magic of bounty! all these spirits thy power
Hath conjured to attend. I know the mer-
chant.

Pain. I know them both; th' other's a jeweler.
Mer. O, 'tis a worthy lord!

Jew.

Nay, that's most fix'd.

Mer. A most incomparable man, breathed, as it

were,

10

To an untirable and continuate goodness:

He passes.

Jew.

I have a jewel here—

Mer. O, pray, let's see 't: for the Lord Timon, sir?
Jew. If he will touch the estimate: but, for that—
Poet. [Reciting to himself] 'When we for recom-
pense have praised the vile,

It stains the glory in that happy verse
Which aptly sings the good.'

Mer. [Looking on the jewel] 'Tis a good form.
Jew. And rich: here is a water, look ye.

Pain. You are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedica

tion

To the great lord.

Poet.

A thing slipp'd idly from me.
Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes

From whence 'tis nourish'd: the fire i' the flint
Shows not till it be struck; our gentle flame
Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies
Each bound it chafes. What have you there?

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15–17. Former editors have thought it needful to inform the reader that these three lines are the beginning of the poem which the speaker afterwards describes. The information, whether needful or not, is doubtless correct. As the Poet strikes up the rehearsal of his lines without bespeaking any listener, this puts the Painter upon supposing him to be in a rapture. Perhaps the reader would like to be told further, that the sudden discharge of poetry arrests the speech of the Jeweler.-H. N. H.

21. The original has,-"Our Poesie is as a Gowne, which uses"; from which no sense can be gathered. The substitution of oozes is by Dr. Johnson. What follows shows that the word, whichever it be, is meant to convey the idea of spontaneous production; not forced, as the fire from the flint.-H. N. H.

"gum, which oozes"; Johnson's reading; Ff. read “gown which uses"; Pope, "gum which issues.”—I. G.

24-25. "flies Each bound it chafes"; Ff., "chases"; Beckett conj. "flies. Eche (bound) it chafes"; Schmidt, "chafes with."-I. G.

Pain. A picture, sir. When comes your book

forth?

Poet. Upon the heels of my presentment, sir.

Let's see your piece.

Pain.

"Tis a good piece.

Poet. So 'tis: this comes off well and excellent.
Pain. Indifferent.

Poet.

Admirable: how this grace

30

Speaks his own standing! what a mental power
This eye shoots forth! how big imagination
Moves in this lip! to the dumbness of the gesture
One might interpret.

Pain. It is a pretty mocking of the life.
Here is a touch; is 't good?

Poet.

I will say of it,
It tutors nature: artificial strife

Lives in these touches, livelier than life.

Enter certain Senators, and pass over.

Pain. How this lord is follow'd!

Poet. The senators of Athens: happy man!

40

30-31. "grace Speaks his own standing"; Johnson conj. "standing graces or grace Speaks understanding"; Mason conj. “Grace Speaks its own standing"; Jackson conj. “grace Speaks! 'tis one standing"; Orger conj. "grace seeming."-I. G.

This picture, it would seem, is a full-length portrait of Timon, in which the gracefulness of the attitude expresses the habitual standing or carriage of the original.-H. N. H.

34. "interpret"; one might supply words to such intelligible action: the significant gesture ascertains the sentiments that should accompany it. So in Cymbeline, Act ii. sc. 4: "Never saw I pictures so likely to report themselves."-H. N. H.

37. "tutors nature"; the excellence of an artist was often set forth by representing him as the tutor or the competitor of nature.— H. N. H.

40. "happy man"; Theobald's emendation of Ff., "happy_men.”I. G.

Pain. Look, moe!

Poet. You see this confluence, this great flood of

visitors.

I have, in this rough work, shaped out a man,
Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug
With amplest entertainment: my free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of wax: no level'd malice
Infects one comma in the course I hold;
But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind.

Pain. How shall I understand you?

Poet.

50

I will unbolt to you.

You see how all conditions, how all minds,

As well of glib and slippery creatures as

45-46. "my free drift halts not particularly"; my design does not stop at any particular character.-H. N. H.

47. "sea of wax"; Bailey conj. “sweep of taxing"; Collier MS., "sea of verse," etc.; but there is evidently a reference to writingtablets covered with wax.-I. G.

It is difficult to make any intelligible sense out of this expression. Sea of wax is commonly interpreted as an allusion to the waxen tablets on which the ancients wrote; a custom not altogether laid aside in England till about the close of the fourteenth century. Mr. Singer explains it, more properly, as referring to the limberness of the speaker's matter; wax being the type of a "theme easily moulded to any drift, not rigidly fixed to one." Mr. Collier's second folio changes wax into verse, which strikes us as not unworthy of being considered; as wax was then commonly written waxe, and so might be misprinted for verse. In either case, the expression appears sufficiently strained and far-fetched; but perhaps the Poet meant something of burlesque, and so dashed the poetaster's language with absurdity.-H. N. H.

49-50. Johnson explains the passage thus: "My poem is not a satire written with any particular view, or 'levell'd' at any single person: I fly, like an eagle, into a general expanse of life, and leave not, by any private mischief, the trace of my passage.”— H. N. H.

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