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By Root 21179 0

Timon is tormented with the perpetual contrast between things and appearances, between the fresh, tempting outside and the rottenness within, and invokes mischiefs on the heads of mankind proportioned to the sense of his wrongs and of their treacheries. He impatiently cries out, when he finds the gold,

This yellow slave

Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd;

Make the hoar leprosy ador'd; place thieves,

And give them title, knee, and approbation,

With senators on the bench; this is it,

That makes the wappen'd widow wed again;

She, whom the spital-house

Would cast the gorge at, THIS EMBALMS AND SPICES

TO TH' APRIL DAY AGAIN.

One of his most dreadful imprecations is that which occurs immediately on his leaving Athens.

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

Convert o' th' 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' th' brothel. Son of sixteen,

Pluck the lin'd crutch from thy old limping sire,

And with it beat his brains out! Fear and piety,

Religion to the Gods, peace, justice, truth,

Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,

Instructions, manners, mysteries and trades,

Degrees, observances, customs and laws,

Decline to your confounding contraries;

And let confusion live!—Plagues, incident to men,

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 liberty

Creep in the minds and manners of our youth,

That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,

And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains,

Sow all th' Athenian bosoms; and their crop

Be general leprosy: breath infect breath,

That their society (as their friendship) may

Be merely poison!

Timon is here just as ideal in his passion for ill as he had before been in his belief of good. Apemantus was satisfied with the mischief existing in the world, and with his own ill-nature. One of the most decisive intimations of Timon's morbid jealousy of appearances is in his answer to Apemantus, who asks him:

What things in the world can'st thou nearest compare with thy flatterers?

Timon. Women nearest: but men, men are the things themselves.

Apemantus, it is said, 'loved few things better than to abhor himself'. This is not the case with Timon, who neither loves to abhor himself nor others. All his vehement misanthropy is forced, up-hill work. From the slippery turns of fortune, from the turmoils of passion and adversity, he wishes to sink into the quiet of the grave. On that subject his thoughts are intent, on that he finds time and place to grow romantic. He digs his own grave by the sea-shore; contrives his funeral ceremonies amidst the pomp of desolation, and builds his mausoleum of the elements.

Come not to me again; but say to Athens,

Timon hath made his everlasting mansion

Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;

Which once a-day with his embossed froth

The turbulent surge shall cover.—Thither come,

And let my grave-stone be your oracle.

And again, Alcibiades, after reading his epitaph, says of him:

These well express in thee thy latter spirits:

Though thou abhorred'st in us our human griefs,

Scorn'd'st 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—

thus making the winds his funeral dirge, his mourner the murmuring ocean; and seeking in the everlasting solemnities of nature oblivion of the transitory splendour of his lifetime.

CORIOLANUS

Shakespeare has in this play shown himself well versed in history