And skip when thou point'st out? Will the cold brook, Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste, To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit? call the creatures, Whose naked natures live in all the spite Of wreakful heaven; whose bare unhoused trunks, To the conflicting elements expos'd, Answer mere nature,—bid them flatter thee; O! thou shalt find TIM. A fool of thee: Depart. APEM. I love thee better now than e'er I did. APEM. TIM. Why? Thou flatter'st misery. APEM. I flatter not; but say, thou art a caitiff. TIM. Why dost thou seek me out? APEM. To vex thee". TIM. Always a villain's office, or a fool's. Dost please thyself in't? АРЕМ. TIM. Ay. What! a knave too"? APEM. If thou didst put this sour-cold habit on To castigate thy pride, 'twere well: but thou 5 Answer MERE NATURE,] So, in King Lear, Act II. Sc. III.: "And with presented nakedness outface "The winds," &c. STEEVENS. 6 To vex thee.] As the measure is here imperfect, we may suppose, with Sir Thomas Hanmer, our author to have written : Only to vex thee." STEEVENS. 66 7 What! a KNAVE too?] Timon had just called Apemantus fool, in consequence of what he had known of him by former acquaintance; but when Apemantus tells him that he comes to ver him, Timon determines that to ver is either the office of a villain or a fool; that to vex by design is villainy, to vex without design is folly. He then properly asks Apemantus whether he takes delight in vexing, and when he answers, yes, Timon replies," What! a knave too?" I before only knew thee to be a fool, but now I find thee likewise a knave. JOHNSON. Dost it enforcedly; thou'dst courtier be again, 8 The other, at high wish: Best state, contentless, Hath a distracted and most wretched being, Worse than the worst, content 9. Thou should'st desire to die, being miserable. TIM. Not by his breath', that is more miserable. Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm With favour never clasp'd2; but bred a dog 3. 3 8-is crown'd before:] Arrives sooner at high wish; that is, at the completion of its wishes. JOHNSON. So, in a former scene of this play: "And in some sort these wants of mine are crown'd, Again, more appositely, in Cymbeline: 66 my supreme crown of grief." MALONE. 9 Worse than the worst, content.] Best states contentless have a wretched being, a being worse than that of the worst states that are content. JOHNSON. - by his breath,] It means, I believe, by his counsel, by his direction. 66 JOHNSON. By his breath," I believe, is meant his sentence. To breathe is as licentiously used by Shakspeare in the following instance from Hamlet : 66 Having ever seen, in the prenominate crimes, "The youth you breathe of, guilty," &c. STEEvens. By his breath means in our author's language, by his voice or speech, and so in fact by his sentence. Shakspeare frequently uses the word in this sense. It has been twice used in this play. See p. 340, n. 4. MALONE. 2 Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm With favour never clasp'd ;] In a Collection of Sonnets, entitled, Chloris, or the Complaint of the passionate despised Shepheard, by William Smith, 1596, a similar image is found: "Doth any live that ever had such hap, "That all her actions are of none effect? "Whom Fortune never dandled in her lap, "But as an abject still doth me reject.' MALONE. Alluding to the word Cynick, of which 3 but bred a DOG.] sect Apemantus was. WARBURTON. For the etymology of Cynick, our author was not obliged to Hadst thou, like us, from our first swath, proceeded have recourse to the Greek language. The dictionaries of his time furnished him with it. See Cawdrey's Dictionary of Hard English Words, octavo, 1604: "Cynical, doggish, "froward." Again, in Bullokar's English Expositor, 1616: "Cynical, doggish, or currish. There was in Greece an old sect of philosophers so called, because they did ever sharply barke at men's vices," &c. After all, however, I believe Shakspeare only meant, thou wert born in a low state, and used from thy infancy to hardships. MALOne. 4 Hadst thou, like us.] There is in this speech a sullen haughtiness and malignant dignity, suitable at once to the lord and the man-hater. The impatience with which he bears to have his luxury reproached by one that never had luxury within his reach, is natural and graceful. There is in a letter, written by the Earl of Essex, just before his execution, to another nobleman, a passage somewhat resembling this, with which, I believe, every reader will be pleased, though it is so serious and solemn that it can scarcely be inserted without irreverence : "God grant your lordship may quickly feel the comfort I now enjoy in my unfeigned conversion, but that you may never feel the torments I have suffered for my long delaying it. I had none but deceivers to call upon me, to whom I said, if my ambition could have entered into their narrow breasts, they would not have been so humble; or if my delights had been once tasted by them, they would not have been so precise. But your lordship hath one to call upon you, that knoweth what it is you now enjoy; and what the greatest fruit and end is of all contentment that this world can afford. Think, therefore, dear earl, that I have staked and buoyed all the ways of pleasure unto you, and left them as sea-marks for you to keep the channel of religious virtue. For shut your eyes never so long, they must be open at the last, and then you must say with me, there is no peace to the ungodly." JOHNSON. A similar thought occurs in a MS. metrical translation of an ancient French romance, preserved in the Library of King's College, Cambridge. [See note on Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Sc. X.]: 5 "But heretofore of hardnesse hadest thou never; "But were brought forth in blisse, as swich a burde ought, first SWATH,] From infancy. Swath is the dress of a new-born child. JOHNSON. 6 The sweet degrees that this brief world affords Freely command, thou would'st have plung'd thyself In general riot; melted down thy youth So, in Heywood's Golden Age, 1611: "No more their cradles shall be made their tombs, "Nor their soft swaths become their winding-sheets." Again, in Chapman's translation of Homer's Hymn to Apollo: swaddled with sincere 66 "And spotless swath-bands-." STEEVENS. 6 THE Sweet degrees-] Thus the folio. The modern editors have, without authority, read-Through, &c. but this neglect of the preposition was common to many other writers of the age of Shakspeare. STEEVENS. 7 To such as may the PASSIVE DRUGS of it-] Though all the modern editors agree in this reading, it appears to me corrupt. The epithet passive is seldom applied, except in a metaphorical sense, to inanimate objects; and I cannot well conceive what Timon can mean by the passive drugs of the world, unless he means every thing that the world affords. But in the first folio the words are not "passive drugs," but "passive drugges." This leads us to the true reading-drudges, which improves the sense, and is nearer to the old reading in the trace of the letters. Dr. Johnson says in his Dictionary, that a drug means a drudge, and cites this passage as an instance of it. But he is surely mistaken; and I think it is better to consider the passage as erroneous, than to acknowledge, on such slight authority, that a drug signifies a drudge. M. MASON. 8 -command,] Old copy-command'st. Corrected by Mr, Rowe. MALONE. In different beds of lust ;] Thus, in the Achilleid of Statius, ii. 394: tenero nec fluxa cubili Membra precepts of respect,] Of obedience to laws. JOHNSON. Timon cannot mean by the word respect, obedience to the laws, as Johnson supposes; for a poor man is more likely to be impressed with a reverence for the laws, than one in a station of nobility and affluence. Respect may possibly mean, as Steevens The sugar'd game before thee. But myself 2, The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men 3 At duty, more than I could frame employment 3; supposes, a regard to the opinion of the world: but I think it has a more enlarged signification, and implies a consideration of consequences, whatever they may be. In this sense it is used by Hamlet: There's the respect "That makes calamity of so long life." M. MASON. "The icy precepts of respect" mean the cold admonitions of cautious prudence, that deliberately weighs the consequences of every action. So, in Troilus and Cressida : 66 Reason and respect, "Makes livers pale, and lustihood deject." Again, in our poet's Rape of Lucrece : "Then, childish fear, avaunt! debating die! Respect and reason wait on wrinkled age! "Sad pause and deep regard become the sage." Hence in King Richard III. the King says: "I will converse with iron-witted fools, “And unrespective boys; none are for me, "That look into me with considerate eyes." MALONE. Respect, I believe, means the qu'en dira't on? the regard of Athens, that strongest restraint on licentiousness: the icy precepts, i. e. that cool hot blood; what Mr. Burke, in his admirable Reflections on the Revolution in France, has emphatically styled "one of the greatest controuling powers on earth, the sense of fame and estimation." STEEVENS. 2 But myself.] The connection here requires some attention. But is here used to denote opposition; but what immediately precedes is not opposed to that which follows. The adversative particle refers to the two first lines: "Thou art a slave, whom fortune's tender arm έσ But myself, "Who had the world as my confectionary," &c. The intermediate lines are to be considered as a parenthesis of passion. JOHNSON. 3 than I could frame employment;] i. e. frame employment for. Shakspeare frequently writes thus. See vol. xii. p. 23, n. 6. MALONE. |
