i ! That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain them:* I'll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades' wrath. 2 shall find him. I will fome kindness-] i. e. I will do them some kindness; for fuch, elliptically confidered, will be the sense of these words, independent of the supplemental do them, which only serves to derange the metre, and is, I think, a certain interpolation. STEEVENS. 3 I have a tree, &c.] Perhaps Shakspeare was indebted to Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue, for this thought. He might however have found it in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, Tom. I. Nov. 28, as well as in several other places. STEEVENS. Our author was indebted for this thought to Plutarch's Life of Antony: "It is reported of him also, that this Timon on a time, (the people being assembled in the market-place, about dispatch of some affaires,) got up into the pulpit for orations, where the orators commonly use to speake unto the people; and filence being made, everie man liftening to hear what he would say, because it was a wonder to fee him in that place, at length he began to speak in this manner: My lordes of Athens, I have a little yard in my house where there groweth a figge tree, on the which many citizens have hanged themselves; and because I meane to make some building upon the place, I thought good to let you all understand it, that before the figge tree be cut downe, if any of you be defperate, you may there in time go hang yourselves." MALONE. 4 in the sequence of degree, Methodically, from highest to lowest. JOHNSON. TIM. Come not to me again: but say to Athens, Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the falt flood; Which once a days with his embossed froth The turbulent furge shall cover; thither come, And let my grave-stone be your oracle.Lips, let four words go by, and language end: What is amiss, plague and infection mend! Graves only be men's works; and death, their gain! Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign. [Exit TIMON. 1. SEN. His discontents are unremoveably Coupled to nature. 2. SEN. Our hope in him is dead: let us return, And strain what other means is left unto us In our dear peril." 2. SEN. : It requires swift foot. [Exeunt, 5 Which once a day-] Old copy-Who. For the correction [whom] I am answerable. Whom refers to Timon. All the modern editors (following the second folio) read-Which once, &c. MALONE. Which, in the second folio (and I have followed it) is an apparent correction of Who. Surely, it is the everlasting manfion, or the beach on which it stands, that our author meant to cover with the foam, and not the corpse of Timon. Thus we often say that the grave in a churchyard, and not the body within it, is trodden down by cattle, or overgrown with weeds. STEEVENS. 6 - embossed froth - When a deer was run hard and foamed at the mouth, he was faid to be emboss'd. See Vol. VI. P. 391, n. 2. The thought is from Painter's Palace of Pleasure, Tom. I. Nov. 28. STEEVENS. Emboffed froth, is swollen froth; from boffe, Fr. a tumour. The term embossed, when applied to deer, is from emboçar, Span. to cast out of the mouth. MALONE. 7 In our dear peril.] So the folios, and rightly. The Oxford editor alters dear to dread, not knowing that dear, in the language of that time, fignified dread, and is so used by Shakspeare in num. berless places. WARBURTON, SCENE III. The Walls of Athens. Enter two Senators, and a Messenger. 1. SEN. Thou hast painfully discover'd; are his files As full as thy report? I have spoke the least: Besides, his expedition promises 2. SEN. We stand much hazard, if they bring not Timon. MESS. I met a courier, one mine ancient friend; Whom, though in general part we were oppos'd, Yet our old love made a particular force, Dear, in Shakspeare's language, is dire, dreadful. So, in Hamlet: " Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven." MALONE. Dear may, in the present instance, fignify immediate, or imminent. It is an enforcing epithet with not always a distinct meaning. To enumerate each of the seemingly various senses in which it may be supposed to have been used by our author, would at once fatigue the reader and myself. In the following situations, however, it cannot fignify either dire or dreadful: 8 9 "Confort with me in loud and dear petition." Troilus and Creffida. Some dear cause "Will in concealment wrap me up a while." King Lear. STEEVENS. a courier,] The players read-a currier. STEEVENS. one mine ancient friend;) Mr. Upton would read-once And made us speak like friends: *-this man was mine ancient friend. STEEVENS. riding From Alcibiades to Timon's cave, With letters of entreaty, which imported His fellowship i' the cause against your city, In part for his fake mov'd. I. SEN. Enter Senators from Timon. Here come our brothers. 3.SEN.Notalk of Timon, nothing of him expect.The enemies' drum is heard, and fearful scouring Doth choke the air with dust: In, and prepare; Ours is the fall, I fear, our foes the snare. [Exeunt. The Woods. Timon's Cave, and a tomb-stone Seem Enter a Soldier, feeking Timon. SOL. By all description this should be the place. Who's here? speak, ho!-No answer? - What is this? 2 Whom, though in general part we were oppos'd, Yet our old love made a particular force, And made us speak like friends:) Our author, hurried away by strong conceptions, and little attentive to minute accuracy, takes great liberties in the construction of sentences. Here he means, Whom, though we were on opposite fides in the publick cause, yet the force of our old affection wrought so much upon, as to make him Speak to me as a friend. See Vol. XII. p. 178, n. 6. MALONE. I am fully convinced that this and many other passages of our author to which similar remarks are annexed, have been irretrievably corrupted by transcribers or printers, and could not have proceeded, in their present state, from the pen of Shakspeare; for what we cannot understand in the closet, must have been wholly useless on the stage. The aukward repetition of the verb-made, very strongly countenances my present observation. STEEVENS. Timon is dead, who hath out-stretch'd his span: Some beast rear'd this; there does not live a man.' 3 Some beaft rear'd this; there does not live a man.) [Old copyread this.] Some beast read what? The foldier had yet only feen the rude pile of earth heap'd up for Timon's grave, and not the infcription upon it. We should read: Some beaft rear'd this; The foldier seeking, by order, for Timon, sees such an irregular mole, as he concludes must have been the workmanship of fome beast inhabiting the woods; and such a cavity as must either have been so over-arched, or happened by the cafual falling in of the ground. WARBURTON. "The foldier (fays Theobald) had yet only seen the rude pile of earth heap'd up for Timon's grave, and not the infcription upon it." In support of his emendation, which was suggested to him by Dr. Warburton, he quotes these lines from Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge: " Here is no food, nor beds; nor any house Notwithstanding this remark, I believe the old reading to be the right. The foldier had only seen the rude heap of earth. He had evidently seen something that told him Timon was dead; and what could tell that but his tomb? The tomb he sees, and the infcription upon it, which not being able to read, and finding none to read it for him, he exclaims peevishly, some beast read this, for it must be read, and in this place it cannot be read by man. There is fomething elaborately unskilful in the contrivance of sending a foldier, who cannot read, to take the epitaph in wax, only that it may close the play by being read with more folemnity in the last scene, JOHNSON. It is evident, that the foldier, when he first sees the heap of earth, does not know it to be a tomb. He concludes Timon must be dead, because he receives no answer. It is likewise evident, that when he utters the words some beaft, &c. he has not seen the infcription. And Dr. Warburton's emendation is therefore, not only juft and happy, but abfolutely necessary. What can this heap of earth be? fays the foldier; Timon is certainly dead: some beast must have erected this, for here does not live a man to do it. Yes, he is dead, fure enough, and this must be his grave. What is this writing upon it? RITSON. I am now convinced that the emendation made by Mr. Theobald is right, and that it ought to be admitted into the text :Some beaft rear'd this. Our poet certainly would not make the foldier call on a beast to read the inscription, before he had informed |