From forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root!
Ensear thy fertile and conceptious womb 33,
Let it no more bring out ingrateful man!

Go great with tigers, dragons, wolves, and bears;
Teem with new monsters, whom thy upward face
Hath to the marbled mansion all above 34

Never presented!—O, a root,─Dear thanks!
Dry up thy marrows, vines, and plough-torn leas;
Whereof ingrateful man, with liquorish draughts,
And morsels unctuous, greases his pure mind,
That from it all consideration slips!

Enter APEMANTUS.

More man? Plague! plague!

Apem. I was directed hither: Men report,
Thou dost affect my manners, and dost use them.
Tim. 'Tis then, because thou dost not keep a dog
Whom I would imitate. Consumption catch thee!
Apem. This is in thee a nature but affected;
A poor unmanly melancholy, sprung

From change of fortune. Why this spade? this place?
This slavelike habit? and these looks of care?
Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft;
Hug their diseas'd perfumes 35, and have forgot
That ever Timon was. Shame not these woods,
By putting on the cunning of a carper 36.

Again in Othello :

'Now by yon marble heaven.'

35 i. e. their diseased perfumed mistresses. Thus in Othello :"Tis such another fitchew; marry, a perfum'd one.'

36 Cunning of a carper' is the fastidiousness of a critic. Shame not these woods, says Apemantus, by coming here to find fault. Carping momuses was a general term for ill natured critics. Beatrice's sarcastic raillery is thus designated by Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing :

Why sure such carping is not commendable.'

Be thou a flatterer now, and seek to thrive
By that which has undone thee: hinge thy knee 37,
And let his very breath, whom thou'lt observe,
Blow off thy cap; praise his most vicious strain,
And call it excellent: Thou wast told thus ;
Thou gav'st thine ears, like tapsters, that bid welcome,
To knaves, and all approachers: 'Tis most just,
That thou turn rascal; hadst thou wealth again,
Rascals should have't. Do not assume my likeness.
Tim. Were I like thee, I'd throw away myself.
Apem. Thou hast cast away thyself, being like
thyself;

A madman so long, now a fool: What, think'st
That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,
Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these moss'd trees,
That have outliv'd the eagle 38, page thy heels,
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 39,-bid them flatter thee;
O! thou shalt find-

Apem. I love thee better now than e'er I did.
Tim. I hate thee worse.

Thou flatter'st misery.

Apem. I flatter not; but say, thou art a caitiff.

Hamlet.

37 To crook the pregnant hinges of the knee.' 38 Aquila Senectus is a proverb. Tuberville, in his Book of Falconry, 1575, says that the great age of this bird has been ascertained from the circumstance of its always building its eyrie or nest in the same place.

39

' And with presented nakedness outface
The winds.'

King Lear, Act ii. Sc. 3.

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?

Apem.
Tim.

Ay.

What! a knave too?

Apem. If thou didst put this sour cold habit on To castigate thy pride, 'twere well: but thou Dost it enforcedly; thou'dst courtier be again, Wert thou not beggar. Willing misery Outlives incertain pomp, is crown'd before 40: The one is filling still, never complete;

The other, at high wish: Best state, contentless, Hath a distracted and most wretched being, Worse than the worst, content.

41

Thou should'st desire to die, being miserable.
Tim. Not by his breath11, that is more miserable.
Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm
With favour never clasp'd; but bred a dog.
Hadst thou, like us, from our first swath 2,

ceeded

, pro

40 To have wishes crowned is to have them completed, to be content. The highest fortunes, if contentless, have a wretched being, worse than that of the most abject fortune accompanied by content.

41 By his breath means by his voice, i. e. his suffrage.

6

42 i. e. from infancy, from the first swathe-band with which a new born infant is enveloped. There is in this speech a sullen haughtiness and malignant dignity, suitable at once to the lord and the manhater. The impatience with which he bears to have his luxury reproached by one that never had luxury within his reach, is natural and graceful.' JOHNSON. O si sic omnia. In the conception and expression of this note (says Mr. Pye) we trace the mind and the pen of the author; a collection of such notes by Johnson would have been indeed a commentary worthy the critic and the poet. Johnson has adduced a passage somewhat resembling this from a letter written by the unfortunate favourite of Elizabeth, the Earl of Essex, just before his execution. I had none but divines to call upon me, to whom I said, if my ambition could have entered into their narrow hearts, they

43

The sweet degrees that this brief world affords
To such as may the passive drugs of it
Freely command, thou would'st have plung'd thyself
In general riot; melted down thy youth

In different beds of lust; and never learn'd
The icy precepts of respect 44, but follow'd
The sugar'd game before thee. But myself,
Who had the world as my confectionary;

The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men
At duty, more than I could frame employment 45;
That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves
Do on the oak, have with one winter's brush
Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare
For every storm that blows 46;-I, to bear this,

would not have been so humble; or if my delights had been once tasted by them, they would not have been so precise.' The rest of this admirable letter is, as Johnson justly observes, too serious and solemn to be inserted here without irreverence.' It was very likely to make a deep impression upon Shakspeare's mind. But indeed no one can read it without emotion. Johnson copied his extract from Birch's Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth, and has erroneously printed deceivers for divines.

43 The old copy reads the passive drugges of it.' Drug, or drugge, is only a variation of the orthography of drudge, as appears by Baret's Alvearie, 'A drivell drudge, or kitchin-slave,' edit. 1573: " A drivell drugge, or kitchin-slave,' edit. 1581. Huloet has it A drudge or drugge, a servant which doth all the vile service.'

44 The cold admonitions of cautious prudence. Respect is regardful consideration:—

Reason and respect

Makes livers pale, and lustihood deject.'

See vol. iii. p. 97, note 16.

Troilus and Cressida.

45 i. e. more than I could frame employment for. 'O summer friendship,

46

Whose flatt'ring leaves that shadow'd us in our
Prosperity, with the least gust drop off

In the autumn of adversity.'

Massinger's Maid of Honour.

Somewhat of the same imagery is found in Shakspeare's seventy

third Sonnet:

That never knew but better, is some burden:

Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time
Hath made thee hard in't. Why should'st thou hate
men?

They never flatter'd thee: What hast thou given?
If thou wilt curse, thy father, that poor rag,
Must be thy subject: who, in spite, put stuff
To some she beggar, and compounded thee
Poor rogue hereditary. Hence! be gone!-
If thou hadst not been born the worst of men,
Thou hadst been a knave, and flatterer 47.

Were all the wealth I have, shut up in thee,
I'd give thee leave to hang it. Get thee gone.-
That the whole life of Athens were in this!

Thus would I eat it.

Apem.

[Eating a root. Here; I will mend thy feast. [Offering him something.

Tim. First mend my company, take away thyself.
Apem. So I shall mend mine own, by the lack of
thine.

That time of year thou dost in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs in which the poor birds sing.'

47 Dryden has quoted two verses of Virgil to show how well he could have written satires. Shakspeare has here given a specimen of the same power, by a line bitter beyond all bitterness, in which Timon tells Apemantus that he had not virtue enough for the vices which he condemns. Dr. Warburton explains worst by lowest, which somewhat weakens the sense, and yet leaves it sufficiently vigorous.

I have heard Mr. Burke commend the subtlety of discrimination with which Shakspeare distinguishes the present character of Timon from that of Apemantus, whom, to vulgar eyes, he would seem to resemble. JOHNSON.