Pluck the lin'd crutch from thy old limping fire, Take thou that too, with multiplying banns!* 7 - confounding contraries,] i. e. contrarieties whose nature it is to waste or destroy each other. So, in King Henry V: 8 as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base." -- yet confusion ) Sir T. Hanmer reads, let confufion; but the meaning may be, though by such confusion all things seem to haften to diffolution, yet let not diffolution come, but the miseries of confufion continue. Jor JOHNSON. 9 liberty- Liberty is here used for libertinism. So, in The Comedy of Errors: " And many such like liberties of fin;" apparently meaning-libertines. STEEVENS. 2 multiplying banns!] i. e. accumulated curses. Multiplying for multiplied: the active participle with a paffive fignification. See Vol. IV. p. 225, n. 3. STEEVENS. The gods confound (hear me, you good gods all,) SCENE II. Athens. A Room in Timon's House. [Exit. Enter FLAVIUS, with two or three Servants. 1. SERV. Hear you, master steward, where's our master? Are we undone? cast off? nothing remaining? FLAV. Alack, my fellows, what should I say to you? Let me be recorded by the righteous gods, 1. SERV. Such a house broke! So noble a master fallen! Allgone! and not One friend, to take his fortune by the arm, And go along with him! 2. SERV. As we do turn our backs From our companion, thrown into his grave; So his familiars to his buried fortunes* & Enter Flavius,) Nothing contributes more to the exaltation of Timon's character than the zeal and fidelity of his servants. Nothing but real virtue can be honoured by domesticks; nothing but impartial kindness can gain affection from dependants. JOHNSON. 9 Let me be recorded-] In compliance with ancient elliptical phraseology, the word me, which disorders the measure, might be omitted. Sir Thomas Hanmer reads: 2 Let it be recorded &c. STEEVENS. to his buried fortunes - So the old copies. Sir Thomas Hanmer reads from; but the old reading might stand. JOHNSON. Slink all away; leave their false vows with him, With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty, Walks, like contempt, alone. More of our fellows. Enter other Servants. FLAV. All brokenimplements of a ruin'd house. 3. SERV. Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery, That see I by our faces; we are fellows still, FLAV. Good fellows all, The latest of my wealth I'll share amongst you. Wherever we shall meet, for Timon's fake, Let's yet be fellows; let's shake our heads, and say, As 'twere a knell unto our master's fortunes, We have feen better days. Let each take some; [Giving them money. Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more: I should suppose that the words from, in the second line, and to in the third line, have been misplaced, and that the original reading was: As we do turn our backs To our companion thrown into his grave, Slink all away;--. When we leave a person, we turn our backs to him, not from him. M. MASON. So his familiars to his buried fortunes, &c.] So those who were familiar to his buried fortunes, who in the most ample manner participated of them, flink all away, &c. MALONE. Thus part we rich in forrow, parting poor. [Exeunt Servants. To have his pomp, and all what state compounds, 3 rich in forrow, parting poor. ) This conceit occurs again in King Lear: "Faireft Cordelia, thou art most rich, being poor." STEEVENS. 40, the fierce wretchedness - ) I believe fierce is here used for hasty, precipitate. Perhaps it is employed in the same sense by Ben Jonson in his Poetafter: " And Lupus, for your fierce credulity, "One fit him with a larger pair of ears." In King Henry VIII. our author has fierce vanities. In all in ftances it may mean glaring, conspicuous, violent. Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, the Puritan says: So, in Ben Thy hobby-horse is an idol, a fierce and rank idol." Again, in King John : " O vanity of fickness! fierce extremes Again, in Love's Labour's Loft : 5 " With all the fierce endeavour of your wit." STEEVENS. Strange, unusual blood,] Of this paffage, I suppose, every reader would wish for a correction: but the word, harsh as it is, ftands fortified by the rhyme, to which, perhaps, it owes its introduction. I know not what to propose. Perhaps, Strange, unusual mood, may, by some, be thought better, and by others worse. JOHNSON. In The Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608, attributed to Shakspeare, blood seems to be used for inclination, propensity: " For 'tis our blood to love what we are forbidden." Srange, unusual blood, may therefore mean, strange unusual dispofition. 1 When man's worst sin is, he does too much good! SCENE III. / The Woods. Enter TIMΟΝ. TIM. O blessed breeding fun, draw from the earth Rotten humidity; below thy sister's orb Infect the air! Twinn'd brothers of one womb,Whose procreation, refidence, and birth, 1 Again, in the 5th book of Gower De Confeffione Amantis, fol. iii. b: "And thus of thilke unkinde blood Stant the memorie unto this daie." Gower is speaking of the ingratitude of one Adrian, a lord of Rome. STEEVENS. Throughout these plays blood is frequently used in the sense of natural propensity or disposition. and p. 282, n. 3. MALONE. 7; See Vol. VI. p. So, n. That is, the moon's, this |