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Pluck the lin'd crutch from thy old limping fire,
With it beat out his brains! piety, and fear,
Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestick awe, night-reft, and neighbourhood,
Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
Degrees, observances, customs, and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries,'
And yet confufion live!-Plagues, incident to men,
Your potent and infectious fevers heap
On Athens, ripe for stroke! thou cold sciatica,
Cripple our fenators that their limbs may halt
As lamely as their manners? lust and liberty
Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth;
That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,
And drown themselves in riot! itches, blains,
Sow all the Athenian bosoms; and their crop
Be general leprosy! breath infect breath;
That their fociety, as their friendship, may
Be merely poison! Nothing I'll bear from thee,
But nakedness, thou détestable town!

Take thou that too, with multiplying banns!*
Timon will to the woods; where he shall find
The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.

7

- confounding contraries,] i. e. contrarieties whose nature

it is to waste or destroy each other. So, in King Henry V:

8

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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,)
The Athenians both within and out that wall!
And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow
To the whole race of mankind, high, and low!
Amen.

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,
I am as poor as you.

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,
Like empty purses pick'd: and his poor self,
A dedicated beggar to the air,

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,
Serving alike in forrow: Leak'd is our bark;
And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck,
Hearing the furges threat: we must all part
Into this sea of air.

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,
So his familiars from his buried fortunes.

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.
O, the fierce wretchedness 4 that glory brings us!
Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt,
Since riches point to misery and contempt?
Who'd be so mock'd with glory? or to live
But in a dream of friendship?

To have his pomp, and all what state compounds,
But only painted, like his varnish'd friends?
Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart;
Undone by goodness! Strange, unusual blood, 5

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:

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So, in Ben

Thy hobby-horse is an idol, a fierce and rank idol."

Again, in King John :

" O vanity of fickness! fierce extremes
"In their continuance will not feel themselves."

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!
Who then dares to be half so kind again?
For bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men.
My dearest lord, bless'd, to be most accurs'd,
Rich, only to be wretched;-thy great fortunes
Are made thy chief afflictions. Alas, kind lord!
He's flung in rage from this ungrateful feat
Of monftrous friends: nor has he with him to
Supply his life, or that which can command it.
I'll follow, and inquire him out:
I'll ever serve his mind with my best will;
Whilft I have gold, I'll be his steward still. [Exit,

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.

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7;

See Vol. VI. p. So, n.

That is, the moon's, this

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