If, where thou art, two villains shall not be,

[To the Painter.

Come not near him.-If thou wouldst not reside

[To the Poet.

But where one villain is, then him abandon.-
Hence! pack! there's gold, ye came for gold, ye

slaves: .

You have done work for me, there's payment:

Hence 9!

You are an alchymist, make gold of that :

Out, rascal dogs!

[Exit, beating and driving them out.

SCENE II. The same.

Enter FLAVIUS, and two Senators.

Flav. It is in vain that you would speak with

Timon;

For he is set so only to himself,

That nothing but himself, which looks like man,
Is friendly with him.

1 Sen.

Bring us to his cave:

It is our part, and promise to the Athenians,

To speak with Timon.

At all times alike

2 Sen.
Men are not still the same: 'Twas time, and griefs,
That fram'd him thus: time, with his fairer hand,
Offering the fortunes of his former days,

The former man may make him: Bring us to him,
And chance it as it may.

Flav.
Here is his cave.-
Peace and content be here! Lord Timon! Timon!
Look out, and speak to friends: The Athenians,
By two of their most reverend senate, greet thee:
Speak to them, noble Timon.

The word done is omitted by accident in the old copy. This line is addressed to the painter, the next to the poet.

Enter TIMON.

Tim. Thou sun, that comfort'st, burn!-Speak, and be hang'd:

For each true word, a blister! and each false
Be as a caut'rizing to the root o'the tongue,
Consuming it with speaking!

1 Sen.

Worthy TimonTim. Of none but such as you, and you of Timon. 2 Sen. The senators of Athens greet thee, Timon. Tim. I thank them; and would send them back

the plague,

Could I but catch it for them.

O, forget

1 Sen. What we are sorry for ourselves in thee. The senators, with one consent of love1, Entreat thee back to Athens; who have thought On special dignities, which vacant lie

For thy best use and wearing.

2. Sen.

They confess, Toward thee, forgetfulness too general, gross: Which now the publick body,-which doth seldom Play the recanter,-feeling in itself

A lack of Timon's aid, hath sense withal

Of its own fall3, restraining aid to Timon;

And send forth us, to make their sorrowed render*,

1 With one united voice of affection. So in Sternhold's version of the hundredth Psalm.

'With one consent let all the earth.'

2 Which should be and. It is now vain to inquire whether the mistake be attributable to the poet or to a careless transcriber or printer, but in such a glaring error as this, it is but charitable to suppose of the last.

3 The Athenians have a sense of the danger of their own fall by the arms of Alcibiades, by their withholding aid that should have been given to Timon.

4 Render is confession. So in Cymbeline, Act iv. Sc. 4:

Together with a recompense more fruitful

Than their offence can weigh down by the dram; Ay, even such heaps and sums of love and wealth, As shall to thee blot out what wrongs were theirs, And write in thee the figures of their love,

Ever to read them thine.

Tim.

You witch me in it;

eyes,

Surprise me to the very brink of tears:
Lend me a fool's heart, and a woman's
And I'll beweep these comforts, worthy senators.
1 Sen. Therefore, so please thee to return with us,
And of our Athens (thine, and ours) to take
The captainship, thou shalt be met with thanks,
Allow'd5 with absolute power, and thy good name
Live with authority:- -so soon we shall drive back
Of Alcibiades the approaches wild;

Who, like a boar too savage, doth root up
His country's peace 6.

2 Sen.

And shakes his threat'ning sword Against the walls of Athens.

Therefore, Timon,

Tim. Well, sir, I will; therefore, I will, sir;

Thus,

If Alcibiades kill my countrymen,

Let Alcibiades know this of Timon,

That-Timon cares not. But if he sack fair Athens,
And take our goodly aged men by the beards,
Giving our holy virgins to the stain

Of contumelious, beastly, mad-brain'd war;
Then, let him know, and tell him, Timon speaks it,

5 Allowed here signifies confirmed. To approove or confirme. Ratum habere aliquid.' Baret. This word is generally used by our old writers in the sense of approved, and I am doubtful whether it has been rightly explained in other places of these dramas by licensed. An allowed fool, I think, means an approved fool, a confirmed fool. See vol. i. p. 223, vol. ii. p. 396.

This image may have been caught from Psalm 1xxx. 13.

In pity of our aged, and our youth,

I cannot choose but tell him, that—I care not, And let him tak't at worst; for their knives care not, While you have throats to answer; for myself, There's not a whittle' in the unruly camp,

So I leave you

But I do prize it at my love, before
The reverend'st throat in Athens.
To the protection of the prosperous gods,
As thieves to keepers.

Flav.

Stay not, all's in vain.

Tim. Why, I was writing of my epitaph, It will be seen to-morrow; My long sickness Of health 9, and living, now begins to mend, And nothing brings me all things. Go, live still; Be Alcibiades your plague, you his,

And last so long enough!

1 Sen.

We speak in vain. Tim. But yet I love my country; and am not One that rejoices in the common wreck,

As common bruit 10 doth put it.

1 Sen. That's well spoke. Tim. Commend me to my loving countrymen,1 Sen. These words become your lips as they pass through them.

2 Sen. And enter in our ears, like great triumphers In their applauding gates.

7 A whittle is a clasp knife. The word is still provincially

in use.

8 The prosperous gods' undoubtedly here mean the propitious or favourable gods, Dii secundi. Thus in Othello, Act i.

Sc. 3:

To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear.'

In which passage the quarto of 1622 reads a gracious ear.' So in The Winter's Tale, Act ii. Sc. 3:

Sir, be prosperous

In more than this deed doth require.'

9 He means 'the disease of life begins to promise me a period.' 10 Report, rumour.

Tim. Commend me to them; And tell them, that, to ease them of their griefs, Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses, Their pangs of love 11, with other incident throes That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain

In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do

them:

I'll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades' wrath. 2 Sen. I like this well, he will return again. Tim. I have a tree, which grows here in my close, That mine own use invites me to cut down, And shortly must I fell it; Tell my friends, Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree, From high to low throughout, that whoso please To stop affliction, let him take his haste, Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe, And hang himself 12-I pray you, do my greeting. Flav. Trouble him no further, thus you still shall find him.

Tim. Come not to me again: but say to Athens, Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood; Whom once a day with his embossed froth 13 The turbulent surge shall cover; thither come,

11'

Compare this part of Timon's speech with part of the celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet.

12 This was suggested by a passage in Plutarch's Life of Antony, where it is said Timon addressed the people of Athens in similar terms from the public tribune in the market place. See also The Palace of Pleasure, vol. i. Nov. 28.

13 The first folio reads who. It was altered to which in the second folio. Malone reads whom, saying it refers to Timon, and not to his grave; as appears from The Palace of Pleasure:-‘By his last will he ordained himselfe to be interred upon the sea shore, that the waves and surges might beate and vexe his dead

.carcas.'

Embossed froth is foaming, puffed or blown up froth. See vol. iii. p. 342, note 7. Among our ancestors' a boss or a bubble of water when it raineth, or the pot seetheth,' were used indifferently.