Enter certain Senators, and pass over. PAIN. How this lord's follow'd! POET. The fenators of Athens; - Happy men! POET. You fee this confluence, this great flood of visitors. 4 I have, in this rough work, shap'd out a man, happy man; and 3 -- Happy men!) Mr. Theobald reads certainly the emendation is sufficiently plausible, though the old reading may well stand. MALONE. The text is right. The poet envies or admires the felicity of the fenators in being Timon's friends, and familiarly admitted to his table, to partake of his good cheer, and experience the effects of his bounty. RITSON. 4 5 this confluence, this great flood of visitors,] this beneath world-] So, in Measure for Measure, we have- "This under generation;" and in King Richard II : "-the 'lower world." STEEVENS. • Halts not particularly, My design does not stop at any single chara&er. JOHNSON. 7 In a wide sea of wax:) Anciently they wrote upon waxen tables with an iron ftile. HANMER. I once thought with Sir T. Hanmer, that this was only an allufion to the Roman practice of writing with a stile on waxen tablets; but it appears that the same custom prevailed in England about the year 1395, and might have been heard of by Shakspeare. It seems also to be pointed out by implication in many of our old collegiate establishments. See Warton's History of English Poetry, Vol. III. p. 151. STEEVENS. Mr. Astle observes in his very ingenious work On the Origin and Progress of Writing, quarto, 1784, that " the practice of writing on ! Infects one comma in the course I hold; PAIN. How shall I understand you? POET. terer 4 To Apemantus, that few things loves better table-books covered with wax was not entirely laid aside till the commencement of the fourteenth century." As Shakspeare, I believe, was not a very profound English antiquary, it is surely im probable that he thould have had any knowledge of a practice which had been difused for more than two centuries before he was born. The Roman practice he might have learned from Golding's Tranflation of the ninth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses: " Her right hand holds the pen, her left doth hold the " emptie waxe, &c. MALONE. no levell'd malice &c.] To level is to aim, to point the shot at a mark. Shakspeare's meaning is, my poem is not a fatire written with any particular view, or levelled at any single person; I fly like an eagle into the general expanse of life, and leave not, by any private mischief, the trace of my passage. JOHNSON. 2 • I'll unbolt ) I'll open, I'll explain. JOHNSON. glib and flippery creatures,] Sir T. Hanmer, and Dr. Warburton after him, read - natures. Slippery is smooth, unrefifting. 3 Subdues 4 All forts of hearts;) So, in Othello: My heart's fubdued JOHNSON. "Even to the very quality of my lord." STEEVENS. glass-fac'd flatterer -] That shows in his look, as by reflection, the looks of his patron. JOHNSON. Than to abhor himself: even he drops down : PAIN. I faw them speak together." POET. Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill, Feign'd Fortune to be thron'd: The base o'the mount Is rank'd with all deserts, all kind of natures, 5 1 even he drops down &.] Either Shakspeare meant to put a falsehood into the mouth of his poet, or had not yet thoroughly planned the character of Apemantus; for in the enfuing scenes, his behaviour is as cynical to Timon as to his followers. STEEVENS. The Poet, seeing that Apemantus paid frequent visits to Timon, naturally concluded that he was equally courteous with his other guests. RITSON. 6 I saw them speak together.) The word - together, which only serves to interrupt the measure, is, I believe, an interpolation, being occafionally omitted by our author, as unneceffary to sense, on similar occasious. Thus, in Measure for Measure: "-- Bring me to hear them fpeak;" i. e. to speak together, to converse. Again, in another of our author's plays: "When spoke you last?" Nor is the fame phraseology, even at this bour, out of use. 7 - STEEVENS. rank'd with all deferts,) Cover'd with ranks of all kinds of men. JOHNSON. 8 To propagate their lates:] To advance or improve their various conditions of life. JOHNSON. Feign'd Fortune to be thron'd: -- 66 on this sovereign lady &c.] So, in The Tempeft: bountiful fortune, " Now my dear lady," &c. MALONE. 1 PAIN. 'Tis conceiv'd to scope.* POET. Drink the free air. 5 2 PAIN. 4 Ay, marry, what of these? conceiv'd to Scope.] Properly imagined, appofitely, to the purpose. JOHNSON. 3 In our condition.) Condition for art. WARBURTON. * Rain facrificial whisperings in his cars,) The sense is obvious, and means, in general, flattering him. The particular kind of flattery may be collected from the circumstance of its being offered up in whifpers: which shows it was the calumniating those whom Timon hated or envied, or whose vices were opposite to his own. This offering up, to the perfon flattered, the murdered reputation of others, Shakspeare, with the utmost beauty of thought and expreflion, calls facrificial whisprings, alluding to the victims offered up to idols. WARBURTON. Whisperings attended with such respect and veneration as accompany facrifices to the gods. Such, I suppose, is the meaning. MALONE. 6 through him Drink the free air. That is, catch his breath in affeded fond. ness. JOHNSON, A fimilar phrase occurs in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour: "By this air, the most divine tobacco I ever drank!" To drink, in both these instances, signifies to inhale. STEEVENS. So, in our autho'rs Venus and Adonis : "His noftrils drink the air:" Again, in The Tempeft: " I drink the air before me." MALONE. 1 1 POET. When Fortune, in her shift and change of mood, Spurns down her late belov'd, all his dependants, Which labour'd after him to the mountain's top, Even on their knees and hands, let him flip down, Not one accompanying his declining foot. PAIN. 'Tis common: A thousand moral paintings I can show," That shall. demonstrate these quick blows of for More pregnantly than words. Yet you do well, To show lord Timon, that mean eyes have seen The foot above the head. 4 let him flip down,) The old copy reads: let him fit down. The emendation was made by Mr. Rowe. STEEVENS. 1 7 A thousand moral paintings I can show,] Shakspeare seems to intend in this dialogue to express some competition between the two great arts of imitation. Whatever the poet declares himself to have shown, the painter thinks he could have shown better. 8 JOHNSON. these quick blows of fortune -) [Old copy fortune's-] This was the phraseology of Shakspeare's time, as I have already observed in a note on King John, Vol. XI. p. 322, n. 3. The modern editors read, more elegantly, - of fortune. The alteration was first made in the second folio, from ignorance of Shakspeare's dition. MALONE. Though I cannot impute such a correction to the ignorance of the person who made it, I can easily suppose what is here styled the phraseology of Shakspeare, to be only the mistake of a vulgar transcriber or printer. Had our author been constant in his use of this mode of speech (which is not the case) the propriety of Mr. Malone's remark would have been' readily admitted. Steevens. 9 mean eyes-] i. e. inferior spectators. So, in Wotton's Letter to Bacon, dated March the last, 1613: "Before their majesties, and almost as many other meaner eyes," &c. 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