Poet. Good day, sir. Pain.

I am glad you are well.

Poet. I have not seen you long: How goes the world?

Pain. It wears, sir, as it grows.
Poet.
Ay, that's well known:
But what particular rarity? what strange,
Which manifold record not matches? See,
Magic of bounty! all these spirits thy power
Hath conjur'd to attend. I know the merchant.
Pain. I know them both; th' other's a
jeweller.

Mer. O, 't is a worthy lord!
Jew.

Nay, that's most fix'd. Mer. A most incomparable man; breath'd,"

as it were,

a Breath'd. When Hamlet says.

"It is the breathing time of day with me,"

he refers to the time of habitual exercise, by which his animal strength was fitted for "untirable and continuate" ex

To an untirable and continuate goodness: He passes.

a

Jew. I have a jewel here.

Mer. O, pray, let's see 't: For the lord

Timon, sir?

Jew. If he will touch the estimate: But, for that

"Our poesie is as a gum which issues." The reading oozes is that of Dr. Johnson. Tieck maintains that the passage should stand as in the original: he says, "The act, the flattery of this poet of occasions, which is useful to those who pay for it. The expression is hard, forced and obscure, but yet to be understood." We cannot see how the construction of the sentence can support this interpretation, and we therefore retain the reading of Pope and Johnson.

b This passage has been considered difficult, but if we receive bound, in the sense of boundary, obstacle, the image is tolerably clear. The "gentle flame of poesy which provokes itself, runs the quicker even for obstruction, like the current which flies faster after it has chafed the obstacles to its equal flow.

c Monck Mason believes that the passage should be writ

ten

"How this Grace

Speaks its own standing: "—

saying the figure alluded to was a representation of one of the Graces. The commentators have not noticed, what appears to us tolerably obvious, that the flattering painter had brought with him a portrait of Timon, in which the grace of the attitude spoke his own standing,"-the habitual carriage of the original.

d Artificial strife-the contest of art with nature. So in the Venus and Adonis

"Look, when a painter would surpass the life,
In limning out a well-proportion'd steed,
His art with nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed;
So did this horse excel."

Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug
With amplest entertainment: My free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of wax: no levell'd malice
Infects one comma in the course I hold;
But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind.

to

you.

Pain. How shall I understand you?
Poet.
I'll unbolt b
You see how all conditions, how all minds,
(As well of glib and slippery creatures, as
Of grave and austere quality,) tender down
Their services to bord Timon: his large fortune,
Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,
Subdues and properties to his love and tendance
All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-fac'd
flatterer

To Apemantus, that few things loves better
Than to abhor himself: even he drops down
The knee before him, and returns in peace
Most rich in Timon's nod.
Pain.

I saw them speak together. Poet. Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant

Apem. Of nothing so much as that I am not like Timon.

Tim. Whither art going?

Apem. To knock out an honest Athenian's brains.

Tim. That's a deed thou 'lt die for.

Apem. Right, if doing nothing be death by the law.

Tim. How likest thou this picture, Apemantus ?

Apem. The best, for the innocence.

Tim. Wrought he not well that painted it?
Apem. He wrought better that made the
painter; and yet he 's but a filthy piece of work.
Pain. You are a dog.
Apem. Thy mother's of my generation:
What's she, if I be a dog?

Tim. Wilt dine with me, Apemantus?
Apem. No; I eat not lords.

Tim. Anthou should'st, thou 'dst anger ladies. Apem. O, they eat lords; so they come by great bellies.

Tim. That's a lascivious apprehension.

Apem. So thou apprehend'st it: Take it for thy labour.

Tim. How dost thou like this jewel, Ape