worst side of everything, and of proving himself an over. match for appearances. He has none of "the milk of human kindness" in his composition. His imagination rejects everything that has not a strong infusion of the most unpalatable ingredients; his mind digests only poisons. Virtue or goodness or whatever has the least "relish of salvation in it," is, to his depraved appetite, sickly and insipid: and he even resents the good opinion entertained of his own integrity, as if it were an affront cast on the masculine sense and spirit of his character. Thus at the meeting between Othello and Desdemona, he exclaims: O, you are well tun'd now ! But I'll set down the pegs that make this music, As honest as I am" 1 his character of bonhommie not sitting at all easy upon him. In the scenes where he tries to work Othello to his purpose, he is proportionably guarded, insidious, dark, and deliberate. We believe nothing ever came up to the profound dissimulation and dexterous artifice of the well-known dialogue in the third act, where he first enters upon the execution of his design. "Iago. My noble lord.— Othello. What dost thou say, Iago? Jago. Did Michael Cassio, when you woo'd my lady, Othello. He did from first to last. Why dost thou ask? No further harm. Jago. I did not think he had been acquainted with her. Iago. Indeed! Othello. Indeed? Ay, indeed. Discern'st thou aught in that? Is he not honest? [Act ii., sc. 1.] The stops and breaks, the deep workings of treachery under the mask of love and honesty, the anxious watchfulness, the cool earnestness, and if we may so say, the passion of hypocrisy, marked in every line, receive their last finishing in that inconceivable burst of pretended indignation at Othello's doubts of his sincerity: "O grace! O Heaven forgive me! Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense? God be wi' you! take mine office.-O wretched fool, O monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world! I thank you for this profit, and from hence I'll love no friend, since love breeds such offence." If Iago is detestable enough when he has business ou his hands and all his engines at work, he is still worse when he has nothing to do, and we only see into the hollowness of his heart. His indifference when Othello falls into a swoon, is perfectly diabolical: 66 Iago. How is it, General? Have you not hurt your head? lago. I mock you! No, by Heaven," &c.3 The part indeed would hardly be tolerated, even as a foil to the virtue and generosity of the other characters in the play, but for its indefatigable industry and inexhaustible resources, which divert the attention of the spectator (as well as his own) from the end he has in [1Act iii., sc. 3.] [2 Ibid.] [3 Act iv., sc. 1.] view to the means by which it must be accomplished. Edmund the Bastard in Lear' is something of the same character, placed in less prominent circumstances. Zanga1 is a vulgar caricature of it. TIMON OF ATHENS. 'TIMON OF ATHENS' always appeared to us to be written with as intense a feeling of his subject as any one play of Shakespear. It is one of the few in which he seems to be in earnest throughout, never to trifle nor go out of his way. He does not relax in his efforts, nor lose sight of the unity of his design. It is the only play of our author in which spleen is the predominant feeling of the mind. It is as much a satire as a play: and contains some of the finest pieces of invective possible to be conceived, both in the snarling, captious answers of the cynic Apemantus, and in the impassioned and more terrible imprecations of Timon. The latter remind the classical reader of the force and swelling impetuosity of the moral declamations in Juvenal, while the former have all the keenness and caustic severity of the old Stoic philosophers. The soul of Diogenes appears to have been seated on the lips of Apemantus. The churlish profession of misanthropy in the cynic is contrasted with the profound feeling of it in Timon, and also with the soldier-like and determined resentment of Alcibiades against his countrymen, who The hero of The Revenge,' a tragedy by Edward Young, Lond. 1721, 8vo.-ED. 2 First printed in the folio of 1623. There is a second drama on the same subject from an anonymous pen, of uncertain date, but conjectured to have been written about 1590. One or two of the incidents are similar to incidents in Shakespear's drama, the composition of which is assigned to 1610 or thereabout. The story itself is in Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure,' 1566, and in North's Plutarch,' 1579.-ED. have banished him, though this forms only an incidental episode in the tragedy. The fable consists of a single event;—of the transition from the highest pomp and profusion of artificial refinement to the most abject state of savage life, and privation of all social intercourse. The change is as rapid as it is complete; nor is the description of the rich and generous Timon, banqueting in gilded palaces, pampered by every luxury, prodigal of his hospitality, courted by crowds of flatterers, poets, painters, lords, ladies, who— "Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance, Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him more striking than that of the sudden falling off of his friends and fortune, and his naked exposure in a wild forest digging roots from the earth for his sustenance, with a lofty spirit of self-denial, and bitter scorn of the world, which raise him higher in our esteem than the dazzling gloss of prosperity could do. He grudges himself the means of life, and is only busy in preparing his grave. How forcibly is the difference between what he was, and what he is, described in Apemantus's taunting questions, when he comes to reproach him with the change in his way of life! "What, think'st That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain, Will put thy shirt on warm? will these moss'd trees And skip where thou point'st out? will the cold brook, To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit? Call the creatures, Of wreakful heaven, whose bare unhoused trunks, Answer mere nature-bid them flatter thee." 2 The manners are everywhere preserved with disticct [2 Act iv., sc. 3.] 1 Act i., sc. 1.] truth. The poet and painter are very skilfully played off against one another, both affecting great attention to the other, and each taken up with his own vanity, and the superiority of his own art. Shakespear has put into the mouth of the former a very lively description of the genius of poetry and of his own in particular. not "A thing slipt idly from me Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes From whence 'tis nourish'd. The fire i' th' flint Shows not till it be struck: our gentle flame Each bound it chafes."1 The hollow friendship and shuffling evasions of the Athenian lords, their smooth professions and pitiful ingratitude, are very satisfactorily exposed, as well as the different disguises to which the meanness of self-love resorts in such cases to hide a want of generosity and good faith. The lurking selfishness of Apemantus does pass undetected amidst the grossness of his sarcasms and his contempt for the pretensions of others. Even the two courtezans who accompany Alcibiades to the cave of Timon are very characteristically sketched; and the thieves who come to visit him are also "true men " in their way. An exception to this general picture of selfish depravity is found in the old and honest steward Flavius, to whom Timon pays a full tribute of tenderness. Shakespear was unwilling to draw a picture "ugly all over with hypocrisy." He owed this character to the good-natured solicitations of his Muse. His mind might well have been said to be the "sphere of humanity." The moral sententiousness of this play equals that of Bacon's Treatise on the Wisdom of the Ancients, and is indeed seasoned with greater variety. Every topic of contempt or indignation is here exhausted; but while the sordid licentiousness of Apemantus, which turns every [1 Act i., sc. 1.] |