Timon

“ Great men should drink with harness on their throats.
TIMON My lord, in heart; and let the health go round.
Second Lord Let it flow this way, my good lord.
APEMANTUS Flow this way! A brave fellow! he keeps his tides
well. Those healths will make thee and thy state
look ill, Timon. Here's that which is too weak to
be a sinner, honest water, which ne'er left man i' the mire:
This and my food are equals; there's no odds:
Feasts are too proud to give thanks to the gods. ”

“ ALCIBIADES. What is it, Timon?
TIMON. Promise me friendship, but perform none. If thou wilt
not
promise, the gods plague thee, for thou art man! If thou dost
perform, confound thee, for thou art a man!
ALCIBIADES. I have heard in some sort of thy miseries.
TIMON. Thou saw'st them when I had prosperity.
ALCIBIADES. I see them now; then was a blessed time.
TIMON. As thine is now, held with a brace of harlots.
TIMANDRA. Is this th' Athenian minion whom the world
Voic'd so regardfully?
TIMON. Art thou Timandra?
TIMANDRA. Yes.
TIMON. Be a whore still; they love thee not that use thee. ”

“ In this way Timon but the other day had given to one of these mean lords the bay courser which he himself rode upon, because his lordship had been pleased to say that it was a handsome beast and went well; and Timon knew that no man ever justly praised what he did not wish to possess. For lord Timon weighed his friends' affection with his own, and so fond was he of bestowing, that he could have dealt kingdoms to these supposed friends, and never have been weary. ”

“ TIMON.
Wouldst thou have thyself fall in the confusion of men and remain a beast with the beasts?
APEMANTUS.
Ay, Timon.
TIMON.
A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t’ attain to. If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee; if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee when peradventure thou wert accused by the ass; if thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou lived’st but as a breakfast to the wolf ”

“ One of the most decisive intimations of Timon's morbid jealousy of appearances is in his answer to Apemantus, who asks him:
What things in the world can'st thou nearest compare with thy flatterers?
Timon. Women nearest: but men, men are the things themselves.
Apemantus, it is said, 'loved few things better than to abhor himself'. This is not the case with Timon, who neither loves to abhor himself nor others. All his vehement misanthropy is forced, up-hill work. From the slippery turns of fortune, from the turmoils of passion and adversity, he wishes to sink into the quiet of the grave. ”

“ As the merits of the General towards his fellow-citizens suppose more strength of character than those of the generous prodigal, their respective behaviours are not less different; Timon frets himself to death, Alcibiades regains his lost dignity by force. If the poet very properly sides with Timon against the common practice of the world, he is, on the other hand, by no means disposed to spare Timon. Timon was a fool in his generosity; in his discontent he is a madman: he is every where wanting in the wisdom which enables a man in all things to observe the due measure. ”

“ Struck with wonder at this presentation, Timon hastily replied, "My lands extend from Athens to Lacedaemon." "O my good lord," said Flavius, "the world is but a world, and has bounds; were it all yours to give in a breath, how quickly were it gone!"
Timon consoled himself that no villanous bounty had yet come from him, that if he had given his wealth away unwisely, it had not been bestowed to feed his vices, but to cherish his friends ”

“ But, to return to the main subject, we have lost Timon. One month has passed without his cheery presence at Bellevue. Reckless postmen have made themselves free of the front garden and all colour has gone out of life.
We have done everything to win him back. We have inserted numerous advertisements in the agony columns of the newspapers: "If this should catch the eye of Timon," or "Come back, Timon. All will be forgiven;" but apparently we have yet to find his favourite newspaper. ”

“ Lords Lucius and Lucullus came, Ventidius, Sempronius, and the rest. Who more sorry now than these fawning wretches, when they found (as they thought) that lord Timon's poverty was all pretence, and had been only put on to make trial of their loves, to think that they should not have seen through the artifice at the time, and have had the cheap credit of obliging his lordship? yet who more glad to find the fountain of that noble bounty, which they had thought dried up, still fresh and running? ”

“ Timon does not utter an imprecation without betraying the extravagant workings of disappointed passion, of love altered to hate. Apemantus sees nothing good in any object, and exaggerates whatever is disgusting: Timon is tormented with the perpetual contrast between things and appearances, between the fresh, tempting outside and the rottenness within, and invokes mischiefs on the heads of mankind proportioned to the sense of his wrongs and of their treacheries. ”

“ So kind to heart, 'tis not enough to give;
Methinks, I could deal kingdoms to my friends,
And ne'er be weary. Alcibiades,
Thou art a soldier, therefore seldom rich;
It comes in charity to thee: for all thy living
Is 'mongst the dead, and all the lands thou hast
Lie in a pitch'd field.
ALCIBIADES Ay, defiled land, my lord.
First Lord We are so virtuously bound--
TIMON And so
Am I to you.
Second Lord So infinitely endear'd--
TIMON All to you. Lights, more lights!
First Lord The best of happiness,
Honour and fortunes, keep with you, Lord Timon! ”

“ APEMANTUS Let me stay at thine apperil, Timon: I come to
observe; I give thee warning on't.
TIMON I take no heed of thee; thou'rt an Athenian,
therefore welcome: I myself would have no power;
prithee, let my meat make thee silent.
APEMANTUS I scorn thy meat; 'twould choke me, for I should
ne'er flatter thee. O you gods, what a number of
men eat Timon, and he sees 'em not! It grieves me
to see so many dip their meat in one man's blood;
and all the madness is, he cheers them up too.
I wonder men dare trust themselves with men:
Methinks they should invite them without knives ”

“ Timon will to the woods; where he shall find
The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.
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! ”

“ But I can tell you one thing, my lord, and
which I hear from common rumours: now Lord Timon's happy
hours
are done and past, and his estate shrinks from him.
LUCIUS. Fie, no: do not believe it; he cannot want for money.
SECOND STRANGER. But believe you this, my lord, that not long
ago
one of his men was with the Lord Lucullus to borrow so many
talents; nay, urg'd extremely for't, and showed what
necessity
belong'd to't, and yet was denied.
LUCIUS. How?
SECOND STRANGER. I tell you, denied, my lord.
LUCIUS. What a strange case was that! Now, before the gods, I
am
asham'd on't. ”

“ We feel that Timon possesses the poet's sympathy and compassion, even when his abhorrence of humanity passes the bounds of hatred, and becomes a passion for its annihilation. Timon turns hermit in order to escape from the sight of human beings, and this misanthropy is no mere mask worn to conceal his despair at the loss of this world's goods, since it stands the test of the finding of the treasure. He no longer looks upon wealth as the means of procuring pleasure, but only as an instrument of vengeance. ”

“ In vain did his honest steward Flavius try to represent to him his condition, laying his accounts before him, begging of him, praying of him, with an importunity that on any other occasion would have been unmannerly in a servant, beseeching him with tears, to look into the state of his affairs. Timon would still put him off, and turn the discourse to something else; for nothing is so deaf to remonstrance as riches turned to poverty, nothing is so unwilling to believe its situation, nothing so incredulous to its own true state, and hard to give credit to a reverse. ”

“ Enter Timon from his cave.
TIMON.
[Aside.] Excellent workman! Thou canst not paint a man so bad as is thyself.
POET.
I am thinking what I shall say I have provided for him. It must be a personating of himself, a satire against the softness of prosperity, with a discovery of the infinite flatteries that follow youth and opulency.
TIMON.
[Aside.] Must thou needs stand for a villain in thine own work? Wilt thou whip thine own faults in other men? ”

“ Sometimes these creatures would go to work in a more direct way, and with gross and palpable artifice, which yet the credulous Timon was too blind to see, would affect to admire and praise something that Timon possessed, a bargain that he had bought, or some late purchase, which was sure to draw from this yielding and soft-hearted lord a gift of the thing commended, for no service in the world done for it but the easy expense of a little cheap and obvious flattery. ”

“ Great Timon, noble, worthy, royal Timon!
Ah, when the means are gone that buy this praise,
The breath is gone whereof this praise is made:
Feast-won, fast-lost; one cloud of winter showers,
These flies are couch'd. ”

“ Things of like value differing in the owners
Are prized by their masters: believe't, dear lord,
You mend the jewel by the wearing it.
TIMON Well mock'd.
Merchant No, my good lord; he speaks the common tongue,
Which all men speak with him.
TIMON Look, who comes here: will you be chid?
Enter APEMANTUS
Jeweller: We'll bear, with your lordship.
Merchant He'll spare none.
TIMON Good morrow to thee, gentle Apemantus!
APEMANTUS Till I be gentle, stay thou for thy good morrow;
When thou art Timon's dog, and these knaves honest.
TIMON Why dost thou call them knaves? thou know'st them not. ”

“ And so does Timon too, or his judgment fails him. Well, I will accost him.—Health to our stock of stoical wit, ingenious Timon! Come, sir, what brave dramatic piece has your running Mercury now upon the loom? The title of your new play, sir?
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Tim. Every post may sufficiently inform you; nay, the fame of the city cannot choose but echo it to you, so much is expected. Neither shall you discover a mouse peeping out of a mountain, believe it.
Nulla fides spectanda feris, nec gratia victis.
Tril. No, nor a monkey dancing his tricotee on a rope, for want of strong lines from the poet's pen. ”

“ Not that Timon's wealth all went to enrich these wicked flatterers; he could do noble and praiseworthy actions; and when a servant of his once loved the daughter of a rich Athenian, but could not hope to obtain her by reason that in wealth and rank the maid was so far above him, lord Timon freely bestowed upon his servant three Athenian talents, to make his fortune equal with the dowry which the father of the young maid demanded of him who should be her husband. ”

“ FIRST LORD. The noblest mind he carries
That ever govern'd man.
SECOND LORD. Long may he live in fortunes! shall we in?
FIRST LORD. I'll keep you company. Exeunt
SCENE II. A room of state in TIMON'S house Hautboys playing loud music. A great banquet serv'd in; FLAVIUS and others attending; and then enter LORD TIMON, the states, the ATHENIAN LORDS, VENTIDIUS, which TIMON redeem'd from prison. Then comes, dropping after all, APEMANTUS, discontentedly, like himself
VENTIDIUS. Most honoured Timon,
It hath pleas'd the gods to remember my father's age,
And call him to long peace. ”

“ But Timon begged them not to give such trifles a thought, for he had altogether forgotten it. And these base fawning lords, though they had denied -him money in his adversity, yet could not refuse their presence at this new blaze of his returning prosperity. For the swallow follows not summer more willingly than men of these dispositions follow the good fortunes of the great, nor more willingly leaves winter than these shrink from the first appearance of a reverse; such summer birds are men. ”

“ Apemantus is specially reared to be this bitter foil to Timon's profuseness. He leads an isolated life, and thus like all solitaries acquires the vice of exaggerating his own opinions. They have never passed between the fine emery of social contact. So he is a caltrop in men's path, with a spike always uppermost to impale the over-hasty feet. Poverty drives Timon directly upon it, to wince at every step he takes on such a bristly virtue, till he matches his smart with curses quite as pointed ”

“ In the splendour of early manhood such a repentant Timon is a rarer and grander figure—stooping his proud, honest head because though men are servile and treacherous, he who is neither is yet their brother in so many other ways that when Athens is besieged he claims to share their agony as a privilege. ”

“ If a poet had composed a work which wanted a recommendatory introduction to the world, he had no more to do but to dedicate it to lord Timon, and the poem was sure of a sale, besides a present purse from the patron, and daily access to his house and table. If a painter had a picture to dispose of, he had only to take it to lord Timon, and pretend to consult his taste as to the merits of it ”

“ And Apemantus came to deride him, and Timon bore with him; but he was impertinent to Timandra, and Timon beat him.
And in fine, Timon became very like any other Attic country gentleman, save that he always maintained that a young man did well to be a misanthrope until he got a loving and sensible wife, which, as he observed, could but seldom happen. And the Gods looked down upon him with complacency, and deferred the ruin of Athens until he should be no more. ”