Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,

Till he hath lost his honey, and his sting:
And being once subdued in armed tail,

Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail. —
Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted cloths.

As many as be here of pander's hall,

Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar's fall:
Or, if you cannot weep, yet give some groans,
Though not for me, yet for your aching bones.
Brethren, and sisters, of the hold-door trade,
Some two months hence my will shall here be made:
It should be now, but that my fear is this, —
Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss:
Till then I'll sweat, and seek about for eases;
And, at that time, bequeath you my diseases.

[Exit."

7 This play is more correctly written than most of Shakspeare's compositions, but it is not one of those in which either the extent of his views or elevation of his fancy is fully displayed. As the story abounded with materials, he has exerted little invention; but he has diversified his characters with great variety, and preserved them with great exactness. His vicious characters disgust but cannot corrupt, for both Cressida and Pandarus are detested and contemned. The comick characters seem to have been the favourites of the writer; they are of the superficial kind, and exhibit more of manners than nature; but they are copiously filled and powerfully impressed. Shakspeare has in his story followed, for the greater part, the old book of Caxton, which was then very popular; but the character of Thersites, of which it makes no mention, is a proof that this play was written after Chapman had published his version of Homer. JOHNSON.

TIMON OF ATHENS.

THE story of the Misanthrope is told in almost every collection of the time, and particularly in two books, with which Shakspeare was intimately acquainted; the Palace of Pleasure, and the English Plutarch. Indeed from a passage in an old play, called Jack Drum's Entertainment, I conjecture that he had before made his appearance on the stage. FARMER.

The passage in Jack Drum's Entertainment, or Pasquil and Katherine, 1601, is this:

"Come, I'll be as sociable as Timon of Athens."

But the allusion is so slight, that it might as well have been borrowed from Plutarch or the novel.

Mr. Strutt the late engraver, to whom our antiquaries are under no inconsiderable obligations, had in his possession a MS. play on this subject. It appears to have been written, or transcribed, about the year 1600. There is a scene in it resembling Shakspeare's banquet given by Timon to his flatterers. Instead of warm water he sets before them stones painted like artichokes, and afterwards beats them out of the room. He then retires to the woods, attended by his faithful steward, who (like Kent in King Lear) has disguised himself to continue his services to his master. Timon, in the last act is followed by his fickle mistress, &c. after he was reported to have discovered a hidden treasure by digging. The piece itself (though it appears to be the work of an academick) is a wretched one. The persona dramatis are as follows:

"Timon.

"The actors' names.

"Laches, his faithful servant.

"Eutrapelus, a dissolute young man.

"Gelasimus, a cittie heyre.

"Pseudocheus, a lying travailer.

"Demeas, an orator.

"Philargurus, a covetous churlish ould man.

"Hermogenes, a fidler.

"Abyssus, a usurer.

"Lollio, a cuntrey clowne, Philargurus sonne.

« Stilpo,

« Speusippus, } Two lying philosophers.

"Grunnio, a lean servant of Philargurus.

"Obba, Tymon's butler.

"Pœdio, Gelasimus page.

"Two serjeants.

"A sailor.

"Callimela, Philargurus daughter.

"Blatte, her prattling nurse.

"SCENE, Athens."

STEEVENS.

Shakspeare undoubtedly formed this play on the passage in Plutarch's Life of Antony relative to Timon, and not on the twentyeighth novel of the first volume of Painter's Palace of Pleasure; because he is there merely described as "a man-hater, of a strange and beastly nature," without any cause assigned; whereas Plutarch furnished our author with the following hint to work upon: "Antonius forsook the citie, and companie of his friendes, saying, that he would lead Timon's life, because he had the like wrong offered him, that was offered unto Timon; and for the unthankfulness of those he had done good unto, and whom he tooke to be his friendes, he was angry with all men, and would trust no man."

To the manuscript play mentioned by Mr. Steevens, our author, I have no doubt, was also indebted for some other circumstances. Here he found the faithful steward, the banquet-scene, and the story of Timon's being possessed of great sums of gold which he had dug up in the woods: a circumstance which he could not have had from Lucian, there being then no translation of the dialogue that relates to this subject.

Spon says, there is a building near Athens, yet remaining, called Timon's Tower.

Timon of Athens was written, I imagine, in the year 1610,

MALONE.