Jupiter to " carry Timon a large treasure." In the play, we observe that the restoration of Timon to wealth, immediately brings out to him the sycophants, who in the days of his prosperity had preyed upon, and in the hour of adversity deserted him. Thus in Lucian. "But hush! whence all this noise and hurry? What crowds are here, all covered with dust and out of breath; somehow or other they have smelt out the gold. I'll get upon this hill, and pelt them from it with stones." To this measure he actually resorts, in order to rid himself of some of his sordid visitors; others he very unceremoniously beats. Shakspeare's Timon pelts Apemantus, and inflicts corporal chastisement on the poor poet and painter.

In the powerful contrast and nice discrimination of characters, Shakspeare is unrivalled. How few authors would have ventured to produce two madmen on the scene together, as in Lear, or two misanthropists, as in the play before us; and who, besides himself, could, amidst difficulties so complicated, have arrived at conclusions so triumphant?

Timon and Apemantus, at the first view similar, have nothing in common but their hatred of mankind. Disgusted with a world, the hollowness and ingratitude of which Timon in his own

person proved, he madly rushes to the conclusion, that virtue is a stranger to the human breast; that love, gratitude, and integrity, are merely assumed for purposes of imposition; and that the sole business of man is one continued endeavour to overreach and defraud his fellow-creature. Timon's dignified and upright soul, incapable of concealing the deep rooted disgust with which the baseness of his sycophant friends had inspired him, vents itself in virtuous indignation; and abjuring all connection with monsters, in his estimation less tolerable than the beasts that range the desert, he seeks refuge from the contaminating influence of society, in the deep recesses of the woods; there resolved to pass the remainder of his days in the peaceful innocence of primitive simplicity. Mark the contrast in Apemantus.

Apemantus is a vile, ill-natured churl, affecting singularity for the pitiful ambition of notoriety; railing at man for the purpose of creating vexation; and pretending to virtue which he neither feels nor knows. Timon's exposure of the philosopher's pretensions is "bitter beyond bitterness," as Johnson designates the last line of the quotation:

"Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm

With favour never clasp'd; but bred a dog.

Hadst thou, like us, from our first swarth, proceeded
The sweet degrees that this brief world affords
To such as may the passive drugs of it

Freely command, thou wouldst have plung'd thyself
In general riot; melted down thy youth

In different beds of lust; and never learn'd

The icy precepts of respect, but follow'd

The sugar'd game before thee.

*

Why should'st thou hate men?

They never flatter'd thee: What hast thou given?

Hence! be gone!

If thou hadst not been born the worst of men,
Thou hadst been a knave and flatterer." *

Apemantus is, in fact, a cynic, and it was from Lucian that Shakspeare acquired his accurate knowledge of that sect:

"But now, mind how you are to behave: you must be bold, saucy, and abusive to every body, kings and beggars alike; this is the way to make them to look upon you, and think you a great man. Your voice should be barbarous, and your speech dissonant, as like a dog as possible; your countenance rigid and inflexible, and your gait and demeanour suitable to it: every thing you say, savage and uncouth: modesty, equity, and moderation, you must have nothing to do with : never suffer a blush to come upon your cheek:

seek the most public and frequented place; but when you are there, desire to be alone, and permit neither friend nor stranger to associate with you; for these things are the ruin and destruction of power and empire."*

* Sale of Philosophers. Franklin's Translation.

289

WINTER'S TALE.

1611.

THE origin of the Winter's Tale is a novel, entitled, Dorastus and Fawnia, the work of one of Shakspeare's contemporaries, Robert Greene, a child of genius and misfortune.

Shakspeare's prevailing, and not the least singular, deviation from his authority, is his ascribing to the king of Bohemia circumstances which in the novel are related of the king of Sicily, and to the latter, the actions of the former.

Leontes, king of Sicily, is, according to Shakpeare married to the beautiful and virtuous Hermione, by whom he has one son. From his earliest youth he had maintained the closest intimacy with Polixenes, king of Bohemia, who, at the opening of the play, is about to conclude a visit