And minister in their fteads! to general filth Do't in your parents' eyes! Bankrupts, hold fast; On Athens, ripe for ftroke! Thou cold fciatica, ~ Take thou that too, with multiplying banns! -the brothel.] So Hanmer. The old copies read, o' tb' brothel. JOHNSON. -yet confufion-] Hanmer reads, let confufion; but the meaning may be, though by fuch confufion all things feem to bafter to diffolution, yet let not diffolution come, but the miseries of confu fon continut. JOHNSON. The The Gods confound (hear me, ye good Gods all) SCENE II. Timon's boufe. Enter Flavius, with two or three fervants. [Exit. 1 Serv. Hear you, master steward, where is our Are we undone? caft off? nothing remaining? I am as poor as you. 1 Serv. Such a house broke ! So noble a master fallen! all gone! and not 2 Serv. As we do turn our backs From our companion, thrown into his grave; With his disease of all-fhunn'd poverty, Walks, like contempt, alone. More of our fellows. Enter other fervants. Flav. All broken implements of a ruin'd house! Enter Flavius,] Nothing contributes more to the exaltation of Timon's character than the zeal and fidelity of his fervants. Nothing but real virtue can be honoured by domesticks; nothing but impartial kindness can gain affection from dependants. 2 JOHNSON. from his buried fortunes] The old copies have to instead of from. The correction is Hanmer's; but the old reading might fand. JOHNSON. 3. Serv. 3 Serv. Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery, That fee I by our faces; we are fellows ftill, Serving alike in forrow. Leak'd is our bark, And we, poor mates, ftand on the dying deck, Hearing the furges threat: we muft all part Into this fea of air. Flav. Good fellows all, The latest of my wealth I'll share amongst you. We bave feen better days. Let each take fome; [Giving them money. -Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more: Thus part we rich in forrow, parting poor. [They embrace, and part feveral ways. 3 Oh, the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us! Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt Since riches point to mifery and contempt? Who'd be fo mock'd with glory, as to live But in a dream of friendship? To have his pomp, and all what state compounds, 3 Oh, the fierce wretchedness ufed for kafty, precipitate. I believe fierce is here -frange unusual blood,] Of this paffage, I fuppofe, every reader would with for a correction; but the word, harfh as it is, ftands fortified by the rhyme, to which, perhaps, it owes its introduction. I know not what to propofe. Perhaps, -frange unusual mood, may, by fome, be thought better, and by others worfe.. JOHNSON. I fhould fuppofe, that the poet meant to apoftrophize Timon's ungrateful and unnatural friends, by calling them -frange Who then dares to be half so kind again? I'll ever ferve his mind with my best will; SCENE III. [Exit. Tim. O bleffed, breeding fun, draw from the earth Rotten humidity; below thy fifter's orb Infect the air! Twinn'd brothers of one womb, Scarce is dividant, touch with several fortunes ; -ftrange unusual brood! who could treat excefs of liberality as they would have treated excefs of guilt. STEEVENS. O bleffed breeding fun,] The fenfe, as well as elegance of the expreffion, requires that we should read, O bleffing breeding fun, i. e. Thou that before ufed to breed bleffings, now breed curfes and contagion; as afterwards he fays, Thou fun that comfort'ft, burn. WARBURTON. I do not fee that this emendation much strengthens the fenfe. thy fifter's orb] That is, the moon's, this fublunary world. JOHNSON. JOHNSON. The The greater fcorns the leffer. Not nature, To whom all fores lay fiege, can bear great fortune But by contempt of nature. *Raife me this beggar, and denude that lord, -Not ev'n nature, To whom all fores lay flege.] The He had faid the brother could not bear great fortune without defpifing his brother. He now goes further, and afferts that even human nature cannot bear it, but with contempt of its common nature. The fentence is ambiguous, and, befides that, otherwife obfcure. I am perfuaded, that our author had Alexander here principally in mind; whofe uninterrupted courfe of fucceffes, as we learn from history, turned his head, and made him fancy himself a God, and contemn his human origin. The poet fays, even nature, meaning nature in its greatest perfection: And Alexander is reprefented by the ancients as the most accomplished person that ever was, both for his qualities of mind and body, a kind of mafterpiece of nature. He adds, To whom all fores lay fuge, f. e. Although the imbecility of the human condition might easily have informed him of his error. Here Shakespeare seems to have had an eye to Plutarch, who, in his life of Alexander, tells us that it was that which stagger'd him in his fober moments concerning the belief of his divinity. “Ελεγεν δὲ μάλιςα συνιέναι θνητὸς ὢν ἐκ τῶ καθεύδειν καὶ συνεσίαζειν· ὡς ἀπὸ μιᾶς ἐγγινόμενον ἀσθενείας τῇ φύσει καὶ τὸ πτῶν καὶ τὸ ἠδόμενον. WARBURTON. I have preferved this note rather for the fake of the commenta.tor than of the author. How nature, to wh.m all fores lay fugt, can fo emphatically exprefs naturs in its greatest perfection, I .fhall not endeavour to explain. The meaning I take to be this: Brother, when his fortune is inlarged, will forn brother; for this is the general depravity of human nature, which, besieged as it is by mifery, admonished-as it is of want and imperfection, when elevated by fortune, will defpife beings of nature like its own. 8 JOHNSON. Raife me this beggar, and deny't that lord,] Where is the fenfe and English of deny't that lord? Deny him what? What preceding noun is there to which the pronoun it is to be referr❜d? And it would be abfurd to think the poet meant, deny to raise that lord. The antithefis muft be, let fortune raife this beggar, and let her frip and defpoil that lord of all his pomp and ornaments, &c. which fenfe is compleated by this flight alteration, -and |