Scaligers which stood in it. We have nothing in England which corresponds to this scene, and no monument or vault in which scenes such as this could be exhibited. Coryat, who could often be worse spared than a better man, writes thus: I saw the monuments of two of the noble Scaligers of Verona in a little church-yard adjoining to the church called Maria Antiqua; the fairest whereof is that of Mastinus Scaliger, standing at one corner of the church-yard, which is such an exceeding sumptuous mausoleum that I saw not the like in Italy. The other monument is that of Canis Grandi or Magnus Scaliger, which stood within another corner of the same church-yard, right opposite unto this. —Crudities, vol. ii. p. 114. Mr. Knight has given an engraving of the principal Scaliger monument, which forms a very legitimate and proper illustration of his author. V. 3. ROMEO. This vault a feasting presence full of light. "Presence" is here used for "presence-chamber," the hall of audience, the most splendid apartment of a royal palace. "The next chamber within it, which is the presence, very fair." fair." Coryat, Crudities, vol. i. p. 32. A longer quotation may be excused for the rareness of the source from whence it comes, and the curious theatrical information it contains:-John Chamberlayne, writing to Sir Dudley Carleton, from London, January 5, 1608, says : "The Marquess goes forward at court the twelfth day, though I doubt the new room will be scant ready. All the holdidays there were Plays, but with so little concourse of strangers that they say they wanted company. The King was very earnest to have one on Christmas Night, though, as I take it, He and the Prince received sacrament that day; but the Lords told him that it was not the fashion, which answer pleased him not a whit, but said 'What, do you tell me of the fashion? I will make it a fashion.' Yesterday he dined in the Presence in great pomp, with his rich cupboards of plate, the one of gold, the other that of the House of Burgundy, pawned to Queen Elizabeth by the States of Brabant, and hath seldom been seen abroad, being exceeding massy, fair, and sumptuous. I could learn no reason of this extraordinary bravery, but that he would shew himself in glory to certain Scots that were never here before, as they say there be many lately come, and that the Court is full of new and strange faces."—From a copy of the Original in the State Paper Office. It shews us something of the splendour of a Presence, contrasting with the dark and dismal sepulchral vault. TIMON OF ATHENS. THIS Play is without any decided notes of time, external or internal. It was first printed in the collection of 1623. The composition of it is referred to about the same period when the three Roman Plays were produced, on the very uncertain ground that Shakespeare took the hint of the subject from Plutarch. The story must have been before him in many forms from an early period of his life. I consider the time of its composition very uncertain. He has contrived to introduce everything that Plutarch says of Timon in the two Lives in which he occurs, Alcibiades and Mark Anthony. He seems also to have been acquainted with Lucian's Dialogue. There is an Italian play, the title of which is Timone, which it may be presumed is on the same story. Oldys, in his manuscript notes on Langbain, refers from this play to Fenton's Tragical Discourses, Painter's Palace of Pleasure, and Fortescue's Forest of Histories. It was quite a story for all writers such as these. The important point here is not so much how or where Shakespeare gained his acquaintance with the existence of such a person as Timon, and the main features in his character, but whether he owed anything to any previous writer in the structure of this Play. There is something approaching to characteristic difference between this Play and the rest; a kind of coldness, so to speak; a sardonic touch, unlike Shakespeare's natural turn of mind; something which reminds of Lucian. But then the subject may be said to have called for it, and there was no style of sentiment or expression in which this versatile man could not write and excel. The story had been told in the following manner by an author who wrote a little before Shakespeare undertook to make it the subject of one of his dramas. This was Sir Richard Barckley, who wrote a long and tedious book, printed in 1598, under the title, A Discourse of the Felicity of Man, or his Summum Bonum. The book is not common, and I shall therefore extract the whole passage, which has never before been brought forward as an illustration of this drama. Another company there were of a most strange disposition, that would not only murmur and grudge at the nature and condition of men, but were as hateful enemies to their own kind, supposing that Nature had set up man as a butt or mark, against which she would discharge all the bullets of her wrath and indignation; amongst which sort of men was one called Tymon, a philosopher of Athens, who professed himself openly an enemy of mankind, and performed it in effect. But he would never dwell or keep among men, but withdrew himself into the deserts, and led his life among beasts, that he might not be seen of men; and, passing his life in this solitary sort, he would speak to no man, saving only with Alcibiades, a valiant gentleman of Athens, neither with him for any love be had to the man, but for that he did foresee that he would be one day a plague and scourge to men, and especially to the Athenians; and it was not sufficient for him to abhor and detest the company of men as furious wild beasts, but he sought all the means he could, if it could have been possible, to destroy mankind, and for that purpose he set up a great many gibbets in his garden, that desperate folks and such as were weary of their lives might hang themselves; and after certain years, meaning to enlarge his little cottage where he dwelt, he determined to cut down those gibbets for his building; and being loath the lack of them should be any hindrance to his citizens' death, he went to Athens, and openly in the market place he caused the people to be assembled that he might deliver some news to them, who, knowing his humour that used to speak to no man, ran to the place out of all parts, expecting attentively some strange matter. When they were come together, he cried out with his hoarse voice, "My citizens of Athens, if any of you be disposed to hang yourselves do it quickly, for I mean shortly to cut down the gibbets for my necessary building." And when he had ended his charitable motion, he departed home to his house without speaking any word more, where he lived many years, continuing in the same opinion, detesting the miserable state and condition of men. And when Tymon perceived that death approached, he took order for his burial to be at the low-water mark in the very brink of the sea, that the waves might not suffer any man to come near him to see his bones or ashes, and caused this epitaph to be written upon his tomb, made Latin thus:— Hic sum post vitam miseramque inopemque sepultus ; Nomen non quæras; Dii, lector, te male perdant. And as another of his condition that lived solitarily in the woods, eschewing likewise the company of men, came to him to supper; in the midst of the banquet, O Tymon (quoth he) what a pleasant supper is this that hath no more guests than thou and I. So were it (said Tymon) if thou were away. He was so hateful to the condition of men that he could not endure the company of him that was of his own disposition. I. 1. POET. Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes From whence 'tis nourish'd; the fire i'the flint Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies I cannot but be of a different opinion from the commentators respecting this passage, which appears to me neither obscure nor absurd. The general idea is that fine poetry flows spontaneously from gifted minds. It is first likened to the oozing of some odoriferous gum. It is then illustrated by contrast; the flint requires to be struck before the flame is produced, but this is not the case with the flame of poetry; it originates itself, it blazes out, caring as little for the things which would restrain and confine it as the current does for the banks between which it flows, which it just chafes and passes on. Milton has the same notion of poetry Thoughts which voluntary move, Harmonious numbers, P. L. Book iii. line 37. and perhaps had this passage in his mind when he wrote the words. Shakespeare's own poetry is throughout an example of this spontaneity. |