  Act i. sc. 1.— “Tim. The man is honest. Old Ath. Therefore he will be, Timon. His honesty rewards him in itself.” Warburton's comment—“If the man be honest, for that reason he will be so in this, and not endeavour at the injustice of gaining my daughter without my consent”—is, like almost all his comments, ingenious in blunder; he can never see any other writer's thoughts for the mist-working swarm of his own. The meaning of the first line the poet himself explains, or rather unfolds, in the second. “The man is honest!”—“True;—and for that very cause, and with no additional or extrinsic motive, he will be so. No man can be justly called honest, who is not so for honesty's sake, itself including its own reward.” Note, that “honesty” in Shakespeare's age retained much of its old dignity, and that contradistinction of the honestum from the utile, in which its very essence and definition consist. If it be honestum, it cannot depend on the utile. Ib. Speech of Apemantus, printed as prose in Theobald's edition:— “So, so! aches contract, and starve your supple joints!” I may remark here the fineness of Shakespeare's sense of musical period, which would almost by itself have suggested (if the hundred positive proofs had not been extant) that the word “aches” was [pg 142] Ib. sc. 2. Cupid's speech: Warburton's correction of— “There taste, touch, all pleas'd from thy table rise”— into “Th' ear, taste, touch, smell,” &c. This is indeed an excellent emendation. Act ii. sc. 1. Senator's speech:— ... “Nor then silenc'd with “Commend me to your master”—and the cap Plays in the right hand, thus.” Either, methinks, “plays” should be “play'd,” or “and” should be changed to “while.” I can certainly understand it as a parenthesis, an interadditive of scorn; but it does not sound to my ear as in Shakespeare's manner. Ib. sc. 2. Timon's speech (Theobald):— “And that unaptness made you minister, Thus to excuse yourself.” Read your;—at least I cannot otherwise understand the line. You made my chance indisposition and occasional inaptness your minister—that is, the ground on which you now excuse yourself. Or, perhaps, no correction is necessary, if we construe “made you” as “did you make;” “and that unaptness did you make help you thus to excuse yourself.” But the former seems more in Shakespeare's [pg 143] Act iii. sc. 3. Servant's speech:— “How fairly this lord strives to appear foul!—takes virtuous copies to be wicked; like those that under hot, ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire. Of such a nature is his politic love.” This latter clause I grievously suspect to have been an addition of the players, which had hit, and, being constantly applauded, procured a settled occupation in the prompter's copy. Not that Shakespeare does not elsewhere sneer at the Puritans; but here it is introduced so nolenter volenter (excuse the phrase) by the head and shoulders!—and is besides so much more likely to have been conceived in the age of Charles I. Act iv. sc. 3. Timon's speech:— “Raise me this beggar, and deny't that lord.” Warburton reads “denude.” I cannot see the necessity of this alteration. The editors and commentators are, all of them, ready enough to cry out against Shakespeare's laxities and licenses of style, forgetting that he is not merely a poet, but a dramatic poet; that, when the head and the heart are swelling with fulness, a man does not ask himself whether he has grammatically arranged, but only whether (the context taken in) he has conveyed his meaning. “Deny” is here clearly equal to “withhold;” and the “it,” quite in the genius of vehement conversation, which a syntaxist explains by ellipses and subauditurs in a Greek or Latin classic, yet triumphs over as ignorances in a contemporary, refers to accidental and artificial rank or elevation, implied in the verb “raise.” Besides, does the word “denude” occur in any writer before, or of, Shakespeare's age? |
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