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Allowed with abfolute power, and thy good name
Live with authority: foon we shall drive back
Of Alcibiades the approaches wild,

Who, like a boar too favage, doth root up
His country's peace.

2 Sen. And fhakes his threatning sword Against the walls of Athens.

I Sen. Therefore, Timon--

Tim. Well, Sir, I will; therefore I will, Sir; If Alcibiades kill my countrymen,

Let Alcibiades know this of Timon,

[thus--

That Timon cares not. If he fack fair Athens,
And take our goodly aged men by the beards,
Giving our holy virgins to the stain

Of contumelious, beatly, mad-brained war;
Then let him know,---and tell him, Timon speaks it;
In pity of our aged, and our youth,

I cannot chufe but tell him, that I care not.

And let him take't at worst; for their knives care

not,

While you have throats to answer.

For myself, There's not a whittle in the unruly camp,

But I do prize it at my love, before

The reverendeft throat in Athens. So I leave you
To the protection of the profperous gods,
As thieves to keepers.

Flav. Stay not, all's in vain.

Tim. Why, I was writing of my epitaph,

It will be feen to-morrow. My long fickness
Of health and living now begins to mend,
And nothing brings me all things. Go, live ftill;
Be Acibiades your plague, you his;

And laft fo long enough!

1 Sen. We fpeak in vain.

Tim. But yet I love my country, and am not

One that rejoices in the common wrack,
As common bruite doth put it.

1 Sen. That's well spoke.

Tim. Commend me to my loving countrymen.
1 Sen. Thefe words become your lips, as they
pafs through them.

2 Sen. And enter in our ears, like great triumphers In their applauding gates.

Tim. Commend me to them,

And tell them, that to ease them of their griefs,
Their fears of hoftile ftrokes, their aches, loffes,
Their pangs of love, with other incident throes,
That Nature's fragile veffel doth sustain
In life's uncertain voyage, I will do

Some kindness to them, teach them to prevent
Wild Alcibiades' wrath.

2 Sen. I like this well, he will return again.
Tim. I have a tree, which grows here in my clofe,
That mine own ufe. invites me to cut down,
And fhortly muft I fell it. Tell my friends,
Tell Athens, in the frequence of degree,
From high to low throughout, that whofo please
To ftop affliction, let him take his hafte; (40)
Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the ax,
And hang himself----I pray you, do my greeting.

(40) -let him take his tafte;] I don't know upon what authority Mr Pope in both his editions has given us this reading; I have restored the text from the old books, and I am perfuaded, as the Author wrote. Timon's whole harangue is copied from this paffage of Plutarch in the life of M. Antony: "Ye men of Athens, in a court-yard belonging to my house, grows a large fig-tree; on which many an honeft citizen has been pleafed to hang himfelf: Now, as I have thoughts of building upon that fpot, I could not "omit giving you this public notice; to the end, that if any more among you have a mind to make the fame ufe of my tree, they may do it fpeedily, before it is destroyed." And Rabelais, who, in the oldest prologue to his fourth

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Flav. Vex him no further, thus you still shall find him.

your

Tim. Come not to me again, but fay to Athens, Timon hath made his everlasting manfion Upon the beached verge of the falt flood; Which once a-day with his embossed froth The turbulent furge fhall cover: Thither come; And let my grave-stone be oracle. Lips, let four words go by, and language end: What is amifs, plague and infection mend! Graves only be mens works, and death their gain! Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign. [Exit Timon. 1 Sen. His discontents are unremoveably coupled to his nature.

2 Sen. Our hope in him is dead; let us return, And ftrain what other means is left unto us

In our dear peril. (41)

1 Sen. It requires fwift foot.

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[Exeunt:

book, has inferted this story from Plutarch, thus ren lers the cl. fe of the fentence:

Pourtant quiconque de vous autres, et de toute la ville aura a le pendre, s'en depofche promptement.

(41) In our dead peril. Thus Mr Rowe and Mr Pope have given us this paffage; but is it not ftrange that the Athenians peril fhould be dead, because one of their hopes was dead? Such a disappointment must naturally give fresh life and ftrength to their danger. We must certainly read with the old Folios ;-in our dear peril.

i. e. dread, deep. So in As You like it;

For my father hated his father dearly:

So in Jul. Caf.

Would it not grieve thee dearer than thy death, &c. And in Hamlet:

Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven, &c.

And in an hundred other paffages that might be quoted from our Author.

SCENE changes to the Walls of Athens.
Enter two other Senators, with a Messenger.

1 Sen. Thou haft painfully discovered; are his As full as thy report?

Mef. I have fpoke the leaft. Befides, his expedition promifes Prefent approach.

[files

2 Sen. We stand much hazard, if they bring not Timon.

Mef. I met a courier, one mine ancient friend; Who, though in general part we were oppofed, Yet our old love made a particular force,

And made us fpeak like friends. This man was
From Alcibiades to Timon's cave,
[riding

With letters of intreaty, which imported
His fellowship i' th' caufe against your city,
In part for his fake moved.

Enter the other Senators.

Sen. Here come our brothers.

3 Sen. No talk of Timon, nothing of him expect.-The enemies drum is heard, and fearful fcouring Doth choak the air with duft. In, and prepare; Ours is the fall, I fear, our foes the fnare. [Exeunt.

Enter a Soldier in the Woods, feeking Timon.

Sol. By all defcription this fhould be the place. Who's here? fpeak, ho.-----No answer ?------What is this?-

Timon is dead, who hath out-ftretched his fpan;-Some beaft rear'd this, here does not live a man. (42.)

(42) Some beast read this: here does not live a man.] Some beaft read what? The foldier had yet only feen the rude pile of earth heaped up for Timon's grave, and not the in

Dead, fure, and this his grave; what's on this tomb?
I cannot read; the character I'll take with wax;
Our captain hath in every figure skill,
An aged interpreter, though young in days:
Before proud Athens he's fet down by this,
Whofe fall the mark of his ambition is.

SCENE, before the Walls of Athens.

[Exit.

Trumpets found. Enter ALCIBIADES with his Power.
Alc. Sound to this coward and lafcivious town
Our terrible approach.

[Sound a parley. The Senators appear upon the Walls.
'Till now you have gone on, and fill'd the time
With all licentious measure, making your wills
The scope of juftice. 'Till now myself, and such
As flept within the fhadow of your power,
Have wandered with our travers'd arms, and
breath'd

Our fufferance vainly. Now the time is flufh,
When crouching marrow in the bearer strong
Cries, of itself, no more: now breathlefs wrong
Shall fit and pant in your great chairs of ease,

fcription upon it. My friend Mr Warburton ingeniously
advised me to amend the text, as I have done; and a paf-
fage occurs to me, (from Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's
Revenge) that feems very strong in fupport of his conjecture:
Comfort was never here;

Here is no food, nor beds; nor any house

Built by a better architect than heasts.

The foldier, feeking by order for Timon, fees such an irregular mole as he concludes must have been the workmanThip of fome beaft inhabiting the woods; and fuch a cavity as either muft have been fo over-arched, or happened by the cafual falling in of the ground. This latter fpecies of caverns, produced by nature, Æfchylus, I remember, in his Prometheus, elegantly calls duríxtir' ävrpa, self-built dens.

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