lying lord, who was full of Timon's meat, and enriched almost to
bursting with Timon's costly presents, when he found the wind changed,
and the fountain of so much bounty suddenly stopped, at first could
hardly believe it; but on its being confirmed, he affected great regret
that he should not have it in his power to serve Lord Timon, for
unfortunately (which was a base falsehood) he had made a great purchase
the day before, which had quite disfurnished him of the means at
present, the more beast he, he called himself, to put it out of his
power to serve so good a friend; and he counted it one of his greatest
afflictions that his ability should fail him to pleasure such an
honourable gentleman.
Who can call any man friend that dips in the same dish with him? just of
this metal is every flatterer. In the recollection of everybody Timon
had been a father to this Lucius, had kept up his credit with his purse;
Timon's money had gone to pay the wages of his servants, to pay the hire
of the labourers who had sweat to build the fine houses which Lucius's
pride had made necessary to him: yet, oh! the monster which man makes
himself when he proves ungrateful! this Lucius now denied to Timon a
sum, which, in respect of what Timon had bestowed on him, was less than
charitable men afford to beggars.
Sempronius, and every one of these mercenary lords to whom Timon applied
in their turn, returned the same evasive answer or direct denial; even
Ventidius, the redeemed and now rich Ventidius, refused to assist him
with the loan of those five talents which Timon had not lent but
generously given him in his distress.
Now was Timon as much avoided in his poverty as he had been courted and
resorted to in his riches. Now the same tongues which had been loudest
in his praises, extolling him as bountiful, liberal, and open handed,
were not ashamed to censure that very bounty as folly, that liberality
as profuseness, though it had shown itself folly in nothing so truly as
in the selection of such unworthy creatures as themselves for its
objects. Now was Timon's princely mansion forsaken, and become a shunned
and hated place, a place for men to pass by, not a place, as formerly,
where every passenger must stop and taste of his wine and good cheer;
now, instead of being thronged with feasting and tumultuous guests, it
was beset with impatient and clamorous creditors, usurers, extortioners,
fierce and intolerable in their demands, pleading bonds, interest,
mortgages; iron-hearted men that would take no denial nor putting off,
that Timon's house was now his jail, which he could not pass, nor go in
nor out for them; one demanding his due of fifty talents, another
bringing in a bill of five thousand crowns, which if he would tell out
his blood by drops, and pay them so, he had not enough in his body to
discharge, drop by drop.
In this desperate and irremediable state (as it seemed) of his affairs,
the eyes of all men were suddenly surprised at a new and incredible
lustre which this setting sun put forth. Once more Lord Timon proclaimed
a feast, to which he invited his accustomed guests, lords, ladies, all
that was great or fashionable in Athens. Lord Lucius and Lucullus came,
Ventidius, Sempronius, and the rest. Who more sorry now than these
fawning wretches, when they found (as they thought) that Lord Timon's
poverty was all pretence, and had been only put on to make trial of
their loves, to think that they should not have seen through the
artifice at the time, and have had the cheap credit of obliging his
lordship? yet who more glad to find the fountain of that noble bounty,
which they had thought dried up, still fresh and running? They came
dissembling, protesting, expressing deepest sorrow and shame, that when
his lordship sent to them, they should have been so unfortunate as to
want the present means to oblige so honourable a friend. But Timon
begged them not to give such trifles a thought, for he had altogether
forgotten it. And these base fawning lords, though they had denied him
money in his adversity, yet could not refuse their presence at this new
blaze of his returning prosperity. For the swallow follows not summer
more willingly than men of these dispositions follow the good fortunes
of the great, nor more willingly leaves winter than these shrink from
the first appearance of a reverse; such summer birds are men. But now
with music and state the banquet of smoking dishes was served up; and
when the guests had a little done admiring whence the bankrupt Timon
could find means to furnish so costly a feast, some doubting whether the
scene which they saw was real, as scarce trusting their own eyes; at a
signal given, the dishes were uncovered, and Timon's drift appeared:
instead of those varieties and far-fetched dainties which they expected,
that Timon's epicurean table in past times had so liberally presented,
now appeared under the covers of these dishes a preparation more
suitable to Timon's poverty, nothing but a little smoke and lukewarm
water, fit feast for this knot of mouth-friends, whose professions were
indeed smoke, and their hearts lukewarm and slippery as the water with
which Timon welcomed his astonished guests, bidding them, "Uncover,
dogs, and lap;" and before they could recover their surprise,
sprinkling it in their faces, that they might have enough, and throwing
dishes and all after them, who now ran huddling out, lords, ladies, with
their caps snatched up in haste, a splendid confusion, Timon pursuing
them, still calling them what they were, "smooth smiling parasites,
destroyers under the mask of courtesy, affable wolves, meek bears, fools
of fortune, feast-friends, time-flies." They, crowding out to avoid him,
left the house more willingly than they had entered it; some losing
their gowns and caps, and some their jewels in the hurry, all glad to
escape out of the presence of such a mad lord, and from the ridicule of
his mock banquet.
This was the last feast which ever Timon made, and in it he took
farewell of Athens and the society of men; for, after that, he betook
himself to the woods, turning his back upon the hated city and upon all
mankind, wishing the walls of that detestable city might sink, and the
houses fall upon their owners, wishing all plagues which infest
humanity, war, outrage, poverty, diseases, might fasten upon its
inhabitants, praying the just gods to confound all Athenians, both young
and old, high and low; so wishing, he went to the woods, where he said
he should find the unkindest beast much kinder than mankind. He stripped
himself naked, that he might retain no fashion of a man, and dug a cave
to live in, and lived solitary in the manner of a beast, eating the wild
roots, and drinking water, flying from the face of his kind, and
choosing rather to herd with wild beasts, as more harmless and friendly
than man.
What a change from Lord Timon the rich, Lord Timon the delight of
mankind, to Timon the naked, Timon the man-hater! Where were his
flatterers now? Where were his attendants and retinue? Would the bleak
air, that boisterous servitor, be his chamberlain, to put his shirt on
warm? Would those stiff trees that had outlived the eagle, turn young
and airy pages to him, to skip on his errands when he bade them? Would
the cool brook, when it was iced with winter, administer to him his warm
broths and caudles when sick of an overnight's surfeit? Or would the
creatures that lived in those wild woods come and lick his hand and
flatter him?
Here on a day, when he was digging for roots, his poor sustenance, his
spade struck against something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great
heap which some miser had probably buried in a time of alarm, thinking
to have come again, and taken it from its prison, but died before the
opportunity had arrived, without making any man privy to the
concealment; so it lay, doing neither good nor harm, in the bowels of
the earth, its mother, as if it had never come from thence, till the
accidental striking of Timon's spade against it once more brought it to
light.
Here was a mass of treasure which, if Timon had retained his old mind,
was enough to have purchased him friends and flatterers again; but Timon
was sick of the false world, and the sight of gold was poisonous to his
eyes; and he would have restored it to the earth, but that, thinking of
the infinite calamities which by means of gold happen to mankind, how
the lucre of it causes robberies, oppression, injustice, briberies,
violence, and murder, among men, he had a pleasure in imagining (such a
rooted hatred did he bear to his species) that out of this heap, which
in digging he had discovered, might arise some mischief to plague
mankind. And some soldiers passing through the woods near to his cave at
that instant, which proved to be a part of the troops of the Athenian
captain Alcibiades, who upon some disgust taken against the senators of
Athens (the Athenians were ever noted to be a thankless and ungrateful
people, giving disgust to their generals and best friends), was marching
at the head of the same triumphant army which he had formerly headed in
their defence, to war against them; Timon, who liked their business
well, bestowed upon their captain the gold to pay his soldiers,
requiring no other service from him, than that he should with his
conquering army lay Athens level with the ground, and burn, slay, kill
all her inhabitants; not sparing the old men for their white beards, for
(he said) they were usurers, nor the young children for their seeming
innocent smiles, for those (he said) would live, if they grew up, to be
traitors; but to steel his eyes and ears against any sights or sounds
that might awaken compassion; and not to let the cries of virgins,
babes, or mothers, hinder him from making one universal massacre of the
city, but to confound them all in his conquest; and when he had
conquered, he prayed that the gods would confound him also, the
conqueror: so thoroughly did Timon hate Athens, Athenians, and all
mankind.
While he lived in this forlorn state, leading a life more brutal than
human, he was suddenly surprised one day with the appearance of a man
standing in an admiring posture at the door of his cave. It was Flavius,
the honest steward, whom love and zealous affection to his master had
led to seek him out at his wretched dwelling, and to offer his services;
and the first sight of his master, the once noble Timon, in that abject
condition, naked as he was born, living in the manner of a beast among
beasts, looking like his own sad ruins and a monument of decay, so
affected this good servant, that he stood speechless, wrapped up in
horror, and confounded. And when he found utterance at last to his
words, they were so choked with tears, that Timon had much ado to know
him again, or to make out who it was that had come (so contrary to the
experience he had had of mankind) to offer him service in extremity. And
being in the form and shape of a man, he suspected him for a traitor,
and his tears for false; but the good servant by so many tokens
confirmed the truth of his fidelity, and made it clear that nothing but
love and zealous duty to his once dear master had brought him there,
that Timon was forced to confess that the world contained one honest
man; yet, being in the shape and form of a man, he could not look upon
his man's face without abhorrence, or hear words uttered from his man's
lips without loathing; and this singly honest man was forced to depart,
because he was a man, and because, with a heart more gentle and
compassionate than is usual to man, he bore man's detested form and
outward feature.
But greater visitants than a poor steward were about to interrupt the
savage quiet of Timon's solitude. For now the day was come when the
ungrateful lords of Athens sorely repented the injustice which they had
done to the noble Timon. For Alcibiades, like an incensed wild boar, was
raging at the walls of their city, and with his hot siege threatened to
lay fair Athens in the dust. And now the memory of Lord Timon's former
prowess and military conduct came fresh into their forgetful minds, for
Timon had been their general in past times, and a valiant and expert
soldier, who alone of all the Athenians was deemed able to cope with a
besieging army such as then threatened them, or to drive back the
furious approaches of Alcibiades.
A deputation of the senators was chosen in this emergency to wait upon
Timon. To him they come in their extremity, to whom, when he was in
extremity, they had shown but small regard; as if they presumed upon his
gratitude whom they had disobliged, and had derived a claim to his
courtesy from their own most discourteous and unpiteous treatment.
Now they earnestly beseech him, implore him with tears, to return and
save that city, from which their ingratitude had so lately driven him;
now they offer him riches, power, dignities, satisfaction for past
injuries, and public honours, and the public love; their persons, lives,
and fortunes, to be at his disposal, if he will but come back and save
them. But Timon the naked, Timon the man-hater, was no longer Lord
Timon, the lord of bounty, the flower of valour, their defence in war,
their ornament in peace. If Alcibiades killed his countrymen, Timon
cared not. If he sacked fair Athens, and slew her old men and her
infants, Timon would rejoice. So he told them; and that there was not a
knife in the unruly camp which he did not prize above the reverendest
throat in Athens.
This was all the answer he vouchsafed to the weeping disappointed
senators; only at parting he bade them commend him to his countrymen,
and tell them, that to ease them of their griefs and anxieties, and to
prevent the consequences of fierce Alcibiades' wrath, there was yet a
way left, which he would teach them, for he had yet so much affection
left for his dear countrymen as to be willing to do them a kindness
before his death. These words a little revived the senators, who hoped
that his kindness for their city was returning. Then Timon told them
that he had a tree, which grew near his cave, which he should shortly
have occasion to cut down, and he invited all his friends in Athens,
high or low, of what degree soever, who wished to shun affliction, to
come and take a taste of his tree before he cut it down; meaning, that
they might come and hang themselves on it, and escape affliction that
way.
And this was the last courtesy, of all his noble bounties, which Timon
showed to mankind, and this the last sight of him which his countrymen
had: for not many days after, a poor soldier, passing by the sea-beach,
which was at a little distance from the woods which Timon frequented,
found a tomb on the verge of the sea, with an inscription upon it,
purporting that it was the grave of Timon the man-hater, who "While he
lived, did hate all living men, and dying wished a plague might consume
all caitiffs left!"
Whether he finished his life by violence, or whether mere distaste of
life and the loathing he had for mankind brought Timon to his
conclusion, was not clear, yet all men admired the fitness of his
epitaph, and the consistency of his end; dying, as he had lived, a hater
of mankind: and some there were who fancied a conceit in the very choice
which he had made of the sea-beach for his place of burial, where the
vast sea might weep for ever upon his grave, as in contempt of the
transient and shallow tears of hypocritical and deceitful mankind.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ROMEO AND JULIET
The two chief families in Verona were the rich Capulets and the
Montagues. There had been an old quarrel between these families, which
was grown to such a height, and so deadly was the enmity between them,
that it extended to the remotest kindred, to the followers and retainers
of both sides, insomuch that a servant of the house of Montague could
not meet a servant of the house of Capulet, nor a Capulet encounter with
a Montague by chance, but fierce words and sometimes bloodshed ensued;
and frequent were the brawls from such accidental meetings, which
disturbed the happy quiet of Verona's streets.
Old Lord Capulet made a great supper, to which many fair ladies and many
noble guests were invited. All the admired beauties of Verona were
present, and all comers were made welcome if they were not of the house
of Montague. At this feast of Capulets, Rosaline, beloved of Romeo, son
to the old Lord Montague, was present; and though it was dangerous for a
Montague to be seen in this assembly, yet Benvolio, a friend of Romeo,
persuaded the young lord to go to this assembly in the disguise of a
mask, that he might see his Rosaline, and seeing her, compare her with
some choice beauties of Verona, who (he said) would make him think his
swan a crow. Romeo had small faith in Benvolio's words; nevertheless,
for the love of Rosaline, he was persuaded to go. For Romeo was a
sincere and passionate lover, and one that lost his sleep for love, and
fled society to be alone, thinking on Rosaline, who disdained him, and
never requited his love, with the least show of courtesy or affection;
and Benvolio wished to cure his friend of this love by showing him
diversity of ladies and company. To this feast of Capulets then young
Romeo with Benvolio and their friend Mercutio went masked. Old Capulet
bid them welcome, and told them that ladies who had their toes unplagued
with corns would dance with them. And the old man was light hearted and
merry, and said that he had worn a mask when he was young, and could
have told a whispering tale in a fair lady's ear. And they fell to
dancing, and Romeo was suddenly struck with the exceeding beauty of a
lady who danced there, who seemed to him to teach the torches to burn
bright, and her beauty to show by night like a rich jewel worn by a
blackamoor; beauty too rich for use, too dear for earth! like a snowy
dove trooping with crows (he said), so richly did her beauty and
perfections shine above the ladies her companions. While he uttered
these praises, he was overheard by Tybalt, a nephew of Lord Capulet, who
knew him by his voice to be Romeo. And this Tybalt, being of a fiery and
passionate temper, could not endure that a Montague should come under
cover of a mask, to fleer and scorn (as he said) at their solemnities.
And he stormed and raged exceedingly, and would have struck young Romeo
dead. But his uncle, the old Lord Capulet, would not suffer him to do
any injury at that time, both out of respect to his guests, and because
Romeo had borne himself like a gentleman, and all tongues in Verona
bragged of him to be a virtuous and well-governed youth. Tybalt, forced
to be patient against his will, restrained himself, but swore that this
vile Montague should at another time dearly pay for his intrusion.
The dancing being done, Romeo watched the place where the lady stood;
and under favour of his masking habit, which might seem to excuse in
part the liberty, he presumed in the gentlest manner to take her by the
hand, calling it a shrine, which if he profaned by touching it, he was a
blushing pilgrim, and would kiss it for atonement. "Good pilgrim,"
answered the lady, "your devotion shows by far too mannerly and too
courtly: saints have hands, which pilgrims may touch, but kiss
not."--"Have not saints lips, and pilgrims too?" said Romeo. "Ay," said
the lady, "lips which they must use in prayer."--"O then, my dear
saint," said Romeo, "hear my prayer, and grant it, lest I despair." In
such like allusions and loving conceits they were engaged, when the lady
was called away to her mother. And Romeo inquiring who her mother was,
discovered that the lady whose peerless beauty he was so much struck
with, was young Juliet, daughter and heir to the Lord Capulet, the great
enemy of the Montagues; and that he had unknowingly engaged his heart to
his foe. This troubled him, but it could not dissuade him from loving.
As little rest had Juliet, when she found that the gentleman that she
had been talking with was Romeo and a Montague, for she had been
suddenly smit with the same hasty and inconsiderate passion for Romeo,
which he had conceived for her; and a prodigious birth of love it seemed
to her, that she must love her enemy, and that her affections should
settle there, where family considerations should induce her chiefly to
hate.