The fore-shadowing of the fate of Timon in the conclusion of this dialogue is part of the almost invariable system by which Shakspere very early infuses into his audience a dim notion of the catastrophe, most frequently indeed in the shape of some presentiment. When Timon enters we feel certain that he is the Timon of Shakspere's own conception. He is as graceful as he is generous; his prodigality is without the slightest particle of arrogance; he builds his munificence upon the necessity of gratifying without restraint the deep sympathies which he cherishes to all of the human family. He is the very model too of patrons, appearing to receive instead of to confer a favour in his reward of art,-a complete gentleman even in the act of purchasing a jewel of a tradesman. That the Apemantus of this scene belongs wholly to Shakspere is not to our minds quite so certain. There is little of wit in any part of this dialogue; and the pelting volley of abuse between the Cynic, the Poet, and the Painter, might have been produced by any writer who was not afraid of exhibiting the tu quoque style of repartee which distinguishes the angry rhetoric of fish-wives and school-boys. Shakspere, however, has touched upon the original canvas;-no one can doubt to whom these lines belong: :

"So, so; there !

Aches contract and starve your supple joints!

That there should be small love 'mongst these sweet knaves,

And all this court'sy! The strain of man's bred out
Into baboon and monkey."

These lines in the original are printed as prose; and they continued so to be printed by Theobald and the editors who succeeded him, probably from its not being considered that aches is a dissyllable. This circumstance is a confirmation to us that the dialogue with Apemantus is not entirely Shakspere's; for it is a most remarkable fact that, in all those passages of which there cannot be a doubt that they were wholly written by our poet, there is no confusion of prose for verse,—no difficulties whatever in the metrical arrangement,-no opportunity presented for the exercise of any ingenuity in "regulation." It was this fact which first led us to perceive, and subsequently to trace, the differences between particular scenes and passages. Wherever the modern text follows the ancient text with very slight changes, there we could put our finger undoubtingly upon the work of Shakspere. Wherever the tinkering of Steevens had been at work, we could discover that he had been attempting to repair,-not "the chinks which time had made," but something very different from the materials with which Shakspere constructed. The evidence of this is at hand.

If, in the first scene, it would be very difficult to say with certainty what is not Shakspere's, so in the second scene it appears to us equally difficult to point out what is Shakspere's. We believe that scarcely any part of this scene was written by him; we find ourselves at once amidst a different structure of verse from the foregoing. We encounter this difference remarkably in the first speech of Timon:

"I gave it freely ever; and there's none

Can truly say he gives, if he receives:

If our betters play at that game, we must not dare

To imitate them; faults that are rich are fair."

In the first scene we do not find a single rhyming couplet;-in the second scene their recurrence is more frequent than in any of Shakspere's plays, even the earliest. This scene alone gives us sixteen examples of this form of verse; which, in combination with prose or blank verse, had been almost entirely rejected by the mature Shakspere, except to render emphatic the close of a scene. In the instance before us, we find the couplet introduced in the most arbitrary and inartificial manner -in itself neither impressive nor harmonious. But the contrast between the second scene and the first is equally remarkable in the poverty of the thought, and the absence of poetical imagery. It will be sufficient, we think, to put in apposition the cynic of this scene and of a subsequent scene, to show the impossibility of the character having been wholly minted from the same die :

ACT I. SCENE II.

"Hey day, what a sweep of vanity comes this way!

They dance! they are mad women:
Like madness is the glory of this life,

As this pomp shows to a little oil, and root.

We make ourselves fools to disport ourselves;
And spend our flatteries, to drink those men,
Upon whose age we void it up again,

ACT IV. SCENE III.

"Thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself;
A madman so long, now a fool: What, think'st
That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,
Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these moss'd trees,
That have outliv'd the eagle, page thy heels,

And skip when thou point'st out? Will the cold brook,
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste,

With poisonous spite and envy.

Who lives that's not depraved, or depraves?
Who dies, that bears not one spurn to their graves

Of their friends' gift?

I should fear, those that dance before me now,
Would one day stamp upon me: It has been done :
Men shut their doors against a setting sun."

To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit? call the creatures,-
Whose naked natures live in all the spite

Of wreakful heaven; whose bare unhoused trunks,
To the conflicting elements expos'd,

Answer mere nature,-bid them flatter thee;
O! thou shalt find-"

Let us try the Steward of the first act and the Steward of the second act by the same test. We print the speech in the first column as we find it in the original. With the exception of the twc rhyming couplets, it is difficult to say whether it is prose or verse. It has been "regulated" into

verse, as we shall show in our foot-notes; but no change can make it metrical; the feebleness of the thought is the same under every disguise. On the other hand, the harmony, the vigour, the poetical elevation of the second passage, like the greater part of the fourth and fifth acts, effectually prevent all substitution and transposition :

He commands us to provide, and give great gifts,

And all out of an empty coffer.

Nor will he know his purse; or yield me this,

To show him what a beggar his heart is,

Being of no power to make his wishes good;

His promises fly so beyond his state,

That what he speaks is all in debt, he owes for every word;

He is so kind, that he now pays interest for 't;

His lands put to their books. Well, 'would I were
Gently put out of office, before I were forc'd out!
Happier is he that hath no friend to feed,

Then such that do even enemies exceed.
I bleed inwardly for my lord."

Flav. Heavens, have I said, the bounty of this lord!

How many prodigal bits have slaves, and peasants,

This night englutted! Who is not Timon's?

What heart, head, sword, force, means, but is lord Timon's?

Great Timon, noble, worthy, royal Timon!

Ah! when the means are gone that buy this praise,

The breath is gone whereof this praise is made:
Feast-won, fast-lost; one cloud of winter showers,
These flies are couch'd."

The modern division of this play into acts and scenes has given us a remarkable short second act. The Senator of the first scene may be Shakspere's. The scene between the Servants, the Fool, and the cynic, has very little of his animation or his wit. But who is the fool's mistress? Johnson saw the want of connexion between this dialogue and what had preceded it :—“I suspect some scene to be lost, in which the entrance of the Fool and the Page that follows him, was prepared by some introductory dialogue, in which the audience was informed that they were the fool and page of Phrynia, Timandra, or some other courtezan, upon the knowledge of which depends the greater part of the ensuing jocularity." We shall have occasion to notice this want of connexion in other scenes of the play. In that before us, if the Timon were an older drama remodelled by Shakspere, the reason for the retention of the scene, disjointed as it is, is obvious.-The audience had been accustomed to the Fool; and it was of little consequence whether his speeches had any very strict connexion with the more important scenes. The whole thing wants the spirit of Shakspere, and it wants also the play upon words which he almost invariably employed upon such occasions. The Fool, the Page, the cynic, and the Servants, are simply abusive.

The scene between Timon and the Steward, to the end of the act, is unquestionably from the master-hand of our poet. The character of Timon as his ruin is approaching him is beautifully developed. His reproach of his steward, slightly unjust as it is, is in a tone perfectly in accordance with the kindness of his nature; and his rising anger is forgotten in a moment in his complete conviction of the integrity of that honest servant. His entire reliance upon the gratitude of his friends is most touching. Thoroughly Shaksperian is the steward's description of the coldness of the senators; and Timon's answer is no less characteristic of the great interpreter of human feelings.

We venture to express a conviction that very little of the third act is Shakspere's. The ingra.itude of Lucullus in the first scene, and of Lucius in the second, is amusingly displayed; but there is little power in the development of character-little discrimination. The passionate invective of Flaminius is forcible: but the force is not exactly that of Shakspere. The dialogue between the

Strangers, at the end of the second scene, is unmetrical enough in the original; Steevens has made it hobble still worse. The third scene has the same incurable defects. It seems to us perfectly impossible that Shakspere could have produced thoughts so commonplace, and verse so uamusical, as we find in the speech of Sempronius. The fourth scene, again, has little peculiarity. It might be Shakspere's, or it might be the work of an inferior writer. Of the fifth scene we venture to say most distinctly that it is not Shakspere's. Independently of the internal evidence of thought and style (which we shall come to presently), this scene of the banishment of Alcibiades, and the concluding scene of his return to Athens, appear to belong to a drama of which the story of this brave and profligate Athenian formed a much more important feature than in the present play. That story stands here strictly as an episode. The banishment of Alcibiades is perfectly unconnected with the misanthropy of Timon;-the return of Alcibiades takes place after Timon's death. We feel no interest in either event. Ulrici has noticed the uncertain connexion of this drama as a whole, particularly in the scene before us, "where it remains quite unknown who is the unfortunate friend for whom Alcibiades petitions so earnestly that he is banished for it." In Shakspere's hand the banishment of Alcibiades is only used in connexion with the wonderful scene in the fourth act. In the older drama we have no doubt that it formed an integral portion of the action, and that Timon himself was only incidental to the catastrophe. Shakspere was satisfied to take the frame-work, as he found it, of the story which he might connect with his display of the character of Timon. The scene before us, and the concluding scene of the fifth act, present, we think, nearly every characteristic by which the early contemporaries of Shakspere are to be distinguished from him; and the negation, in the same degree, of all those qualities which render him so immeasurably superior to every other dramatic poet.

The scene between Alcibiades and the Senate consists of about a hundred and twenty lines.-Of these lines twenty-six form rhyming couplets. This of itself is enough to make us look suspiciously upon the scene, when presented as the work of Shakspere. Could the poet have proposed any object to himself, by this extraordinary departure from his usual principle of versification, presenting even in this play an especial contrast to the mighty rush and sustained grandeur of the blank verse in the speeches of Timon in the fourth and fifth acts? Is not the perpetual and offensive recurrence of the couplet an evidence that this and other scenes of the play were of the same school as 'The History of King Lear and his Three Daughters,' upon which Shakspere founded his own Lear?

The whole of the senate scene in Timon is singularly unmetrical; but wherever the verse becomes regular it is certainly not the metre of Shakspere. Mark the pause, for example, that occurs at the end of every line of the first speech of Alcibiades. "The linked sweetness long drawn out" is utterly wanting. The last scene of the fifth act has the same peculiarity. But in addition to the structure of the verse, the character of the thought is essentially different from that of the true Shaksperian drama. Where is our poet's imagery? From the first line of this scene to the last, the speeches, though cast into the form of verse, are in reality nothing but measured prose. The action of this scene adinitted either of passion or reflection; and we know how Shakspere puts forth either power whenever the occasion demands it. The passion of Alcibiades is of the most vapid character :

"Now the gods keep you old enough; that you may live
Only in bone that none may look on you!

Let us contrast for a moment the Shaksperian Coriolanus, under somewhat similar circumstances:

"You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate,

As reek o' th' rotten fens: whose loves I prize,
As the dead carcasses of unburied men,

That do corrupt my air: I banish you."

In this scene between Alcibiades and the senate, the usually profound reflection of Shakspere, which plunges us into the depths of our own hearts, and the most unfathomable mysteries of the world around us and beyond us, is exchanged for such slight axioms as the following:

"For pity is the virtue of the law,
And none but tyrants use it cruelly."
"To revenge is no valour, but to bear."
"To be in anger is impiety,

But who is man that is not angry."

The form of expression in these scenes with Alcibiades appears to us as remarkably un-Shaksperian as the character of the thought. By nothing is our poet more distinguished than by his conciseness, the quality that makes him so often apparently obscure. Shakspere would have dismissed the following idea in three words instead of three lines :—

"By decimation, and a tithed death,

(If thy revenges hunger for that food,

Which nature loaths) take thou the destin'd tenth."

The original stage direction of the sixth scene of the fourth act is, "Enter divers Friends at several doors;" and there is a subsequent direction at the end of the scene-"Enter the Senators with other Lords." Ulrici, looking at the modern stage direction, "enter divers lords," is surprised that Timon's most intimate friends (Lucius, Lucullus, Sempronius) are omitted. We doubt whether the previous scenes in which these friends are introduced are those of Shakspere; and in the same way it appears to us that our poet took the scene before us as he found it, adding perhaps Timon's vehement imprecations against his

"Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites."

The scene concludes with this line

"One day he gives us diamonds, next day stones."

Steevens had seen a MS. play, written or transcribed about 1600, entitled Timon, which was in the possession of Mr. Strutt. Of this play he says,-“There is a scene in it resembling Shakspeare's banquet given by Timon to his flatterers. Instead of warm water he sets before them stones painted like artichokes." This manuscript has passed into the possession of the Rev. A. Dyce; and the Shakespeare Society have printed the play, under Mr. Dyce's superintendence. We transcribe the passage (modernizing the orthography) in which Timon, having invited his false friends to a banquet, resents their perfidy and ingratitude. Laches is the faithful steward of this old play. The guests are Gelasimus, Eutrapelus, Demeas, Philargurus, Hermogenes, and Stilpo :

"Timon. O happy me, equal to Jove himself!

I going touch the stars. Break out, O joy,

And smother not thyself within my breast!
So many friends, so many friends I see;
Not one hath falsified his faith to me.

What if I am oppress'd with poverty?

And grief doth vex me? fortune left me poor?

All this is nothing: they relieve my wants;
This one doth promise help, another gold,
A third a friendly welcome to his house,
And entertainment; each man acts his part;
All promise counsel and a faithful heart.

Gelas. Timon, thou art forgetful of thy feast.
Tim. Why do ye not fall to? I am at home:
I'll standing sup, or walking, if I please.-
Laches, bring here the artichokes with speed.-
Eutrapelus, Demeas, Hermogenes,

I'll drink this cup, a health to all your healths!
Lach. Convert it into poison, O ye gods!

Let it be ratsbane to them.

[Aside.

Gelas. What, wilt thou have the leg or else the wing?

Eutr. Carve ye that capon.

Dem. I will cut him up

And make a beast of him.

Phtl. Timon, this health to thee.

Tim. I'll pledge you, sir.

These artichokes do no man's palate please.

Dem. I love them well, by Jove!

Tim. Here, take them then!

[Stones painted like to them, and throws them at them.

Nay, thou shalt have them, thou, and all of ye!

Ye wicked, base, perfidious rascals,

Think ye my hate's so soon extinguish'd?

[TIM. beats HERM. above all the rest.

Dem. O my head!

Herm. O my cheeks!

Phil. Is this a feast?

It is pretty clear that Shakspere owed no obligation to the writer of this scene. Mr. Dyce justly says, "I entertain considerable doubts of his having been acquainted with a drama which was certainly never performed in the metropolis, and which was likely to have been read only by a few of the author's particular friends, to whom transcripts of it had been presented." We have little doubt, however, that Timon was familiar to the stage before hakspere took up the subject; although it is tolerably evident that the play which Mr. Dyce has given to the world was not the play which Shakspere, as we believe, partly made his own. Shakspere, according to our belief, did what he undertook to do, and perhaps he did more than he intended. He completely remodelled the character of Timon. He left it standing apart in its naked power and majesty, without much regard to what surrounded it. It might have been a hasty experiment to produce a new character for Burbage, the greatest of Elizabethan actors. That Timon is so all in all in the play is, to our minds, much better explained by the belief that Shakspere engrafted it upon the feebler Timon of a feeble drama that held possession of the stage, than by the common opinion that he, having written the play entirely, had left us only a corrupt text, or left it unfinished, with parts not only out of harmony with the drama as a whole, in action, in sentiment, in versification, but altogether different from anything be had himself produced in his early, his mature, or his later years.

It is scarcely necessary for us very minutely to follow the successive passages of the fourth and fifth acts, in our endeavours to trace the hand of Shakspere. We may, however, briefly point out the passages which we believe not to be his. The second scene of the fourth act, between the steward and the servants, has some touches undoubtedly of the master's hand; the steward's speech, after the servants have left, again presents us the rhyming couplets, and the unmetrical blank verse. The scene between the Poet and the Painter, at the commencement of the fifth act, is so unmetrical, that it has been printed as prose by all modern editors, and we scarcely know how to avoid following the example. We have already exhibited a specimen of this hobbling approach to metre-the characteristic of several of the rude plays which preceded Shakspere, such as 'The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth.' Mr. Collier considers that play to be wholly prose; but he adds, "by the time it was printed, blank-verse had completely superseded both rhyme and prose: the publisher seems, on this account, to have chopped up much of the original prose into lines of various lengths, in order to look like some kind of measure, and now and then he bas contrived to find lines of ten syllables each, that run with tolerable smoothness, and as if they had been written for blank-verse." We venture to think, that, although the greater part of The Famous Victories' was intended for prose, "the lines of ten syllables each that run with tolerable smoothness," were written for blank verse; and this, we believe, is the case with parts of the scene in Timon which we are now describing. But, whether they speak in prose or verse, the Poet and the Painter of this scene are as unlike the Poet and the Painter of the first act, in the tone of their dialogues, as can be well imagined. Timon, in the lines which he speaks aside, has caught this infection of unmetrical blank verse, which reads like prose, and jingling couplets which want the spirit of poetry. The Soldier at Timon's tomb is marked by the same characteristics. Of the concluding scene of the return of Alcibiades to Athens, we have already spoken.

It is not by looking apart at the scenes and passages which we have endeavoured to separate from the undoubted scenes and passages of Shakspere, in this play, that we can rightly judge of their inferiority. They must be contrasted with the great scenes of the fourth act, and with Timon's portion of the fifth, -the essentially tragic portions of this extraordinary drama. In power those scenes are almost unequalled. They are not pleasing-they are sometimes positively repulsive