Re-enter TIMON and FLAVIUS.. Tim. They have e'en put my breath from me, Tim. I'll have it so:-My steward! Flav. Here, my lord. Tim. So fitly? Go, bid all my friends again, Lucius, Lucullus, and Sempronius; all7: I'll once more feast the rascals. Flav. O, my lord, Tim. Be't not in thy care; go, I charge thee; invite them all: let in the tide [Exeunt. SCENE V. The same. The Senate-House. The Senate sitting. Enter ALCIBIADES, attended. 1 Sen. My lord, you have my voice to it; the fault's Bloody; 'tis necessary he should die : Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy. 2 Sen. Most true; the law shall bruise him. Alcib. Honour, health, and compassion to the senate! Lucius, Lucullus, and Sempronius, Ulloṛxa all.' What is meant by this strange corruption it is perhaps now vain to conjecture. Malone retains this strange word; and Steevens banters him pleasantly enough upon his pertinacious adherence to the text of the first folio. 1 Sen. Now, captain? Alcib. I am an humble suitor to your virtues; And none but tyrants use it cruelly. Of comely. virtues: Nor did he soil the fact with cowardice And with such sober and unnoted passion Ii.e. putting this action of his, which was predetermined by fate, out of the question. 2 The folio reads: And with such sober and unnoted passion He did behoove his anger ere 'twas spent.' This Warburton changed for behave his anger,', which he explains govern, manage his anger. It is said the verb to behoove is only used impersonally with it; otherwise the old reading might mean, he did so fit or become his anger, ere it was spent with such sober and unnoted [i. e. unmarked] passion, that it seemed as if,' &c. Perhaps we might read:— And with such sober and unnoted passion He did behood [i. e. hide, conceal] his anger,' &c. Shakspeare uses to hood for to hide more than once. Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 2: Come, civil night Hood my unman'd blood bating in my cheeks And in the Merchant of Venice, Act ii. Sc. 2 : Thus in ‘While grace is saying, hood mine eyes thus with my hat.' In defence of Warburton's reading it should be remarked, how 1 Sen. You undergo too strict a paradox3, Striving to make an ugly deed look fair: Your words have took such pains, as if they labour'd To bring manslaughter into form, set quarrelling The worst that man can breathe *; and make his wrongs His outsides; wear them like his raiment, carelessly; And ne'er prefer his injuries to his heart, To bring it into danger. If wrongs be evils, and enforce us kill, To 1 Sen. You cannot make gross sins look clear; revenge is no valour, but to bear. Alcib. My lords, then, under favour, pardon me, If I speak like a captain.— Why do fond men expose themselves to battle, Such valour in the bearing, what make we ever, that behave is used in the same singular manner in Sir W. Davenant's Just Italian, 1630:— And again: How well my stars behave their influence.' You an Italian, sir, and thus Behave the knowledge of disgrace. So Spenser, in his Faerie Queene, b. i. c. iii. :— 'But who his limbs with labour, and bis mind 3 You undertake a paradox too hard. 4 i. e. utter. Abroad 5? why then, women are more valiant, And th' ass more captain than the lion; the felon, Loaden with irons, wiser than the judge, If wisdom be in suffering. O my lords, As you are great, be pitifully good: Who cannot condemn rashness in cold blood? To kill, I grant, is sin's extremest gust7; But, in defence, by mercy, 'tis most just. But who is man, that is not angry? 2 Sen. You breathe in vain. In vain! his service done At Lacedæmon, and Byzantium, 1 Sen. What's that? Alcib. Why, I say, my lords, h'as done fair service, And slain in fight many of your enemies : How full of valour did he bear himself In the last conflict, and made plenteous wounds? Drowns him, and takes his valour prisoner: He has been known to commit outrages, 5 What do we, or what have we to do in the field?-See vol. i. p. 260; and vol. ii. p. 364. 6 The old copy reads 'fellow.' The alteration was made at Johnson's suggestion, perhaps without necessity. Fellow is a common term of contempt. 7 Gust here means rashness. We still say it was done in a gust of passion.' 8 i. e. I call mercy herself to witness.' 9 i. e. a man who practises riot as if he had made it an oath or duty. And cherish factions: "Tis inferr'd to us, His days are foul, and his drink dangerous. 1 Sen. He dies. Alcib. Hard fate! he might have died in war. My lords, if not for any parts in him (Though his right arm might purchase his own time, 1 Sen. We are for law, he dies; urge it no more, On height of our displeasure: Friend or brother, He forfeits his own blood, that spills another. Alcib. Must it be so? it must not be. My lords, I do beseech you, know me. 2 Sen. How? Alcib. Call me to your remembrances 11. 3 Sen. What? 12 Alcib. I cannot think, but your age has forgot me; It could not else be, I should prove so base 18, To sue, and be denied such common grace: My wounds ache at you. 1 Sen. Do you dare our anger? "Tis in few words, but spacious in effect; We banish thee for ever. 10 He charges them obliquely with being usurers. Thus in a subsequent passage: banish usury, That makes the senate ugly.' 11 Remembrances is here used as a word of five syllables. In the singular Shakspeare uses it as a word of four syllables only: 'And lasting in her sad remembrance.' Twelfth Night, Act i. Sc. 1. 12 Base for dishonoured. |