Page:A study of Shakespeare (IA cu31924013158393).pdf/226

 evidence in both so patent before us, that he too like other men had his dark seasons of outer or of inner life, and like other poets found them or made them fruitful as well as bitter, though it might be but of bitter fruit. And of such there is here enough to glut the gorge of all the monks in monkery, or strengthen for a forty days' fast any brutallest unwashed theomaniac of the Thebaid. The most unconscionably unclean of all foul-minded fanatics might have been satisfied with the application to all women from his mother upwards of the monstrous and magnificent obloquy found by Timon as insufficient to overwhelm as his gold was inadequate to satisfy one insatiable and indomitable "brace of harlots." In Troilus and Cressida we found too much that Swift might have written when half inspired by the genius of Shakespeare; in the great and terrible fourth act of Timon we find such tragedy as Juvenal might have written when half deified by the spirit of Æschylus.

There is a noticeable difference between the case of Timon and the two other cases (diverse enough between themselves) of late or mature work but partially assignable to the hand of Shakespeare. In Pericles we may know exactly how much was added by Shakespeare to the work of we know not whom;