Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/211

196 gone, but the noble heart is "wealthy in his friends;" it were lack of conscience to think otherwise.

The trial is made, the bubble bursts; one after another the friends find characteristic and ingenious excuses. To one, bare friendship without security is nothing; another is in despair that he hath not furnished himself against so good a time; another puts on the semblance of anger that he was not sent to first, and pretending that his honour hath thus been abated, he refuses his coin.

The world turns dark with Timon, he is struck down by his friends' desertion.

"Thy lord leans wonderously to discontent, his comfortable temper has forsook him; he is much out of health and keeps his chamber."

The period of depression which would naturally intervene between that of confidence and enraged defiance is concealed from view, and only alluded to in the above sentence. Here, as in Lear and Constance, the poet takes care to mark the concurrence of physical with moral causes of insanity. Mere bodily disease is no subject for dramatic representation; and the fact of its existence is lightly enough indicated, but it is indicated, and that is sufficient to preserve the exact natural verisimilitude of the diseased mind's history. When Timon re-appears, the re-action of furious indignation possesses him. He rushes wildly forth from the house in which his loving