Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/215

200 The want that makes him lean.

Who dares, who dares,

In purity of manhood stand upright, And say, “This man's a flatterer?” If one be,

So are they all ; for every grize of fortune Is smooth'd by that below: the learned pate Ducks to the golden fool: All is oblique; There's nothing level in our cursed natures, But direct villainy. Therefore, be abhorr'd All feasts, societies, and throngs of men His semblable, yea, himself, Timon disdains: Destruction fang mankind —Earth, yield me roots ''' Instead of roots he finds gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold, and he comments upon it in terms which still further prove that the social curses he invokes upon the detestable town he has quitted, are those which he believes to exist. There is no honesty, no nobility in man, proof against this yellow slave, this damned earth which will “knit and break religions, bless the accursed, make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves and give them titled approbation.” This belief in the existence of man's utter unworthiness is of prime

importance in estimating Timon's character.

It is needful to

vindicate his misanthropy from being that of miserable

spite. There is no doubt a mixture of personal resentment in his feeling, but his deep rooted disparagement and con tempt of man, is founded upon a fixed belief in his utter worthlessness. If men were noble and good, or if Timon could believe them so, he would not hate them ; but they are

all to his distempered mind either base in themselves, or base in their subserviency to baseness. “Timon Atheniensis dictus interrogatus cur omnes homines odio prosequeretur: Malos, inquit, merito odi ; coeteros ob id odi, quod malos non oderint.”—Erasmus.

This is not to hate man as he

ought to be, nor even as he is, but as he appears in the false colours of mental derangement. The character of Apemantus is skilfully managed to elicit the less selfish nature of Timon's misanthropy. In the one