That these great towers, trophies, and schools should

fall

For private faults in them.

2 Sen.

Nor are they living,

Who were the motives that you first went out;
Shame, that they wanted cunning, in excess

Hath broke their hearts.

March, noble lord,

Into our city with thy banners spread:

By decimation, and a tithed death,

(If thy revenges hunger for that food

Which nature loaths) take thou the destin'd tenth;
And by the hazard of the spotted die,

Let die the spotted.

1 Sen.
All have not offended;
For those that were, it is not square to take,
On those that are, revenge: crimes, like lands,
Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman,
Bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage:
Spare thy Athenian cradle, and those kin,
Which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall
With those that have offended. Like a shepherd,
Approach the fold, and cull th' infected forth,
But kill not altogether.

2 Sen.

What thou wilt,

Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile,

Than hew to't with thy sword.

1 Sen.

Set but thy foot

Against our rampir'd gates, and they shall ope,

So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before,

To say, thou'lt enter friendly.

2 Sen.

Throw thy glove,

Or any token of thine honour else,

That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress,
And not as our confusion, all thy powers

6 Shame, that they wanted CUNNING,] . e. that they wanted knowledge—the etymological meaning of the word. Sax. connan, to know. The line, like many others, is wrongly printed in parenthesis in the old copies.

Shall make their harbour in our town, till we

Have seal'd thy full desire.

Then, there's my glove:

Alcib.
Descend, and open your uncharged ports.

Those enemies of Timon's, and mine own,
Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof,
Fall, and no more; and,-to atone your fears'
With my more noble meaning,—not a man
Shall pass his quarter, or offend the stream
Of regular justice in your city's bounds,
But shall be remedied to your public laws
At heaviest answer.

Both.

"Tis most nobly spoken.

Alcib. Descend, and keep your words.

[The Senators descend, and open

Enter a Soldier'.

the Gates.

Sold. My noble general, Timon is dead;
Entomb'd upon the very hem o' the sea:
And on his grave-stone this insculpture, which
With wax I brought away, whose soft impression
Interprets for my poor ignorance.

Alcib. [Reads.] "Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft :

Seek not my name. A plague consume you wicked

caitiffs left!

Here lie I Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate: Pass by, and curse thy fill; but pass, and stay not here thy gait'."

7 to ATONE your fears] i. e. to at one or reconcile your fears. See p. 240. Massinger uses atonement in the same sense. Gifford's edit. vol. i. 315.

8 But shall be REMEDIED to your public laws] We may suspect that ": remedied" ought to have been printed rendered. The folio, 1632, and those of 1664 and 1685 after it, read, “ remedied by your public laws.”

Enter a Soldier.] This is the same Soldier who had taken a wax-impression of the inscription on the tomb of Timon; but here, in the old stage-direction, he is called "a Messenger."

1

-

and stay not here thy gait.] This, which is here given as one epitaph, is in fact two; as is evident, because in the first couplet the reader is told, "Seek

These well express in thee thy latter spirits:

Though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs,

Scorn'dst our brain's flow, and those our droplets which
From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit

Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
On thy low grave on faults forgiven. Dead
Is noble Timon; of whose memory

Hereafter more.-Bring me into your city,

And I will use the olive with my sword:

Make war breed peace; make peace stint war; make

each

Prescribe to other, as each other's leech.

Let our drums strike.

[Exeunt.

not my name," and yet in the next line he is told, "Here lie I, Timon," &c. They stand thus separately in "Plutarch's Lives," by Sir Thomas North, fol. 1579, p. 1003 :

"Heere lyes a wretched corse, of wretched soule bereft.

Seek not my name : a plague consume you wicked wretches left.

"It is reported that Timon himselfe, when he lived, made this epitaphe; for that which is commonly rehearsed was not his, but made by the poet Callimachus :

"Heere lye I, Timon, who alive all living men did hate.

Passe by, and curse thy fill; but passe and stay not here thy gate."

The epitaph assigned to Timon in Paynter's "Palace of Pleasure" runs thus:"My wretched catife dayes, expired now and past,

My carren corps intered here is fast in grounde,

In waltering waves of swelling sea by surges cast:

My name if thou desire, the gods thee doe confounde."

END OF VOL. VI.

LONDON:

GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE.