The character here sketched is deficient in the thorough heartiness of hatred for which Shakespeare’s Timon is distinguished, yet may it have served him for the primal material out of which to create the drama. In Sambucus there is a mistiness of thought and language which might be said almost to prefigure the doubtful utterances of some of our modern philosophers, but in Shakespeare the master himself takes in hand the pencil of true genius, and by the contrasts and harmonies, the unmistakeable delineations and portraitures, lays on the canvas a picture as rich in its colouring as it is constant in its fidelity to nature, and as perfect in its finish as it is bold in its conceptions.
The extravagance of Timon’s hatred may be gathered from only a few of his expressions,—
“Burn, house! sink, Athens! henceforth hated be
Of Timon man and all humanity.”
Timon of Athens, act iii. sc. 6, l. 103
“Timon will to the woods, where he shall find
The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind
The gods confound—hear me, you good gods all!—
The Athenians both within and out that wall!
And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow