END OF PART I.
The Essay which succeeds was discovered after his decease among the manuscripts of the elegant and accomplished youth, whose character will be found in Vol. I. p. 173, et seq. It is supposed to be descriptive of his own particular situation.
Goodness wounds itself,
And sweet affection proves the spring of woe.
Shakespeare.
The character of Timon of Athens presents a delineation of sudden change in the principles of human action, which, though drawn by the pen of Shakespeare himself, whose knowledge of the heart appears almost intuitive, has been censured as extravagant and unnatural. The glowing generosity, the indefatigable friendship, the expansive openness of soul, which mark the earlier features of the character of Timon, are suddenly, on a change of fortune, which discover treachery in his supposed friends, subverted to their foundation. The whole mental scene, shifting with rapidity and violence, presents in their room the most inveterate and ferocious detestation directed against all mankind. In my mind, the poet has here only afforded another proof of the keenness of that penetration, which, glancing through all the springs and mazes of the human soul, fixes the changing features of the mental portrait, and holds a mirror to nature herself. He perceived that on the ruins of our best feelings the temple of misanthropy is ever erected, the force of this truth he has exemplified by characters stamped with the kindliest affections of nature, containing those propensities on which the fairest structure of human happiness is raised, in which those benefits, so far from tending to their proper end, ill-managed and abused, involve their possessors in delusion and misery, and naturally end in a frame of mind inimical to mankind, and incapable of felicity.
Of these Timon is one; although inconsiderate ostentation forms a striking feature in the delineation of Shakespeare, the violence of misanthropy is to be traced to other causes, and we are led to exclaim, from a thorough knowledge of his character, with the faithful Flavius,
Poor honest Lord, brought low by his own heart;
Undone by goodness.