To the conflicting elements expos’d,
Answer mere nature, bid them flatter thee.’
The manners are every where preserved with distinct truth. The poet and painter are very skilfully played off against one another, both affecting great attention to the other, and each taken up with his own vanity, and the superiority of his own art. Shakespear has put into the mouth of the former a very lively description of the genius of poetry and of his own in particular.
——‘A thing slipt idly from me.
Our poesy is as a gum, which issues
From whence ’tis nourish’d. The fire i’ th’ flint
Shews not till it be struck: our gentle flame
Provokes itself—and like the current flies
Each bound it chafes.’
The hollow friendship and shuffling evasions of the Athenian lords, their smooth professions and pitiful ingratitude, are very satisfactorily exposed, as well as the different disguises to which the meanness of self-love resorts in such cases to hide a want of generosity and good faith. The lurking selfishness of Apemantus does not pass undetected amidst the grossness of his sarcasms and his contempt for the pretensions of others. Even the two courtezans who accompany Alcibiades to the cave of Timon are very characteristically sketched; and the thieves who come to visit him are also ‘true men’ in their way.—An exception to this general picture of selfish depravity is found in the old and honest steward Flavius, to whom Timon pays a full tribute of tenderness. Shakespear was unwilling to draw a picture ‘ugly all over with hypocrisy.’ He owed this character to the good-natured solicitations of his Muse. His mind might well have been said to be the ‘sphere of humanity.’