Patroclus. Out gall! Thersites. Finch egg! (Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS) To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care: but to be Menelaus,-I would conspire against destiny. Ask me not what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus.-Hey-day! spirits and fires!-Act 5, Sc. 1. Thersites. O' the other side, The policy of those craftyswearing rascals, that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor; and that same dog-fox, Ulysses,-is not proved worth a blackberry.-Sc. 4. Hector. What art thou, Greek? art thou for Hector's match? Art thou of blood, and honour ? Thersites. No, no :-I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave; a very filthy rogue. Hector. I do believe thee :-live. TIMON OF ATHENS. (Exit.) The play of "Timon " is a domestic tragedy, and therefore strongly fastens on the attention of the reader. In the plan there is not much art, but the incidents are natural, and the characters various and exact. The catastrophe affords a very powerful warning against that ostentatious liberality, which scatters bounty, but confers no benefits, and buys flattery, but not friendship.-Johnson. Timon. the learned pate Ducks to the golden fool: This yellow slave Act 4, Sc. 3. Timon. I am misanthropos, and hate mankind. For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog, That I might love thee something Alcibiades. Why, fare the well: Here's some gold for thee. Timon. Keep't, I cannot eat it. (Enter APEMANTUS.) More man? Plague! plague! Were I like thee, I'd throw away myself. Apemantus. Thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself; A madman so long, now a fool; What, think'st That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain, Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these moss'd trees, And skip when thou point'st out? Will the cold brook, To cure thy o'ernight's surfeit? Call the creatures,— Of wreakful heaven; whose bare unhoused trunks, Answer mere nature,-bid them flatter thee; . Best state, contentless, Hath a distracted and most wretched being, Thou should'st desire to die, being miserable. Freely command, thou would'st have plung'd thyself The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men, Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time Hath made thee hard in't. Why should'st thou hate men? They never flatter'd thee: What hast thou given ?— Poor rogue hereditary. Hence! begone! If thou had'st not been born the worst of men, Thou had'st been a knave, and flatterer. Apemantus. Thou art the cap of all the fools alive. Thou tedious rogue! I am sorry I shall lose A stone by thee. Apemantus. Beast! (Throws a stone at him.) Timon. Slave! Apemantus. Toad! Timon. Rogue, rogue, rogue !-Id. Timon. Why should you want? Behold the earth hath roots; Within this mile break forth a hundred springs: The oaks bear mast, the briars scarlet hips; The bounteous housewife, Nature, on each bush Want? why want?—Id. CORIOLANUS. Menenius. What do you think? You, the great toe of this assembly? 1st Citizen. I the great toe? Why the great toe? Menenius. For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest, Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost; Thou rascal, that art worst in blood, to run, But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs; Rome and her rats are at the point of battle, The one side must have bale.-Hail! noble Marcius! (Enter CAIUS MARCIUS.) Marcius. Thanks.-What's the matter, you dissentious rogues, That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion Make yourselves scabs ? Go, get you home, you fragments!-Act 1, Sc. 1. (Alarum, and exeunt Romans and Volces fighting. The Romans are beaten back to their trenches. Re-enter MARCIUS.) Further than seen, and one infect another Against the wind a mile! You souls of geese, With flight and agued fear; Mend, and charge home, Menenius. You blame Marcius for being proud! Menenius. I know you can do very little alone; for your helps are many; or else your actions would grow wondrous single: your abilities are too infant-like, for doing much alone. You talk of pride: O! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves; O! that you could. Brutus. What then, sir? Menenius. Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates (alias fools), as any in Rome. Sicinius. Menenius, you are known well enough too. Menenius. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tyber in't; said to be something imperfect, in favouring the first complaint: hasty, and tinder-like, upon too trivial motion: one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning. What I think, I utter; and spend my malice in my breath: Meeting two such wealsmen as you are (I cannot call you Lycurguses), if the drink you give me, touch my palate adversely, I make a crooked face at it. I cannot say, your worships have delivered the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables: and though I must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave men; yet they lie deadly, that tell, you have good faces. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it, that I am known well enough too? What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough too? Brutus. Come, sir, come, we know you well enough. Menenius. You know neither me, yourselves, nor any thing. You are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs; you wear out a good wholesome forenoon, in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three-pence to a second day of audience.-You are a pair of strange ones. Brutus. Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfector giber for the table, than a necessary bencher in the Capitol. Menenius. Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave, as to stuff a botcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying, Marcius is proud; who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors, And I could laugh: I am light, and heavy: welcome: That is not glad to see thee!-You are three, That Rome should dote on: yet, by the faith of men, We call a nettle but a nettle; and The faults of fools, but folly.-Act 2, Sc. 1. Brutus. Sir, I hope, My words disbench'd you not. Coriolanus. No, sir; yet oft, When blows have made me stay I fled from words. Sc. 2. And look'd upon things precious, as they were The common muck of the world; he covets less His deeds with doing them; and is content To spend the time, to end it.-Id. Menenius. O! sir, you are not right: have you not known The worthiest men have done it? Coriolanus. What must I say ?— I pray, sir,-Plague upon't! I cannot bring My tongue to such a pace :-Look, sir!-my wounds! I got them in my country's service, when Some certain of your brethren roar'd and ran From the noise of our own drums.-Sc. 3. Coriolanus. What custom wills, in all things should we do't. The dust on antique time would lie unswept, And mountainous error be too highly heap'd For truth to overpeer.-Id. When two authorities are up, Neither supreme, how soon confusion The one by the other.-Act 3, Sc. 1. Coriolanus. I would they were barbarians (as they are, Though in Rome litter'd) not Romans (as they are not, |