TIMON OF ATHENS.
“I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind.”
The remarkable difference between Timon and all the other dramas, both in construction and general idea, has been a subject of much difficulty with the literary critics. It has been generally supposed to be one of Shakespeare's latest works transmitted to us in an unfinished state; but the explanation of Mr. Knight appears far more probable, that it was originally produced by an inferior artist, and that Shakespeare remodeled it, and substituted entire scenes of his own; this substitution being almost wholly confined to the character of Timon. That of Apemantus, however, bears unmistakable impressions of the same die.
It certainly is not like the sepia sketch of a great master, perfect so far as it goes; nor yet like an unfinished picture which shews the basis of the artist's work; nor yet like those paintings of the old masters, in which the accessories were filled in by the 'prentice hands of their pupils, while the design and prominent figures indicated the taste and skill of high genius. It is rather an old painting, retouched perhaps in all its parts, and the prominent figures entirely remodeled by the hand of the great master, but designed and originally completed by a stranger.
Of the origin of Timon's character there can be no doubt. He is unmistakably of the family of Hamlet and Lear. The resemblance to Lear especially is close; like him at first, full of unreasoning confidence; like him at last, full of unreasoning hate. In Lear's circumstances, Timon might have followed closely in his steps. The conditions of rank and age and nation, do indeed direct the course of the two in paths wide apart, but in actual development of character they are not far from being parallel.
Timon is very far from being a copy from Plutarch's sketch, "a viper, and malicious man unto mankind." He is essentially high-minded and unselfish. His prodigality is unsoiled with profligacy; indeed, it takes to a great degree the form of humane and virtuous generosity, satisfied with the pleasure of doing good, the luxury of giving, without view of recompense. Even his profuse feasting is represented as noble and dignified hospitality, alloyed by no grossness. His temper is sweet and serene; even Apemantus cannot ruffle it.
With all this goodness of heart he is no fool; his remarks on all occasions shew refined and educated intellect. He has sense on all points except two, namely, in the ability to appreciate character, and the knowledge of the relation of things, as represented by the counters which transfer them. He has all kind of sense except that which is current—common sense. How such a character could be produced in the out-of-door life of Athens, where every citizen had his wits sharpened by contact with those of his neighbours, it would be difficult indeed to conjecture; but the character of Lord Timon in his prosperity is one which may any day be found in the ranks of the English aristocracy. A young man is born to a great name and estate; he inherits a generous disposition and an ardent temper; he is brought up as a little prince, and is never allowed to feel the wholesome pain of an ungratified wish. Can it be matter of wonder that in such a hotbed the growth of mind should be luxuriant and weak. Fortunately for our golden youth they generally undergo the rough discipline of public school and college; their sensibilities are indurated, and their wits sharpened, in societies where, if they find sycophant spirits, they also find independent and even tyrannical ones. But young Croesus, brought up at home, what must be his destiny in these latter days When the twenty-first birthday emancipates him from mamma and the mild tutor, well for him if reckless hospitality be his worst offence against prudence; well for him if that old man of the woods, the land steward does not suffocate him in his tenacious embrace; well for him if the turf and the card-table do not attract his green state of social initiation, devour wealth and destroy morality. Men who most need knowledge of the selfishness of their fellow men, have too often the least of it. Bred up on the sunny parterres of life, they have no experience of the difficulties and dangers of the rough thicket. The human pigeon has not even the resource of fear and swift flight to save him from the accipitres of his race. The fascination of false confidence lends him a willing victim to their talons, and under the chloroform of self-esteem he does not even feel being rent and devoured. So it is with Timon, with intelligence quick enough on all other matters, he is utterly incapable of seeing his relation to men and theirs to him, of appreciating the real value of deed and motive. The kind of knowledge most imperatively needed to guide our conduct is that of relation. It is the first to which the mind opens. The child under ever recurring penalties is compelled to acquaint himself with the relation existing between his person and the physical world; he burns himself, and thereafter dreads the fire. The man under penalties more sharp and lasting, must discover his moral relations in this world, must learn to estimate himself and those around him, according to the actualities of motive. As the child ascertains that fire and blows cause pain, so the man must learn that flattery is not friendship, that imprudence exacts regret, that the prevalent Philosophy of this selfish world is that taught by Lear's unselfish fool, "Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following; but the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after;" or by Timon's poet, who laboriously conveys the same idea that flashes from the fool:
"When fortune, in her shift and change of mood,
Spurns down her late belov'd, all his dependents,
Which laboured after him to the mountain's top,
Even on their hands and knees, let him slip down,
Not one accompanying his declining foot."
Timon, however, takes a widely different view of life. To him society is a disinterested brotherhood in which to possess largely is but to have the greater scope for the luxury of giving, and in which want itself may be but a means to try one's friends, and to learn their sterling value. His first act of bounty, not less noble than reasonable, is to pay the debt on which his friend Ventidius is imprisoned. It is done with graceful freedom, and his liberated friend is invited to him for further help in the fine sentiment, that
"'Tis not enough to help the feeble up,
But to support him after."
The dowry of the servant Lucilius, to satisfy the greed of the old miser whose daughter he courts, is more lavish and less reasonable. Timon will counterpoise with his fortune, what the old man will give with his daughter, though he feels the burthen of the task.
"To build his fortune, I would strain a little,
For ’tis a bond in men."
"Dishonour traffics with man's nature,
He is but outside."
Timon conducts himself as if all men on the contrary were true to the core like himself, deriving enjoyment from the happiness of others. Life to him is a poet's dream of goodness and beauty. All men are deserving of his bounty, even as he is deserving of the love and gratitude of all.
But there is more than this reasoning bounty acting upon a false estimate of man's goodness. Timon gives for the very love of giving; he scatters without motive, further than the pleasure of doing so affords.
"He outgoes the very heart of kindness,
He pours it out. Plutus the god of gold
Is but his steward, no meed but he repays
Seven fold above itself."
He scatters jewels, and horses, and wealthy gifts among the rich, even as he distributes fortunes among the needy. He will have nothing back. Ventidius succeeds to the wealth of his father, and seeks to return the talents which freed him from prison, but Timon will have none of the gold.
"I gave it freely ever; and there's none
Can truly say he gives if he receives."
This squandering disposition would appear to be the converse of what phrenologists denote acquisitiveness. To coin a word, it is disquisitiveness, and in some men would seem to be an innate bias of the disposition. It is to give, for the pleasure of giving; to spend, for the pleasure of spending, without esteem for the things procured in return. Probably like the opposite desire of accumulating, it is a secondary mental growth. The love of gold in itself would be as absurd as the love of iron; but after having been first esteemed for its attributes, its ability to confer pleasure and power, it becomes valued for itself, and the mere love of hoarding, without the slightest reference to the employment of the hoard, takes possession of the mind. So in the opposite mental state, the first pleasures of distributing wealth are, no doubt, derived from the gratification it affords in various ways; in contributing to the happiness of others; in purchasing esteem or the semblance of it for one's self; in apparently raising one's self above the level of those on whom the benefits are conferred, and thus gratifying vanity; or in the more direct gratification of the senses. The pleasure of enjoyment from these sources is at length unconsciously transferred to the mere act of distribution. To give and to spend for the mere pleasure of doing so, combined with the love of change, are the attributes of many a prodigal who is no profligate, of many a man who, in a stricter sense than that usually applied to the saying, is no one's enemy but his own—very strictly this can never be said, for in civilized society no man can be his own enemy without injuring others.
Such a man is Timon represented. He appears to have had no strong attachment either to men or things. The jewel recklessly purchased, is lavishly thrown to the first friend he meets. His fortune is at every one's command, not only of the old friend in prison, and of the old servant aspiring to fortune, but at that of the flatterers of his own rank, empty in head and heart, who have no real wants or claims.
Timon has indeed a noble theory of friendship, but there wants in it all those heartlights which prove the reality of the thing, as it existed between Hamlet and Horatio, or Celia and Rosalind in the other sex. There is, however, a noble freedom of welcome in his introduction to his first feast:—
"Tim. Nay, my lords, ceremony was but devis'd at first
To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes,
Recanting goodness, Sorry ere’t is shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none.
Pray sit ; more welcome are ye to my fortunes,
Than my fortunes to me."
"Why, I have often wished myself poorer, that I might come nearer to you. We are born to do benefits: and what better or properer can we call our own than the riches of our friends? O, what a precious comfort 'tis to have so many, like brothers, commanding one another's fortunes! O joy, e'en made away ere it can be born! Mine eyes cannot hold out water, methinks; to forget their faults, I drink to you."
He gives more entertainment, distributes more jewels, showers presents on those who bring them and on those who do not, and, without knowing it, all "out of an empty coffer." What he speaks is all in debt, he owes for every word. Honest Flavius seeks to apprise him, but since "its a word which concerns him near," he will not listen. Even Apemantus, who seems to entertain a surly liking for him, and who seeks to inspire in him some suspicion that friendship has its dregs, tenders advice which this time is not quite railing. He admits him to be honest though a fool.
"Thus honest fools lay out their wealth in courtesies."
He'll not be bribed lest that should shut his mouth, and Timon would then sin the faster; Timon will give so long that soon he will give himself away in paper; but Timon will have none of his warning, it is railing on Society; and Apemantus rebuffed at the only moment when he is tolerable, turns on his heel with his rejected advice:
"O that men's ears should be
To counsel deaf, but not to flattery."
"I take all and your several visitations
So kind to heart; 't is not enough to give;
Methinks I could deal kingdoms to my friends,
And ne'er be weary."
But now the time of reckoning approaches in which it is prophesied that,
"When every feather sticks in his own wing,
Lord Timon will be left a naked gull,
Which flashes now a phoenix."
He is beset with the clamorous demands of creditors, and turns with reproachful enquiry to the one honest man who has been seeking so long to check the ebb of his estate, and this great flow of debts; and when he at length gives ear to the importunity that can no longer be avoided, his debts double his means, and all his vast lands are engaged or forfeited. No estate could support his senseless prodigality,
"The world is but a word,
Were it all yours to give it in a breath
How quickly were it gone?"
Flavius, like Apemantus refers the motive of Timon's profusion to vanity and the love of compliment.
"Who is not Timon's?
What heart, head, sword, force, means, but is lord Timon's?
Great Timon, noble, worthy, royal Timon!
Ah! when the means are gone that buy this praise,
The breath is gone whereof this praise is made:
Feast-won, fast-lost : one cloud of winter showers,
These flies are couch'd."
This however is not quite the whole truth. There is doubtless much vanity in Timon's ostentation, but there is also a magnanimous disregard of self, and a false judgment of others founded upon it. His bounty,
"Being free itself, it thinks all other so."
Now comes the real trial, the test of man's value. Riches are gone, but the noble heart is "wealthy in his friends;" it were lack of conscience to think otherwise.
"Tim.Come, sermon me no further:
No villainous bounty yet hath pass'd my heart;
Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given.
Why dost thou weep 7 Canst thou the conscience lack
To think I shall lack friends ! Secure thy heart;
If I would broach the vessels of my love,
And try the argument of hearts by borrowing,
Men, and men's fortunes, can I frankly use,
As I can bid thee speak."
The trial is made, the bubble bursts; one after another the friends find characteristic and ingenious excuses. To one, bare friendship without security is nothing; another is in despair that he hath not furnished himself against so good a time; another puts on the semblance of anger that he was not sent to first, and pretending that his honour hath thus been abated, he refuses his coin.
The world turns dark with Timon, he is struck down by his friends' desertion.
"Thy lord leans wonderously to discontent, his comfortable temper has forsook him; he is much out of health and keeps his chamber."
The period of depression which would naturally intervene between that of confidence and enraged defiance is concealed from view, and only alluded to in the above sentence. Here, as in Lear and Constance, the poet takes care to mark the concurrence of physical with moral causes of insanity. Mere bodily disease is no subject for dramatic representation; and the fact of its existence is lightly enough indicated, but it is indicated, and that is sufficient to preserve the exact natural verisimilitude of the diseased mind's history. When Timon re-appears, the re-action of furious indignation possesses him. He rushes wildly forth from the house in which his loving servants have sought to retain him. Must his very house also be his enemy, his gaol?
"The place where I have feasted, does it now,
Like all mankind, shew me an iron heart?"
At the door he is beset with a crowd of dunning creditors, adding fuel to the flame of his rage.
"Phi. All our bills.
Tim. Knock me down with 'em: cleave me to the girdle.
Luc. Serv. Alas ! my lord,—
Tim. Cut my heart in sums.
Tit. Mine, fifty talents.
Tim. Tell out my blood.
Luc. Serv. Five thousand crowns, my lord.
Tim. Five thousand drops pays that.
What yours?—and yours?
Tim. Tear me, take me, and the gods fall upon you!
Hor. 'Faith, I perceive our masters may throw their caps
at their money; these debts may well be called desperate
ones, for a madman owes 'em.
[Timon drives them out and re-enters.
Tim. They have e'en put my breath from me, the slaves:
Creditors?—devils."
He gives orders for his farewell feast, although Flavius reminds him of his absolute want of means, and says that in doing so
"You only speak from your distracted soul."
However Timon and the cook will provide. The feast is toward. The expression of rage is controlled, and the infinite sarcasm of the inverted benediction is pronounced before the guests know what it means. The ambiguity of the language is of course intended to conceal for a moment its true meaning—that men are all villains and women no better; that even their piety is selfishness, so that if the Gods gave all, even they would be despised like Timon; but all being amiss, let all be suitable for destruction.
The dishes uncovered are full of warm water, which Timon throws into the faces of his mock friends, whose perfect nature “is but smoke and lukewarm water.”
He overwhelms them
with a torrent of curses by no means lukewarm, throws the dishes at them, and driving them from the hall, takes his own
farewell of house and home, bursting with rage and general hate.
“Burn house, sink Athens ! henceforth hated be,
Of Timon, man, and all humanity.” The conclusion of the “smiling, smooth, detested parasites,” is the same as that already arrived at by the servants, namely “Lord Timon's mad.”
Nothing indeed is less safe than to adopt the opinion of some of Shakespeare's characters upon others. He makes them speak of each other according to their own light, which is often partial and perverted, obscured by ignorance, or blinded by prejudice. The spectator sees the whole field, and experiences difficulty of judgment, not from narrowness of vision, but from its extent. In Timon, as in the early parts of Lear, the psychological opinion is embarrassed by the very circumstance which constitutes the difficulty in actual cases of dubious insanity, namely, that the operations of diseased mind are not retrograde to those of normal function, but merely divergent from them, in the same direction. Timon's eloquent declamations against his kind, are iden
tical in spirit with those of ‘Lear.’ They are, indeed, inter rupted by no vagrancy of thought, but are always true to the passion which now absorbs him, namely, intense hatred of the human race in whom he believes baseness and wickedness
inherent.
Here lies the great intellectual error which may
indeed be called delusion; that, because some few men have
been base and thankless parasites, the whole race is steeped in infamy. His emotional being is absorbed by indignation, and this re-acting on the intellect, represents human nature in the darkest colours of treachery and villainy. It is not clearly made out to what degree Timon is in fluenced by spite. In the imprecation upon Athens, “Let me look back upon thee,” &c., he invokes social disorder of every kind as the punishment for his own treatment, and does not represent it as actually existing, and as the cause of his fierce anger. There is, some uncertainty in this passage, some confusion of thought between the depraved state of Athens which merits dire punishment, and the social disorders which in themselves constitute such punishment. The wall of Athens is thought to girdle in a mere troop of human wolves. To avenge his own injuries, he prays that the matrons may turn incontinent, that obedience may fail in children, and so forth, recognising that the contrary has existed, and that social disorder is invoked as the punishment of demerit towards himself. He acknowledges that “degrees, observances, customs, and laws,” have held their place, and that their “confounding contraries” would be a new state of things due to that human baseness which is now obvious to his distempered vision through the medium of his own wrongs. In the following scene, where he apos trophises “the blessed breeding sun,” in vehement declama tion, he does not so much invoke curses upon man, as describe his actual state as in itself a curse; moral depravity he depicts in its existing colors. “Tim. O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth Rotten humidity; below thy sister's orb Infect the air Twinn’d brothers of one womb,
Whose procreation, residence, and birth, Scarce is dividant,
touch them with several fortunes,
The greater scorns the lesser: Not nature, To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune, But by contempt of nature:
Raise me this beggar, and deny 't that lord. The senator shall bear contempt hereditary, The beggar native honour:
It is the pasture lards the rother's sides, The want that makes him lean.
Who dares, who dares,
In purity of manhood stand upright, And say, “This man's a flatterer?” If one be,
So are they all ; for every grize of fortune Is smooth'd by that below: the learned pate Ducks to the golden fool: All is oblique; There's nothing level in our cursed natures, But direct villainy. Therefore, be abhorr'd All feasts, societies, and throngs of men His semblable, yea, himself, Timon disdains: Destruction fang mankind —Earth, yield me roots Instead of roots he finds gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold, and he comments upon it in terms which still further prove that the social curses he invokes upon the detestable town he has quitted, are those which he believes to exist. There is no honesty, no nobility in man, proof against this yellow slave, this damned earth which will “knit and break religions, bless the accursed, make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves and give them titled approbation.” This belief in the existence of man's utter unworthiness is of prime
importance in estimating Timon's character.
It is needful to
vindicate his misanthropy from being that of miserable
spite. There is no doubt a mixture of personal resentment in his feeling, but his deep rooted disparagement and con tempt of man, is founded upon a fixed belief in his utter worthlessness. If men were noble and good, or if Timon could believe them so, he would not hate them ; but they are
all to his distempered mind either base in themselves, or base in their subserviency to baseness. “Timon Atheniensis dictus interrogatus cur omnes homines odio prosequeretur: Malos, inquit, merito odi ; coeteros ob id odi, quod malos non oderint.”—Erasmus.
This is not to hate man as he
ought to be, nor even as he is, but as he appears in the false colours of mental derangement. The character of Apemantus is skilfully managed to elicit the less selfish nature of Timon's misanthropy. In the one it is the result of a bad heart, in the other that of a per verted reason. If all men were true and good, they would be the more offensive to the churlish disposition of Ape mantus, who is an ingrained misanthrope, and as such is recognized and abhorred by Timon himself. He seeks Timon to vex him—“always a villain's office, or a fool's ;” he attri butes Timon's conduct to the meanest motives, a madman before, he is now a fool; “This is in thee a nature but infected,
A poor unmanly melancholy sprung From change of fortune.” He recommends Timon to play the part he was undone by— a base flatterer; and that he should turn rascal to have his
wealth again, that he might again distribute it to rascals. He accuses him of being an imitator—“Thou dost affect my manners;” of putting on the sour cold habit of his nakedness and melancholy from mere want, and of the capacity to be a courtier, were he not a beggar. Timon estimates the currish spirit which thus attacks him, at its true value. “Why should'st thou hate men? they never flattered thee?” He replies, “If thou had'st not been born the worst of men Thou hadst been a knave and a flatterer.”
Apemantus, indeed, is a real misanthrope, who judges of man by his own bad heart. It was necessary to the drama that he should speak his thoughts, but naturally such a man would only express his antagonism to mankind in his actions. Such misanthropes are too common; every malevolent villain being, in fact, one of them, although selfishness in league with badness may counsel hypocrisy. Boileau recognises this in his lines on the malignant hypocrite of Society : “En vain ce misanthrope, aux yeux tristes et sombres, Veut, par un air riant, en éclaircir les ombres: Le ris sur son visage est en mauvaise humeur; L'agrément fuit ses traits, ses caresses font peur ; Ses mots les plus flatteurs paroissent des rudesses, Et la vanité brille en toutes ses bassesses.”
Lord Shaftesbury, in the Characteristics, takes a view of misanthropy, which strictly accords with the character of Apemantus. He places it among “those horrid, monstrous, and unnatural affections, to have which, is to be miserable in
the highest degree.”
He writes:
“There is also among these a sort of hatred of mankind
and society; a passion which has been known perfectly reigning among some men, and has had a peculiar name given to it, misanthropy. A large share of this belongs to those who have habitually indulged themselves in a habitual moroseness, or who by force of ill nature and ill breeding,
have contracted such a reverse of affability, and civil manners, that to see or meet a stranger is offensive. The very aspect of mankind is a disturbance to 'em, and they are sure always to hate at first sight.” Timon's contempt of the treasure of gold, which he dis covers in his naked and houseless misery, marks his changed nature less than his entire disregard of the invitation of the senators to rank and power, and to be captain of Athens. Riches, for their own sake, he always placed at the lowest value. He now distributes them as moral poison. To Alcibiades, whom, following Plutarch's hint, he hates less than others, he gives it to whet the sword which threatens his country. To the courtezans he gives it, because they are the infecting curses of man. “There's more gold
So you damn others, and let this damn you, And ditches grave you all !” To Flavius he gives it tempting him to misanthropy; to the contemptible poet and painter, because they are villains; to the thieves, that in the poison of wine it may destroy them. “Here's gold; go suck the subtle blood of the grape,
'Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth, And so 'scape hanging.” Gold, which has been his own curse, has become in his the curse of all.
eyes
It is “the common whore of mankind.”
His
contemptuous distribution of the “yellow slave,” the “damned earth,” the “strong thief,” with blows and maledictions to the mean wretches who seek it from him, is the keenest sa
tire upon the state of society, which for want of it has thrown him from its bosom.
It has been said both by Schlegel and Hazlitt, that Timon is more a satire than a drama. This idea may have been derived from the little development of character which it ex hibits. Each character is placed clear and definitely formed in the page, and remains so. Timon's alone undergoes one radical change, of which we see the effect, rather than the transition. During the fourth and fifth acts, the movements of the drama are solely devised with the intention of bringing the several personages under Timon's withering denunciation. There are, however, some passages which hint of change, and are more important than the more prominent and elo quent ones in affording an estimate of Timon's mental state. By the other personages he is evidently regarded as mad. Alcibiades thus excuses his anathemas on
the
ladies
of
pleasure. “Pardon him, sweet Timandra ; for his wits Are drowned and lost in his calamities.”
The good steward expresses wondering grief at the change in his appearance, the pregnant sign of the mind's disease. “Flav. O, you gods ! Is yon despis'd and ruinous man my lord 7 Full of decay and failing 7 O, monument And wonder of good deeds evilly bestow'd What an alteration of honour has
Desperate want made What viler thing upon the earth, than friends, Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends: ” Even before this, life-weariness has suggested the intention of suicide; the life weariness of true mental disease, which is
distinct from misanthropy, and has reference only to the individual. Misanthropy of opinion may be robust, egotis tical, resisting, full of life. The misanthropy of melancholia is despairing and suicidal. “I am sick of this false world ; and will love nought But even the mere necessities upon 't.
Then, Timon, presently prepare thy grave; Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat Thy grave-stone daily : make thine epitaph, That death in me at others' lives may laugh.
It is, however, not certain whether Timon dies directly by his own hand, or indirectly by the misery which he inflicts upon himself. The exposure described in such noble poetry by Apemantus, out of place as it seems in his churlish mouth, “What, think'st that the bleak air thy boisterous chamber
lain,” &c., is in itself a kind of suicide, which has many a time and oft been resorted to by the insane. Indeed, of all forms of voluntary death, that of starvation is the most frequently attempted by them. Timon, however, does not actually refuse food; he digs for roots and eats them, while he regrets the necessity, “That nature being sick of man's unkindness Should yet be hungry”— Although his exposure to “desperate want,” which hath made him almost unrecognizable to the loving eyes of his faithful steward, may from the first have been adopted for a suicidal purpose, it is more probable that the manner of his death was still more voluntary; for however sensibly he might feel his failing health drawing to a close, it is not likely that on the day when he supported the animated dialogue with the senators, he should be able positively to foretell his death from exhaustion on the morrow.
-
“Why, I was writing of my epitaph ; It will be seen to-morrow ; my long sickness Of health, and living, now begins to mend,
And nothing brings me all things.” After mocking the senators with the pretented patriotism of a public benefit, copied from the short notice to be found in Plutarch, the invitation forsooth to the Athenian citizens to
stop their afflictions by hanging themselves upon his tree, Timon takes his farewell of men and their deeds, in words
pointing to a voluntary death, in a prepurposed time and place. “Tim. Come not to me again: but say to Athens, Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood; Whom once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover; thither come, And let my grave-stone be your oracle.—
Lips, let sour words go by, and language end : What is amiss, plague and infection mend Graves only be men's works; and death their gain Sun, hide thy beams | Timon hath done his reign. Suicide had not that place of honour among the Greeks, which it afterwards obtained among the Romans, and at the present day, has among that remote and strange people the Japanese. Yet the duty of living and bearing one's burden manfully was not fully recognised until a better religious faith instructed us, that this life is but a state of preparation for another. The suicide of Timon, whether it is effected by exposure and want, or by more direct means, has no motive recognised by the ancients as an excuse, and can only be attributed to the suggestions of a diseased mind. Whether Shakespeare intended in Timon to describe the ca reer of a madman is a question on which it is difficult, perhaps
impossible, to come to a definite conclusion. The chief objection to the affirmative would be, that all satire upon the hollowness of the world would lose much of its point if it came from the lips of an undoubted lunatic. This objection, however, loses somewhat of its validity, when it is remembered that in Lear,
Shakespeare actually has put such satire in the mouth of the maddest of his characters, during the height of the disease; and that in his devotion to the truth of nature he would
certainly have represented such misanthropy, as a monstrous growth of the mind, if it were so. Is it possible even in a state of disease? is it actually met with ? Undoubtedly, yes. Making allowance for the difference between the adorned descriptions of poetry and plain matter of fact, putting on one side the power of eloquent declamation, which belongs indeed not to the character, but
to the author, the professed misanthrope in word and in deed is met with among the insane, and, as I think, among the insane only. This malignant and inhuman passion, for such it is, takes divers forms.
Sometimes it is mere motive
less dislike; every one is obnoxious with or without cause, like Dr. Fell, in the adage. This is the malignity of Apemantus expressing itself in conduct, rather than in frank confession. . The explanation of it is best given by Timon himself that, “Ira brevis furor est, But this man's always angry.”
If anger be identical with madness, except in its duration, this exception is here excepted, and this form of madness may be said to be a life-long and universal anger.
Another form of in
sanity, not uncommon in and out of lunatic asylums, approaches more nearly to the misanthropy of Timon ; namely, that form of chronic mental disease, I know not whether to call it mania or melancholia, which constantly torments itself and others
by attributing evil motives, not like Timon's to all ranks and classes of society, but to every individual with whom the unhappy being comes in contact. The poetical misanthropy of Timon is generalised, and cannot be said to point at any individual, unless it be Apemantus. The misanthropy of reality is individualized ; it points to all persons in turn, but to one only at a time.
This form of misanthropy may, and indeed often does exist, with none of the attributes of Insanity, but as the expression of that misleading influence, which evil dispositions exercise over the judgment. In not unfrequent instances, however, it passes the limits of sanity, and presents all the features of mental disease. Hate and suspicion become constant and uncontrol able emotions; belief in the misconduct of others develops into delusions, representing the commission of actual crimes; and with these mental symptoms the physical indications of brain disease are not wanting. No task of psychological diagnosis, however, is so arduous as that of determining the point at which exaggerated natural disposition of any kind becomes actual disease ; but as the boundaries of sane mind
are left behind, difficulty and doubt vanish. When sane malignity has developed into insane misan
thropy, a remarkable change is sometimes seen in the habits of the man, resembling the self-inflicted miseries of Timon. I once knew a gentleman whose educated and acute in tellect occupied itself solely in the invention of calumnies against every person with whom he was brought into contact.
This habit of mind was associated with utter negligence of the proprieties of life, and indeed of personal decency, so that it became absolutely requisite for his own sake, that he should
receive the protection of an asylum. A more close approxi mation to the misanthropy represented by the dramatist, because more general and uninfluenced by malign feeling, was, however, presented in the case of a poor creature in whose
expulsion from that which served for his Timon's cave, I took some part. For several years I had frequently passed by a desolate-looking house, which I believed to be uninhabi ted. Any strange thing, accompanied by change, strikes one's attention, but stranger things, not so accompanied, pass by unnoticed.
So it was that this house remained in this state
for years, without anyone asking why it was so. At length in formation was received that an insane person was incarcerated within its desolate looking walls. In company with a Justice of the Peace and others, I obtained admission into the house,
and, by forcing a door, into the chamber of the anchorite. Here in gloomy mistrust and dislike of all mankind he had secluded himself for five years. Little of his history was known, except that he had travelled in all parts of the world, had returned to find great domestic affliction, and from that time had shut himself in one room ; the bare necessaries of life being Sup
plied to him by relatives who connived at his eccentricity, one of whom scarcely more sane than himself, also occupied a room in this strange home. It is astonishing that with a penurious diet, and absence of all comfort, and an absolute want of fresh
air and exercise, he retained health for so long a time. Had it not been for this self-inflicted misery and incarceration, it would have been difficult to certify that this poor man was
insane. He disliked his fellow men, and shut himself up from them ; that was all. Although not a rich man, he had property; and while it was under contemplation how he could be rescued from his voluntary misery, some relations took him under their kind protection. Had this man possessed the passionate eloquence of Timon, and been exposed to severe incitements to its use, by irritating invasions on his misanthropic privacy, he might have declaimed as Timon did ; if Timon indeed did declaim ; if silence indeed is not the
natural state of misanthropy, and all the eloquence of this drama that of the author, rather than of the character.
The character which Shakespeare has delineated in Timon, is remarkably enough the subject of the chef d'oeuvre of French comedy. The Misanthrope of Molière, however, is in many respects, a very distinct personage from that of Shakespeare. So far from being susceptible to flattery and to the blandishments of prosperity, more than half of his quarrel with society is founded upon his abhorrence of this social falsehood. Although he loudly condemns general vices, and thus accounts for his retirement from the world,
“La raison, pour mon bien, veut que je me retire; Je n'ai point surma langue un assez grand empire,” yet he detests private scandal, and reproaches his mistress for indulging in it. The dishonest praise and blame of indi viduals are equally hateful to his ears. The reason he as signs for his misanthropy, and its extent, are identical with those which Erasmus attributed to Timon; in his anger, he
says, that his aversion to man admits of no exception; “Non, elle est générale, et je hais tous les hommes; Les uns, parcequ'ils sont méchants et malfaisants,
Et les autres, pour étre aux mèchants complaisants.” He hates all mankind, because they all come under the ca tegory of rogues or flatterers. He is, however, elevated above Timon in this, that the personal injuries he himself receives are not the cause of this hatred ; on the contrary, he treats them with a noble indifference. The character of Alceste is,
on the whole, that of a magnanimous, truth-loving, truth speaking man, misplaced in a court where servility and cor ruption are triumphant. His very defects, his anger at vice and duplicity, and his promptness to express it, are those of a noble soul.
Rousseau has taken this view of the character in a severe cri
ticism, to which he has exposed Molière for degrading the dra matic art, to pander to the corrupt morals of his age, in covering virtue with ridicule, and vice with false attractions.
Other
French writers have generally dissented from this condemnation, but Rousseau's letter to D'Alembert is a fine example of analytic criticism, not to be set aside by the sneering assertion, that P he identified himself with this noble character, and felt his own vanity wounded in its unworthy treatment. Rousseau's estimate of it is irrefragibly just and logical. If he has erred at all, it is in the opinion of the impression which the character of Alceste is calculated to make. His imprudent magnanimity may have been a subject of ridicule to the parterre of Molière's time, and doubtless was so; but this view of the character was less due to the manner in which it is delineated, than to the corrupt morals and taste of that age. In better times it would be difficult to throw ridicule upon that which is intrinsically and morally excellent. An interesting anecdote, related by St. Simon, attests that this view of the character was even taken in Molière's own time by the person most interested in estimating it justly. The Duc de Montausier was generally recognized to be the original of the misanthrope, and was so indignant at the supposed insult that he threatened to have Molière beaten to death for it. When the king went to see the play, M. le Duc was compelled to go with him as his governor. After the performance the Duke sent for Molière, who was with difficulty brought to him, trembling from head to foot, expecting nothing less than death. M. Montausier, however, gave him a very different reception from that which he expected; he embraced him again and again, overwhelmed him with praises and thanks, for "if he had thought of him in drawing the character of the misanthrope, which was that of the most perfectly honest man possible, he had done him an honor which was only too great, and which he should never forget."
Rousseau positively asserts not only that Alceste was not a misanthrope in the proper sense of the word, but that no sane man can be such.
"One may say that the author has not ridiculed virtue in Alceste, but a true fault; that is to say, hatred of mankind. I reply, that it is not true that he has endowed his character with this hatred. The mere name of misanthrope must not be understood to imply that he who bears it is the enemy of the human race. A hatred of this kind would not be a defect, but a depravity of nature, and the greatest of all vices, since all the social virtues are connected with benevolence, and nothing is so directly contrary to them as inhumanity. The true misanthrope, if his existence were possible, would be a monster who would not make us laugh; he would excite our horror."
The true misanthrope, in fact, is such a character as Iago, a malevolent devil, without belief in any human goodness, without human sympathies, one who has said in his heart, "evil, be thou my good." But the very nature of such inhuman hatred would impose not only silence as to evil thoughts, but hypocritical expression of humane sentiment. The honest wide-mouthed misanthropy of Timon is wholly explicable on neither of these theories. It is neither the rough garb of sincerity and virtue, as in Alceste, nor inhuman hatred as in Iago. It is a medium between the two, inconsistent with sane mind, and explicable alone as a depravation and perversion of nature arising from disease. It is a form of insanity.
Aretaeus, describing the conduct of maniacs "in the height of the disease," remarks, "some flee the haunts of men, and going into the wilderness live by themselves."
In Caius Cassius there is a fine psychological delineation of another character, who estimates man and his motives depreciatingly. Cassius is robustly sane and self-possessed, and therefore has little in common with Timon. He would approximate more closely to Jaques did not the strong intermixture of spleen pickle him as it were from the
contagion of melancholy. In Caesar's unfriendly but graphic description, he figures as the type of cynicism, except that the envy of ambition is attributed to him which the true cynic would despise. Shakespeare's only true cynics are his fools and his madmen. "Cæs. Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o'nights:
Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Ant. Fear him not, Cæsar, he's not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman, and well given.
Cæs. 'Would he were fatter:—But I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no musick:
Seldom he smiles; or smiles in such a sort
As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit
That could be mov'd to smile at any thing.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease,
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves;
And therefore are they very dangerous."
However true the dangerous nature of such men may be, in times when despotic power can only be attacked by conspiracy, it can scarcely be so when eloquence is the most formidable assailant of established authority. Sleep o'nights is needful to sustain the energy of the day, and a fat body is often associated with a well-nourished brain of best quality. The greatest orators and some of the greatest demagogues have at least indicated a proclivity to Falstaffian proportions; witness Danton, Fox, O'Connell, John Bright, and the Bishop of Oxford. Falstaff indeed, himself says, "Give me spare men and spare me great ones," but this was only for soldiers.