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.
Shakespeare was unwilling to draw a picture 'all over ugly with
hypocrisy'. He owed this character to the good-natured solicitations
of his Muse. His mind was well said by Ben Jonson to be the 'sphere
of humanity'.

The moral sententiousness of this play equals that of Lord Bacon's
Treatise on the Wisdom of the Ancients, and is indeed seasoned with
greater variety. Every topic of contempt or indignation is here
exhausted; but while the sordid licentiousness of Apemantus, which
turns everything to gall and bitterness, shows only the natural
virulence of his temper and antipathy to good or evil alike, Timon
does not utter an imprecation without betraying the extravagant
workings of disappointed passion, of love altered to hate. Apemantus
sees nothing good in any object, and exaggerates whatever is
disgusting: Timon is tormented with the perpetual contrast between
things and appearances, between the fresh, tempting outside and the
rottenness within, and invokes mischiefs on the heads of mankind
proportioned to the sense of his wrongs and of their treacheries. He
impatiently cries out, when he finds the gold,

This yellow slave