"That all the abhorred things o'the earth amend,

By being worse than they."

This thought is introduced in King John, Act 4, Scene 3:

"All murders past do stand excus'd in this;
"And this, so sole and so unmatchable,
"Shall give a holiness, a purity,

"To the yet unbegotten sin of time,
"And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest,
Exampled by this heinous spectacle.

634. "Shall's have a play of this ?".

"

In the fourth act we found this barbarism before:

Where shall's lay him ?"

637. "I had a feigned letter of my master's."

Pisanio is unwilling to disclose to the king the savage jealousy of Posthumus: the letter was not feigned.

639. "The whole world shall not save him."

The king is in a very vindictive and ungrateful humour.

640.

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Those arts they have, as I

"Could put into them.”

The instances of harsh construction and false grammar that abound in an unusual measure in this play, are, I think, chiefly to be ascribed to sophistication.

641. "

- Beaten for loyalty "Excited me to treason.'

This is a very vicious expression-the passive participle is made the nominative noun: it should be" the being beaten," &c.

643. "

O rare instinct !"

Here, contrary to general usage in these works, instinct has the accent on the first syllable.

645.“

Made you finish."

Finish," for "die," occurred before.

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Take that life,

"Which I so often owe."

i. e. Which I so often have forfeited: but it is strangely expressed.

It will be impossible for me to entertain a belief that the whole of this play, or even a very large portion of it, is of the hand of Shakspeare, or of any one author: it seems sometimes to be a little in the style of Beaumont and Fletcher, and sometimes, in places, perfectly in the style of the author of the obscure and unintelligible parts of the Tempest; which no attentive critic can possibly attribute to our poet, after a perusal of his earliest works, wherein no crudities are to be found.

B. STRUTT.

TIMON OF ATHENS.

ACT I. SCENE I.

5. Timon's House.- Enter Poet, Painter, Jeweller, Merchant, &c.

It is clear the dialogue was intended to be metrical; but it has been miserably deranged: the commencement might be regulated in some such way as this:

Poet. "Good day, good sir."
Paint. "

I'm glad to see you sir."

6. "A most incomparable man; breath'd as it were."

There is no force or use in the word "most, before "incomparable;" and, as it only loads the verse, it should be dismissed: the line would be complete,

"Incomparable man; breath'd as it were," &c. 7. "He passes," &c.

This is lame: I suppose it was written,

Jew. "And rich: here is a water; look you."

"Are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication."

8. "Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes." Which flows naturally forth-is not with violence extracted.

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Our gentle flame

"Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies "Each bound it chafes."

The allusion seems to be to the retreat of the waters, after their assault upon the shores; but congruity, as Mr. Henley remarks, is not, perhaps, to be looked for in the language of this poetaster.

9. "Let's see your piece.”

The metre is defective—we might read :

Poet. "Let's see your piece."

Paint. "

10.

It is a goodly piece."

How this grace

"Speaks his own standing."

Perhaps the obscurity of this passage was designed in the affected expression of the poetaster, and yet the remainder of the speech is of a very different character:

What mental power

"This eye shoots forth! how big imagination "Moves in this lip."

12. "How this lord's follow'd."

To this hemistic might be added, with a sup

plementary word or two, that other, in the Painter's next speech:

Look you now, there's more."

14. "Glib and slippery creatures,"

Means, I believe, loose, pliant, unsteady people -such as are not to be relied on.

"The glass-fac'd flatterer."

Dr. Johnson's interpretation is elegant and ingenious; but, I believe, the glass-fac'd flatterer · is, rather, he who by his looks flatters his patron, as a mirror does the vanity of those who are fond of composing their countenances at it.

15.

'Tis conceiv'd to scope."

i. e. Says Dr. Johnson, properly imagined, appositely, to the purpose: but is it not rather widely, extensively imagined ?-is it not "the big imagination," of which we heard a little before?

This, I believe, means no more than that these flatterers affected to hold their existence as dependent on Timon, and to breathe the common air only by his permission.

17. "'Tis common."

This fragment might be admitted into the following line, by withdrawing from the latter the epithet "moral," which is unnecessary :

" 'Tis common, a thousand paintings I can shew."