at his overloaded board, seeks him in the forest to offer something better than roots to mend his feast. His steward, Flavius, approaches him in his calamity with a tender of his duteous service. Alcibiades, the most honored of his guests, and who never had received any favors at his hands, offers him assistance unasked. These touches of kindness might have abated his censure, and made him waver in his opinions that he should find in the woods

"The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind."

But no. The feeling which was at the root of his madness is as conspicuous in his reception of these offers, as in all other parts of his conduct. He patronizes to the end. He is touched by the devotion of Flavius, because he recognises Timon in the light of a master; he declines the gold of Alcibiades, because he wishes to show that he has more gold, and can still lavish it; but Apemantus he spurns. He will not accept assistance from a beggar, and a beggar upon whom it would be no matter of pride to waste his bounty, even if the perverse snarler would receive it.

Insanity, arising from pride, is the key of the whole character: pride indulged, manifesting itself indirectly in insane. prodigality-pride mortified, directly in insane hatred. Apemantus was wrong when he told him that he was long a madman, and then a fool. He should have reversed it. Timon was first a fool, and then a madman.* Alcibiades sees at a glance that

"his wits

Are drowned and lost in his calamities;"

and for such a catastrophe nothing can be a more unerring preparation than the stubborn will of pride. 'Assuredly,"

* Schlegel pronounces Timon to be a fool in his generosity; a madman in his discontent; every where wanting in the wisdom which enables men in all things to observe the due measure. — M.

says the Laureate, "in most cases, madness is more frequently a disease of the will than of the intellect. When Diabolus appeared before the town of Mansoul, and made his oration to the citizens at Eargate, Lord Will-be-will was one of the first that was for consenting to his words, and letting him into the town." Well may Dr. Southey conclude his speculations on this subject by saying, "In the humorist's course of life, there is a sort of defiance of the world and the world's law; indeed, any man who departs widely from its usages, avows this; and it is, as it ought to be, an uneasy and uncomfortable feeling wherever it is not sustained by a high state of excitement, and that state, if it be lasting, becomes madness."* The Laureate in this sentence has written an unconscious commentary on the Timon of Shakespeare. The soul-stung Athenian, when he "made his everlasting mansion

Upon the beached verge of the salt flood,"

called himself a misanthrope :-he was a madman!

The text of Timon of Athens is about the most corrupt of the plays. I suggest a few alterations. Act III., scene 1. Lucullus, wishing to bribe Flavius, says, Here's three solidores for thee." Steevens declares this coin to be from the mint of the poet. It is saludores, i. e., saluts-d'or, a piece coined in France by our Henry V.; see Holinshed, Ruding, Ducange, &c. It is mentioned by Rabelais more than once.

Act IV., scene 3.

"Raise me this beggar, and denude the lord,

The senator shall bear contempt hereditary,
The beggar native honor."

"The Doctor," &c., vol. iii., pp. 272 and 281. I believe no secret is violated in attributing this work to Dr. Southey.-W. M. [Maginn had already affiliated "The Doctor" upon Southey, in an elaborate and analytic review, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine in 1837-'38. This may be mentioned as one of the best criticisms ever written by Maginn, and no collection of his works can be complete without it. Much about the time when these articles appeared (a little earlier, in fact), the late Horace Wallace Binney had published a critique in the New York Knickerbocker Magazine, showing by a clear course of inductive reasoning that none but Southey could have written "The Doctor."-M.

Read "Robe me this beggar," i. e., Array the beggar in the robes of the senator, and reduce the senator to the nakedness of the beggar, and contempt and honor will be awarded according to their appearance.

Act IV., scene 3. Timon, addressing gold, says,

"O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce

"Twixt natural son and sire!"

Read "kin-killer," i. e., destroyer of all kindred affection. King-killing was no crime in Athens, where, as Shakespeare knew, there was no king; and all Timon's apostrophes to the wicked power of gold relate not to the artificial laws of society, but to the violations of natural ties, as between son and sire, husband and wife.

Same scene.

"Thou bright defiler

Of Hymen's purest bed! thou valiant Mars!

Thou ever young, fresh, loved, and delicate wooer," &c. Perhaps fresh-lived.

NO. VI.-POLONIUS.

THIS is a character which few actors like to perform.* Custom exacts that it must be represented as a comic part, and yet it wants the stimulants which cheer a comedian. There are no situations or reflections to call forth peals of laughter, or even fill the audience with ordinary merriment. He is played as a buffoon; but the text does not afford the adjuncts of buffoonery;

* Dr. Ulrici, who puts forth high pretensions to be considered a superlatively critical authority upon Shakespeare, speaks of Polonius, from first to last, in a contemptuous manner-as a fool. He calls him "the old dotard Polonius," he speaks of "the pretended wisdom of a hoary fool,”-he declares that "Polonius pays the penalty of his foolish curiosity and his empty cunning, with which he thinks he can see through and manage every thing,"—and he winds up with a cut at "the folly of Polonius." Schlegel offers no remarks on the character of Polonius, but a greater than Ulrici or Schlegel-the illustrious Goethe himself, thus considers it in his Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, which, it may be noted, contains a copious criticism on the tragedy of Hamlet. He says, "One evening, Serlo [the manager of a country-theatre in Germany] was very merry in his remarks about the character of Polonius, and the manner in which it should be performed. 'I shall endeavor,' said he, 'to represent a very worthy man in a favorable light. I shall exert myself to portray his various characteristics in a becoming manner, his repose and confidence, his emptiness and self-importance, his pliancy and meanness, his candor and sycophancy, his sincere roguery and deceptive truth. I will paint this grey-headed, time-serving, and patient old rogue in the most courtly colors, and the occasionally bold strokes of our author's pencil will prove of some service to my task. I will speak like a book where I am prepared, and like a simpleton when I am in good spirits. I shall be absurd enough to coincide with every one, and clever enough never to notice when I am turned into ridicule. I have not often found a part which affords me so much malicious satisfaction.""-M.

and, in order to supply their place, antic gesture and grimace are resorted to by the puzzled performer. It is indeed no wonder that he should be puzzled, for he is endeavoring to do what the author never intended. It would not be more impossible—if we be allowed to fancy degrees of impossibility—to perform the pantomimic Pantaloon seriously in the manner of King Lear, than to make the impression which Shakespeare desired that Polonius should make, if he be exhibited in the style of the dotard of Spanish or Italian comedy, or the Sganarelle whom Molière has borrowed from them. There is some resemblance in Lord Ogleby; but we can not persuade ourselves to think that George Colman, elder or younger, could have written any part in Hamlet. I doubt not that both thought their own comedies far superior.

Polonius is a ceremonious courtier; and no more ridicule attaches to him than what attaches to lords of the bedchamber, or chamberlains, or other such furniture of a court in general.* It is deemed necessary that kings should be hedged not only by the divinity of their regal honors, but by the more corporal entrenchments of officers of state. In fact it must be so; and in every history of the world we find these functionaries, differing only in name. We know not the internal arrangements of

Polonius is a perfect character in its kind; nor is there any foundation for the objections which have been made to the consistency of this part. It is said that he acts very foolishly and talks very sensibly. There is no inconsistency in that. Again, that he talks wisely at one time and foolishly at another; that his advice to Laertes is very sensible, and his advice to the King and Queen on the subject of Hamlet's madness very ridiculous. But he gives the one as a father, and is sincere in it; he gives the other as a mere courtier, a busy-body, and is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent. In short, Shakespeare has been accused of inconsistency in this and other characters, only because he has kept up the distinction which there is in nature, between the understandings and the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of their ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not a fool, but he makes himself appear one. His folly, whether in his actious or speeches, comes under the head of impropriety of intention.-HAZLITT.