find Shakespeare in "Timon of Athens" is an ingenious exercise, and a not unprofitable expenditure of time. Mr. Lee, than whom there could be no higher authority, assigns to him the first two acts and the fourth, crediting George Wilkins with the third and the fifth. If, as Mr. Lee hints, Wilkins had something to do with that magnificent play "The Yorkshire Tragedy," his dramatic power must have been considerable; for there is no English playwright except Shakespeare whose fame would not be raised if it were proved that he had written "The Yorkshire Tragedy." As much cannot be said for "Timon of Athens," in which we may feel sure that Shakespeare took very little interest himself. Yet diligent search reveals some faint

trace of him, and the dust of his writings is gold. The story of the play, which may have been taken from Plutarch, from Lucian, from Painter, or from Boiardo, is singularly crude and displeasing. Timon was a wealthy Athenian citizen of the great days, the generation after Pericles, when the martyrdom of Socrates was still recent and Plato was yet alive. It is perhaps needless to say that local colour will be sought in vain. Just as Shakespeare's Verona contains an alehouse, but no amphitheatre, no market-place, and no tombs of the Scaligers; so in the Athens of Timon there are drums and fifes and other appliances of modern civilisation, but no Acropolis and no Parthenon. The play opens in the true Shakespearean manner, with an easy and natural scene which introduces the subject without the formality of an explanation. Perhaps the best example of Shakespeare's method in this respect is the dialogue between Sampson and Gregory at the beginning of "Romeo and Juliet. Here we have artists and tradesmen waiting for an audience in the hall of Timon's house. Their conversation discloses his manner of life. He is rich, open-handed, liberal, indiscriminate in his generosity, ostentatious though kindly in his patronage. He "passes," that is, he exceeds the common run of men. The painter has

made a portrait of him. The poet has written verses in his honour. All men speak well of him, and find their account in flattering him. But even on the threshold of the drama an admonitory note is struck. The poet has feigned Fortune to be throned on a high and pleasant hill, beckoning Timon to her, and multitudes follow

Timon's steps. Then he goes on in lines which we may well accept as Shakespeare's to foreshadow the μulos, the plot and moral, of the tragedy:

"When Fortune in her shift and change of mood
Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants
Which labour'd after him to the mountain's top,
Even on their knees and hands, let him slip down,
Not one accompanying his declining foot."

These words are uttered significantly enough before
Timon appears upon the stage.

He comes on talking to the servant of his old friend Ventidius, imprisoned for debt. The debt will at once be paid, and Timon's kindness will not end there. With a construction, terse and pregnant, which Shakespeare did not know to be Thucydidean, he adds:

""Tis not enough to help the feeble up,

But to support him after."

A further promise on Timon's part to provide a dowry for his servant Lucilius elicits the cynical proverb, appropriate to the story, that honesty is its own reward. Amid a chorus of gross and rather sickening flattery there enters Apemantus, by far the best and most vivid person of the drama. Timon, as will be seen, changes from one extreme to another, from universal confidence to equally universal distrust. Apemantus never changes at all. He is a cynic from the first, and with him cynicism means the natural shamelessness of the dog, not the acquired indifference of the philosopher.