make a personage by geometrical proportions; the other, by taking the best parts out of divers faces to make one excellent. Such personages, I think, would please nobody but the painter that made them. Not but I think a painter may make a better face than ever was; but he must do it by a kind of felicity (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music), and not by rule. A man shall see faces, that if you examine them part by part, you shall find never a good; and yet altogether do well. If it be true that the principal part of beauty is in decent motion, certainly it is no marvel though persons in years seem many times more amiable." Understanding that Apemantus contemplated the universe, as it is herein supposed that Bacon himself did, as the actual thought of a Creative Thinker, and as essentially and to the very bottom Artist-Mind work, and that the highest beauty is in life and motion, there may be discovered in this scene a profound opinion of the true nature of the highest art:— "Tim. How likest thou this picture, Apemantus? Apem. The best, for the innocence. Tim. Wrought he not well, that painted it? Act I. Sc. 1. This remark, apparently so very cynical, and perhaps intended so to appear on the surface, may find a deeper interpretation by the light of another very cynical philosopher: "Do you think those who make senseless and motionless statues are more to be wondered at than those who make active and intelligent living animals? No, by Jupiter; since these are made, not by chance, but by intellect." Other poets followed the "customary fashion" and men's opinions: he followed the order of divine providence, the truth of nature, that true art which is always capable of advancing, and his own opinions : 1 Xen. Mem. Socratis, Lib. I. c. 4. "Apem. Yes, he is worthy of thee, and to pay thee for thy labor: he that loves to be flattered is worthy o' the flatterer. Heavens, that I were a lord!" Here, too, is his opinion of the mere man of traffic: 66 Apem. Traffic confound thee, if the gods do not! Mer. If traffic do it, the gods do it. Apem. Traffic's thy god, and thy god confound thee!" This merchant may remind us of the merchant Jew in the New Atlantis, with this difference, that, here, it is the man whose god is traffic, but there, it is "the good Jew." The play continues thus: "Tim. How dost thou like this jewel, Apemantus? Apem. Not so well as plain dealing, which will not cost a man a doit. Tim. What dost thou think 't is worth? Apem. Not worth my thinking." Act I. Sc. 1. - Timon has not yet emerged from those mines and caves, where gold and jewels are the chief treasure. Apemantus would seem to have reached the uppermost elevations of nature and those "tops of mountains," where the serenity of his contemplations was not to be disturbed by any consideration of such low things. And here, again, we have this philosopher's judgment on ostentatious piety and prayer : "Apem. Immortal gods, I crave no pelf; To some, this might appear to be in the highest degree impious, as Timon thought another saying of the churlish philosopher to be "a lascivious apprehension"; to which Apemantus replies : — "So thou apprehend'st it. Take it for thy labour." Or, by possibility, it might put them in mind of another more modern philosopher, likewise suspected of being somewhat cynical, who seems to have apprehended many things differently from the common way; for, being of the same opinion, doubtless, that this author was, when he made the Duke in the disguise of " power divine" say, "there is so great a fever on goodness, that the dissolution of it must cure it," so he says: "There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." 1 So Apemantus seems to have thought a man had enough to do to pray for himself; and perhaps, also, he had that reverence for himself, which is, "next religion, the chiefest bridle of all vices," and such chastity as was never seen anywhere else than in the island of Bensalem. All this is made subservient to the introduction of the main subject of the play, the character of Lord Timon and the changes of fortune, which the poet is made to announce as the subject of that very work which he had come to dedicate to the great lord; as if the author himself would speak in character. And we may say of this piece as the poet said to the picture, "to the dumbness of the gesture, One might interpret." It is announced thus: "Poet. I have in this rough work shap'd out a man, Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug With amplest entertainment. . . . .... I'll unbolt to you. Paint. How shall I understand you? ["A noble man and of much worth," says Lucian.] There is to be some 66 - Act 1. Sc. 1. steep and rough" work in the 1 Thoreau's Walden, 80. woods among "thorns and briers," not levelled particularly; but a survey is to be taken of "all conditions"; and even Apemantus is constrained to drop the knee before the great lord, as did the other philosopher, who said: "I come with my pitcher to Jacob's well as others do." The poet continues : 66 Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill, Feign'd Fortune to be thron'd: the base o' the mount Is rank'd with all deserts, all kinds of natures, [that is to say, all "characters of natures and dispositions," hitherto too much omitted in Morality and Policy,]— That labour on the bosom of this sphere To propagate their states: amongst them all, This throne, this Fortune, and this hill, methinks, Bowing his head against the steepy mount To climb his happiness, would be well express'd In our condition. Poet. When Fortune, in her shift and change of mood, Which labour'd after him to the mountain's top, Not one accompanying his declining foot. Paint. A thousand moral paintings I can show 'Tis common: That shall demonstrate these quick blows of fortune, Surely, this "high and pleasant hill," this "steepy mount," ranked with all deserts and all kinds of natures at the base, and "this mountain's top," which all that labor on the bosom of this sphere seek to climb in search of happiness, can be no other than that same hill of the Muses, and those "tops of mountains," which the traveller, on "the steep and rough," or "the even and level," road of active life, was to "climb by regular succession, with persevering and indefatigable patience," and by the "several degrees of ascent, as if it had been a Scala Coeli," before he should reach a serene station on the height of things; and these "paths of contemplation," placed thus visibly before the eyes in a kind of representative speaking picture, exhibiting "the whole process of the mind and the continuous frame and order of discovery" in the given subject, may be taken as an example of the new method, which those "types and models" were to illustrate; and this is that use of poetry that "tendeth to demonstrate and illustrate that which is taught or delivered," as by a thousand moral paintings." 66 Timon was not one of those who had reached the mountain's top, but only "a more disengaged and arduous station towards the foot, and was still bowing his head against the steepy mount. But the poet himself had attained that uppermost elevation, and was able to look down upon him from that high cliff and platform, which is more amply sketched in the Essay of Truth, thus: — "The poet that beautified the sect that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of Truth, (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene,) and to see the errors and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below'; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride." And so that it be done by a Solomon of the New Atlantis, who wears "an aspect as if he pitied men." The scene next shifts upon the marriage of the old Athenian's daughter, a fair maid, bred "in qualities of the best"; and Lord Timon, like the Tirsan, takes due care that it shall be a chaste marriage, with due consent of |