"Nor resumes no care," is quite surely a misprint for "no reserve, no care," which is the reading found in Mr. Collier's folio. But there is another confessed obscurity in this passage, in the last line, to obviate which I confidently offer the following correction of a very natural typographical error.

"Never miud,

Was truly so unwise, to be so kind,

Mr. Collier's folio offers surely, which is right as to sense, but not like enough in the trace of the letters.*

* Truly had been on the margin of my Shakespeare for a long time before the discovery of Mr. Collier's folio. I find in Mr. Singer's Vindication &c., that he has a corrected folio in which truly also appears.

"Flav. I have retir'd me to a wasteful cock, And set mine eyes at flow."

Sir Thomas Hanmer interpreted "wasteful cock" 'a cockloft or garret!' and Bishop Warburton agreed with him. Pope had the effrontery to change "wasteful cock" to lonely room. These be thy editors, O Shakespeare! Mr. Knight thinks it should be "from a wasteful cock," &c. Why this trouble? Honest Flavius says,

How can this be tortured to mean any thing else than that, when the casks were running with wine, which was wasted on Timon's parasites, Flavius sat down by them, and wept at the ruinous profuseness of his master's hospitality. It seems impossible that this should not have been the first and only construction put upon the passage by any reader.

ACT III. SCENE 1.

"Flam. Thou disease of a friend, and not himself!

Has friendship such a faint and milky heart,

It turns in less than two nights? O ye gods

I feel my master's passion! This slave
Unto his honour, has my lord's meat in him:
Why should it thrive, and turn to nutriment,
When he is turned to poison?"

There is no semblance of a reason for calling Lucullus

"a slave unto his honour." Monck Mason is evidently right in reading,

"This slave

Unto this hour has my lord's meat in him."

Lucullus was the very reverse of punctilious as to honor: to suppose that "this slave unto his honour," means 'this slave to Timon,' is puerile in the extreme,-unsufferable : whereas the short time which has passed since Lucullus was the guest of Timon is pointed out by a truly Shakespearian turn of expression, according to Mason's correction of the obvious typographical error.

SCENE 2.

"Luc. What a wicked beast was I, to disfurnish myself against such a good time, when I might have shown myself honourable! how unluckily it happened, that I should purchase the day before for a little part, and undo a great deal of honour!"

Purchasing "for a little part" has no meaning. The obscurity of the sentence is owing to a transposition of the printing office; which Jackson, himself a practical printer, thus easily corrects.

"how unluckily it happened that I should purchase the day before; and, for a little part, undo a great deal of honour."

ACT IV. SCENE 1.

"Tim. Let me look back upon thee. O, thou wall That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth,

And fence not Athens."

Thus the original is carefully pointed; but subsequent editions, except Mr. Knight's, have removed the period in the first line, placed an exclamation mark in the second, and begun there a new sentence, reading thus:

"Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall

That girdles in those wolves! Dive in the earth
And fence not Athens."

What a wrong to Shakespeare and his readers! Timon, leaving Athens in disgust, turns to look back upon it,-the place of his triumphs and his humiliation. He pauses and ponders on his life and the experience he has had of his fellow men in Athens, and then breaks forth, "O thou wall that girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth!" The change from the original accomplishes nothing but the destruction of the finer beauties of the passage,-making Timon turn to look upon a wall instead of upon Athens.

We do not turn our backs from our buried friends, we turn them to or on them: nor do flatterers slink away to buried fortunes,-they slink from them. By one of those almost unaccountable accidents which occur in the printing office, these words have changed places, as Monck Mason has pointed out. We should evidently read:

"As we do turn our backs To our companion, thrown into his grave;

So his familiars from his buried fortunes
Slink all away.

"Flav. Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt Since riches point to misery and contempt?

Who would be so mock'd with glory, or to live

But in a dream of friendship."

In Mr. Collier's folio this passage is insufferably altered in three several places. It is evidently corrupt; but the change of a letter only is necessary to make it plain. Obviously "to" is a misprint for so, in the last line but one. Read,

"Who would be so mock'd with glory, and so live

But in a dream of friendship?"

Timon

The so, in both cases, meaning 'thus,' of course. having been mocked with glory, and the friendship in which he had trusted proving but a dream, the Steward askswho would be rich to be "so mocked," or "so live."

SCENE 3.

"Tim. Thou art a slave, whom fortune's tender arm

With favour never clasped, but bred a dog,

Had'st thou, like us, from our first swath, proceeded

The sweet degrees that this brief world affords

To such as may the passive drugs of it

Freely command, thou would'st have plung'd thyself
In general rio

Johnson would change "drugs" to drudges; and Mr.