time but my visitation: only I will
promise him an excellent piece.
I must serve him so too, tell him of an intent
that's coming toward him.
Good as the best. Promising is the very air o' the
time: it opens the eyes of expectation:
performance is ever the duller for his act; and,
but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the
deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is
most courtly and fashionable: performance is a kind
of will or testament which argues a great sickness
in his judgment that makes it.
Excellent workman! thou canst not paint a
man so bad as is thyself.
I am thinking what I shall say I have provided for
him: it must be a personating of himself; a satire
against the softness of prosperity, with a discovery
of the infinite flatteries that follow youth and opulency.
Must thou needs stand for a villain in
thine own work? wilt thou whip thine own faults in
other men? Do so, I have gold for thee.
Nay, let's seek him:
Then do we sin against our own estate,
When we may profit meet, and come too late.
True;
When the day serves, before black-corner'd night,
Find what thou want'st by free and offer'd light. Come.
I'll meet you at the turn. What a
god's gold,
That he is worshipp'd in a baser temple
Than where swine feed!
'Tis thou that rigg'st the bark and plough'st the foam,
Settlest admired reverence in a slave:
To thee be worship! and thy saints for aye
Be crown'd with plagues that thee alone obey!
Fit I meet them.
Hail, worthy Timon!
Our late noble master!
Have I once lived to see two honest men?
Sir,
Having often of your open bounty tasted,
Hearing you were retired, your friends fall'n off,
Whose thankless natures--O abhorred spirits!--
Not all the whips of heaven are large enough:
What! to you,
Whose star-like nobleness gave life and influence
To their whole being! I am rapt and cannot cover
The monstrous bulk of this ingratitude
With any size of words.
Let it go naked, men may see't the better:
You that are honest, by being what you are,
Make them best seen and known.
He and myself
Have travail'd in the great shower of your gifts,
And sweetly felt it.
Ay, you are honest men.
We are hither come to offer you our service.
Most honest men! Why, how shall I requite you?
Can you eat roots, and drink cold water? no.
What we can do, we'll do, to do