Women nearest: but men, men are the things themselves.
Apemantus, it is said, 'loved few things better than to abhor
himself'. This is not the case with Timon, who neither loves to
abhor himself nor others. All his vehement misanthropy is forced,
up-hill work. From the slippery turns of fortune, from the turmoils
of passion and adversity, he wishes to sink into the quiet of the
grave. On that subject his thoughts are intent, on that he finds
time and place to grow romantic. He digs his own grave by the sea-
shore; contrives his funeral ceremonies amidst the pomp of
desolation, and builds his mausoleum of the elements.
Come not to me again; but say to Athens,
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;
Which once a-day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover.--Thither come,
And let my grave-stone be your oracle.
And again, Alcibiades, after reading his epitaph, says of him:
These well express in thee thy latter spirits:
Though thou abhorred'st in us our human griefs,
Scorn'd'st our brain's flow, and those our droplets, which
From niggard nature fall; yet rich conceit
Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
On thy low grave--
thus making the winds his funeral dirge, his mourner the murmuring
ocean; and seeking in the everlasting solemnities of nature oblivion
of the transitory splendour of his lifetime.
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