Page:Tales from Shakspeare (1831).djvu/304

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
288
TALES FROM SHAKSPEARE.

the man-hater, who, "While he lived, did hate all living men, and dying wished a plague might consume all caitiffs left!"

Whether he finished his life by violence, or whether; mere distaste of life and the loathing he had for mankind brought Timon to his conclusion, was not clear, yet all men admired the fitness of his epitaph, and the consistency of his end; dying, as he had lived, a hater of mankind: and some there were who fancied a conceit in the very choice which he made of the seabeach for his place of burial, where the vast sea might weep for ever upon his grave, as in contempt of the transient and shallow tears of hypocritical and deceitful mankind.