it is the result of a bad heart, in the other that of a per verted reason. If all men were true and good, they would be the more offensive to the churlish disposition of Ape mantus, who is an ingrained misanthrope, and as such is recognized and abhorred by Timon himself. He seeks Timon to vex him—“always a villain's office, or a fool's ;” he attri butes Timon's conduct to the meanest motives, a madman before, he is now a fool; “This is in thee a nature but infected,
A poor unmanly melancholy sprung From change of fortune.” He recommends Timon to play the part he was undone by— a base flatterer; and that he should turn rascal to have his
wealth again, that he might again distribute it to rascals. He accuses him of being an imitator—“Thou dost affect my manners;” of putting on the sour cold habit of his nakedness and melancholy from mere want, and of the capacity to be a courtier, were he not a beggar. Timon estimates the currish spirit which thus attacks him, at its true value. “Why should'st thou hate men? they never flattered thee?” He replies, “If thou had'st not been born the worst of men Thou hadst been a knave and a flatterer.”
Apemantus, indeed, is a real misanthrope, who judges of man by his own bad heart. It was necessary to the drama that he should speak his thoughts, but naturally such a man would only express his antagonism to mankind in his actions. Such misanthropes are too common; every malevolent villain being, in fact, one of them, although selfishness in league with badness may counsel hypocrisy. Boileau recognises this in his lines on the malignant hypocrite of Society : “En vain ce misanthrope, aux yeux tristes et sombres, Veut, par un air riant, en éclaircir les ombres:
