._ The man is honest.

_Old Ath._ _Therefore he will be_, Timon.
His honesty rewards him in itself."

Warburton's comment--"If the man be honest, for that reason he will be so
in this, and not endeavour at the injustice of gaining my daughter without
my consent"--is, like almost all his comments, ingenious in blunder; he can
never see any other writer's thoughts for the mist-working swarm of his
own. The meaning of the first line the poet himself explains, or rather
unfolds, in the second. "The man is honest!"--"True;--and for that very
cause, and with no additional or extrinsic motive, he will be so. No man
can be justly called honest, who is not so for honesty's sake, itself
including its own reward." Note, that "honesty" in Shakespeare's age
retained much of its old dignity, and that contradistinction of the
_honestum_ from the _utile_, in which its very essence and definition
consist. If it be _honestum_, it cannot depend on the _utile_.

_Ib._ Speech of Apemantus, printed as prose in Theobald's edition:--

"So, so! aches contract, and starve your supple joints!"

I may remark here the fineness of Shakespeare's sense of musical period,
which would almost by itself have suggested (if the hundred positive
proofs had not been extant) that the word "aches" was then _ad libitum_, a
dissyllable--_aitches_. For read it "aches," in this sentence, and I would
challenge you to find any period in Shakespeare's writings with the same
musical or, rather dissonant, notation. Try the one, and then the other,
by your ear, reading the sentence aloud, first with the word as a
dissyllable and then as a monosyllable, and you will feel what I mean.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Cupid's speech: Warburton's correction of--

"There taste, touch, all pleas'd from thy table rise"--

into

"Th' ear, taste, touch, smell," &c.

This is indeed an excellent emendation.

Act ii. sc. 1. Senator's speech:--

... "Nor then silenc'd with
"Commend me to your master"--_and the cap_
_Plays in the right hand, thus_."

Either, methinks, "plays" should be "play'd," or "and" should be changed
to "while." I can certainly understand it as a parenthesis, an
interadditive of scorn; but it does not sound to my ear as in
Shakespeare's manner.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Timon's speech (Theobald):--

"And that unaptness made _you_ minister,
Thus to excuse yourself."

Read _your_;--at least I cannot otherwise understand the line. You made my
chance indisposition an