lowed at no great distance
on that of the other.[124]

When we turn from _Othello_ to _Timon of Athens_ we find a play of quite
another kind. _Othello_ is dramatically the most perfect of the
tragedies. _Timon_, on the contrary, is weak, ill-constructed and
confused; and, though care might have made it clear, no mere care could
make it really dramatic. Yet it is undoubtedly Shakespearean in part,
probably in great part; and it immediately reminds us of _King Lear_.
Both plays deal with the tragic effects of ingratitude. In both the
victim is exceptionally unsuspicious, soft-hearted and vehement. In both
he is completely overwhelmed, passing through fury to madness in the one
case, to suicide in the other. Famous passages in both plays are curses.
The misanthropy of Timon pours itself out in a torrent of maledictions
on the whole race of man; and these at once recall, alike by their form
and their substance, the most powerful speeches uttered by Lear in his
madness. In both plays occur repeated comparisons between man and the
beasts; the idea that 'the strain of man's bred out into baboon,' wolf,
tiger, fox; the idea that this bestial degradation will end in a furious
struggle of all with all, in which the race will perish. The
'pessimistic' strain in _Timon_ suggests to many readers, even more
imperatively than _King Lear_, the notion that Shakespeare was giving
vent to some personal feeling, whether present or past; for the signs of
his hand appear most unmistakably when the hero begins to pour the vials
of his wrath upon mankind. _Timon_, lastly, in some of the
unquestionably Shakespearean parts, bears (as it appears to me) so
strong a resemblance to _King Lear_ in style and in versification that
it is hard to understand how competent judges can suppose that it
belongs to a time at all near that of the final romances, or even that
it was written so late as the last Roman plays. It is more likely to
have been composed immediately after _King Lear_ and before
_Macbeth_.[125]

Drawing these comparisons together, we may say that, while as a work of
art and in tragic power _King Lear_ is infinitely nearer to _Othello_
than to _Timon_, in its spirit and substance its affinity with _Timon_
is a good deal the stronger. And, returning to the point from which
these comparisons began, I would now add that there is in _King Lear_ a
reflection or anticipation, however faint, of the structural weakness of
_Timon_. This weakness i