ean. Who dares, who dares.
In purity of manhood stand upright
And say 'This man's a flatterer'? if one be,
So are they all: for every grise of fortune
Is smooth'd by that below: the learned pate
Ducks to the golden fool: all is oblique;
There's nothing level in our cursed natures,
But direct villany.

The reader may wish to know whether metrical tests throw any light on
the chronological position of _Timon_; and he will find such information
as I can give in Note BB. But he will bear in mind that results arrived
at by applying these tests to the whole play can have little value,
since it is practically certain that Shakespeare did not write the whole
play. It seems to consist (1) of parts that are purely Shakespearean
(the text, however, being here, as elsewhere, very corrupt); (2) of
parts untouched or very slightly touched by him; (3) of parts where a
good deal is Shakespeare's but not all (_e.g._, in my opinion, III. v.,
which I cannot believe, with Mr. Fleay, to be wholly, or almost wholly,
by another writer). The tests ought to be applied not only to the whole
play but separately to (1), about which there is little difference of
opinion. This has not been done: but Dr. Ingram has applied one test,
and I have applied another, to the parts assigned by Mr. Fleay to
Shakespeare (see Note BB.).[268] The result is to place _Timon_ between
_King Lear_ and _Macbeth_ (a result which happens to coincide with that
of the application of the main tests to the whole play): and this result
corresponds, I believe, with the general impression which we derive from
the three dramas in regard to versification.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 268: These are I. i.; II. i.; II. ii., except 194-204; in III.
vi. Timon's verse speech; IV. i.; IV. ii. 1-28; IV. iii., except
292-362, 399-413, 454-543; V. i., except 1-50; V. ii.; V. iv. I am not
to be taken as accepting this division throughout.]

NOTE T.

DID SHAKESPEARE SHORTEN _KING LEAR_?

I have remarked in the text (pp. 256 ff.) on the unusual number of
improbabilities, inconsistencies, etc., in _King Lear_. The list of
examples given might easily be lengthened. Thus (_a_) in IV. iii. Kent
refers to a letter which he confided to the Gentleman for Cordelia; but
in III. i. he had given to the Gentleman not a letter but a message.
(_b_) In III. i. again he says Cordelia will inform the Gentleman who
the sender of the message was; but from IV. iii.