es.--What have you there?

We perceive that he is a poet, and a rather rhetorical than sincere one.
He has the art, but, as we shall see, not the heart.

_Painter_. A picture, Sir.--And when comes your book forth?

_Poet_. Upon the heels of my presentment, Sir--
Let's see your piece.
_Painter_. 'Tis a good piece.

We know that the Poet has come to make his presentment. The Painter,
the more modest of the two, wishes his work to be admired, but is
apprehensive, and would forestall the Poet's judgment. He means, it is a
"tolerable" piece.

_Poet_. So 'tis: this comes off well and excellent.

_Painter_. Indifferent.

_Poet_. Admirable. How this grace
Speaks his own standing! What a mental power
This eye shoots forth! How big imagination
Moves in this lip! To the dumbness of the gesture
One might interpret.

He, at all events, means to flatter the Painter,--or he is so habituated
to ecstasies that he cannot speak without going into one. But with what
Shakspearean nicety of discrimination! The "grace that speaks his own
standing," the "power of the eye," the "imagination of the lip," are all
true; and so is the natural impulse, in one of so fertile a brain as a
poet from whom verse "oozes" to "interpret to the dumb gesture,"--to
invent an appropriate speech for the figure (Timon, of course) to be
uttering. And all this is but to preoccupy our minds with a conception
of the lord Timon!

_Painter_. It is a pretty mocking of the life.
Here's a touch; is't good?

_Poet_. I'll say of it
It tutors Nature: artificial strife
Lives in these touches livelier than life.

He has thought of too fine a phrase; but it is in character with all his
fancies.

[_Enter certain Senators, and pass over._

_Painter_. How this lord's followed!

_Poet_. The senators of Athens: happy men!

This informs us who they are that pass over. The Poet also keeps up the
Ercles vein; while the Painter's eye is caught.

_Painter_. Look, more!

_Poet_. You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.

I have, in this rough work, shaped out a man
Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug
With amplest entertainment: my free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of wax: no levelled malice
Infects one comma in the course I hold:
But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind.

This flight of rhetoric is intended to produce