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Timon of Athens, of all the works of Shakspeare, possesses most the character of satire: a laughing satire in the picture of the parasites and flatterers, and Juvenalian in the bitterness of Timon's imprecations on the ingratitude of a false world.
Even Garrick's talent and friendship could not make Irene a success, but the performance brought Johnson a little welcome profit and enabled him to sell the book to Dodsley for a hundred pounds. In the same year, 1749, a more lasting evidence of his poetic powers was given by the appearance of The Vanity of Human Wishes, another Juvenalian imitation, but freer and bolder than the first.
So, too, fancy Greeks and Romans may be ever preferable to the true Aristophanic or Juvenalian article, imaginary Cavaliers or Puritans not at all hard to swallow, but ideal sailors, why in the world must we bear them, when we can get the originals so cheaply? When the American "Beggar's Opera" was put upon the stage, "Mose" stepped forward, the very impersonation of the Bowery. If it was low, it was at least true, a social fact. But the stage sailor is not as near probability as even the stage ship or the theatrical ocean. He is a relic of the past, a monstrous compound out of the imperfect gleanings of the Wapping dramatists of the last century. Yet all those who deal with this character of the sailor begin upon the same false notion. In their eyes the seaman is a good-natured, unsophisticated, frank, easy-going creature, perfectly reckless of money, very fond of his calling, unhappy on shore, manly, noble-hearted, generous to a degree inconceivable to landsmen. He is a child who needs to be put in leading-strings the moment he comes over the side, lest he give way to an unconquerable propensity of his to fry gold watches and devour bank-notes,
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