line appeared, and eight years after he was made Poet Laureate. Soon he became poor and palsy stricken, but his genius did not decay. The most graceful and tender thing he ever wrote was written in his old age. His pastoral drama, The Sad Shepherd, proves that, like Shakespeare, Jonson grew kinder and gentler as he grew near to death, and death took him in 1637. He was a great man. The power of the young Elizabethan age belonged to him; and he stands far below, but still worthily by, Shakespeare, a robust, surly, and observing dramatist.""

From Jonson's Sejanus.*

Enter Arruntius.

Arr. Still dost thou suffer, heaven! will no flame,
No heat of sin make thy just wrath to boil

In thy distemper'd bosom, and o'erflow

The pitchy blazes of impiety

Kindled beneath thy throne? Still canst thou sleep
Patient, while vice doth make an antic face

At thy dread power, and blow dust and smoke
Into thy nostrils? Jove! will nothing wake thee?
Must vile Sejanus pull thee by the beard
Ere thou wilt open thy black-lidded eye,

And look him dead? Well, snore on, dreaming gods,
And let this last of that proud giant-race

Heave mountain upon mountain, 'gainst your state-
Be good unto me, Fortune and you Powers,

Whom I, expostulating, have profaned.

I see what's equal with a prodigy,

A great, a noble Roman, and an honest,
Live an old man!—

*Sejanus was the prime minister of Tiberius Claudius Nero Cæsar, Emperor of Rome, 14-37 A.D. For eight years Sejanus possessed an undivided influence over his wicked master, and procured the death or banishment of almost every one op. posed to his own ambition-the attainment of imperial power. The Senate were servile to him, and the people gave him honors second only to those accorded to the Emperor. Tiberius at length became aware of the plans of Sejanus, and had him arrested, condemned, and put to an ignominious death.

This extract describes his eminence and the feelings of patriotic Romans toward him just before his fall.

Enter Lepidus.

O Marcus Lepidus,

When is our turn to bleed? Thyself and I,
Without our boast, are almost all the few
Left to be honest in these impious times.

Lep. What we are left to be we will be, Lucius,
Though tyranny did stare as wide as death
To fright us from it.

Arr. 'T hath so on Sabinus.

Lep. I saw him now drawn from the Gemonies,1 And, what increased the direness of the fact, His faithful dog, upbraiding all us Romans, Never forsook the corps2, but seeing it thrown Into the stream, leap'd in, and drown'd with it. Arr. O act to be envied him of us men! We are the next the hook lays hold on, Marcus. What are thy arts, good patriot, teach them me, That have preserved thy hairs to this white dye, And kept so reverend and so dear a head Safe on his comely shoulders?

Lep. Arts, Arruntius!

None but the plain and passive fortitude
To suffer and be silent; never stretch
These arms against the torrent; live at home
With my own thoughts, and innocence about me,
Not tempting the wolves' jaws: these are my arts.
Arr. I would begin to study 'em if I thought
They would secure me. May I pray to Jove
In secret and be safe? Ay, or aloud,
With open wishes, so I do not mention

Tiberius or Sejanus? Yes, I must

If I speak out.

'Tis hard that. May I think

And not be rack'd? What danger is't to dream,

Talk in one's sleep, or cough? Who knows the law? May I shake my head without a comment? say

It rains or it holds up, and not be thrown

Upon the Gemonies? These now are things
Whereon men's fortune, yea, their faith depends.

1 Steps near the Roman prison, down which bodies were thrown. 2 Corpse.

3 Its.

1 Sejanus.

Nothing hath privilege 'gainst the violent ear.
No place, no day, no hour, we see, is free,
Not our religious and most sacred times,
From some one kind of cruelty; all matter,
Nay, all occasion pleaseth. Madmen's rage,
The idleness of drunkards, women's nothing,
Jester's simplicity-all, all is good

That can be catcht at. Nor is now the event
Of any person, or for any crime,
To be expected; for 'tis always one.

I dare tell you, whom I dare better trust,
That our night-eyed Tiberius doth not see
His minion's' drifts; or, if he do, he's not
So arrant subtile as we fools do take him;
To breed a mongrel up, in his own house,
With his own blood, and, if the good gods please,
At his own throat, flesh him, to take a leap.

I do not beg it heaven; but, if the fates
Grant it these eyes, they must not wink.
Lep. They must not see it, Lucius.
Arr. Who should let them?
Lep. Zeal

And duty, with the thought he is our prince.
Arr. He is our monster: forfeited to vice
So far as no rack'd virtue can redeem him.
His loathed person fouler than all crimes:
An emperor only in his lusts. Retired
From all regard of his own fame or Rome's
Into an obscure island, where he lives
Acting his tragedies with a comic face

Amidst his rout of Chaldees; spending hours,
Days, weeks, and months, in the unkind abuse
Of grave astrology, to the bane of men,

Casting the scope of men's nativities,

And having found aught worthy in their fortune,

Kill, or precipitate them in the sea,

And boast he can mock fate. Nay, muse not; these

2 Hinder.

* Sejanus had persuaded Tiberius to retire to the island of Capres, now Capri, near Naples.

4 A Semitic people from Mesopotamia, given to astronomy and astrology.

Are far from ends1 of evil, scarce degrees.
He hath his slaughter-house at Capreæ,
Where he doth study murder as an art;
And they are dearest in his grace that can
Devise the deepest tortures. Thither, too,
He hath his boys and beauteous girls ta'en up
Out of our noblest houses, the best form'd,
Best nurtured, and most modest; what's their good
Serves to provoke his bad. Some are allured,
Some threatened; others, by their friends detained
Are ravished hence, like captives, and, in sight
Of their most grievèd parents, dealt away

2

Unto his spintries, sellaries, and slaves.

To this (what most strikes us and bleeding Rome)
He is, with all his craft, become the ward

To his own vassal, a stale catamite1,

Whom he, upon our low and suffering necks,
Hath raised from excrements to side the gods,
And have his proper sacrifice in Rome:
Which Jove beholds, and yet will sooner rive
A senseless oak with thunder than his trunk!
Lep. I'll ne'er believe but Cæsar hath some scent
Of bold Sejanus' footing. These cross points
Of varying letters and opposing consuls,
Mingling his honors and his punishments,
Feigning now ill, now well, raising Sejanus
And then depressing him, as now of late
In all reports we have it, cannot be
Empty of practise: 'tis Tiberius' art.

For having found his favorite grown too great,

And with his greatness strong; that all the soldiers

Are, with their leaders, made at his devotion;

That almost all the senate are his creatures,
Or hold on him their main dependencies,
Either for benefit or hope or fear;

And that himself hath lost much of his own,
By parting unto him; and, by th' increase
Of his rank, lusts, and rages, quite disarm'd
Himself of love or other public means

1 His extremes.

2 Lewd people.

4 One kept for unnatural purposes.

3 In addition to.

5 The dirt.

To dare an open contestation;

His subtilty hath chose this doubling line
To hold him even in: not so to fear him
As wholly put him out, and yet give check
Unto his farther boldness.

Scene II. An Apartment in Sejanus' House.

Sej. Swell, swell, my joys, and faint not to declare Yourselves as ample as your causes are.

I did not live till now; this my first hour;
Wherein I see my thoughts reach'd by my power.
My roof receives me not; 'tis air I tread,
And at each step I feel my advanced head
Knock out a star in heaven! rear'd to this height,
All my desires seem modest, poor, and slight
That did before sound impudent: 'tis place
Not blood discerns' the noble and the base.
Is there not something more than to be Cæsar?
Must we rest there? it irks t' have come so far
To be so near a stay. Caligula,

Would thou stood'st stiff, and many in our way!
Winds lose their strength when they do empty fly
Unmet of woods or buildings; great fires die
That want their matter to withstand them; so
It is our grief, and will be our loss, to know

Our power shall want opposites; unless
The gods, by mixing in the cause, would bless
Our fortune with their conquest. That were worth
Sejanus' strife, durst fates but bring it forth.

Enter Terentius, Satrius, and Natta.

Ter. Safety to great Sejanus!

Sej. Now, Terentius?

Ter. Hears not my lord the wonder?

Sej. Speak it, no.

Ter. I meet it violent in the people's mouths,

Who run in routs to Pompey's theatre

To view your statue, which, they say, sends forth
A smoke, as from a furnace, black and dreadful.
Sej. Some traitor hath put fire in: you, go see,