Afer. And prosecute

All under name of treason.d

Var. I conceive.

Enter SABINUS, GALLUS, LEPIDUS, and ARRUN

TIUS.

Sab. Drusus being dead, Cæsar will not be here.

Gal. What should the business of this senate

be?

Arr. That can my subtle whisperers tell you:

we

That are the good-dull-noble lookers on,
Are only call'd to keep the marble warm.
What should we do with those deep mysteries,
Proper to these fine heads? let them alone.
Our ignorance may, perchance, help us be saved
From whips and furies.

Gall. See, see, see their action!

Arr. Ay, now their heads do travail, now they work;

Their faces run like shittles; they are weaving Some curious cobweb to catch flies.

Arr. What, so low!

Gal. O yes,

They must be seen to flatter Cæsar's grief,

Though but in sitting.

Var. Bid us silence.
Præ. Silence!

a Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 79. Sed cuncta quæstione majestatis exercita.

e Tacit. eod. Lib. iv. p. 76. Consulesque sede vulgari per speciem mæstitia sedentes.

Var. Fathers conscript, may this our present

meeting

Turn fair, and fortunate to the common-wealth!

Enter SILIUS, and other Senators.

Præ. Silius stand forth,

The consul hath to charge thee.

Lic. Room for Cæsar.

Arr. Is he come too! nay then expect a trick. Sab. Silius accused! sure he will answer nobly.

Enter TIBERIUS attended.

Tib. We stand amazed, fathers, to behold This general dejection. Wherefore sit

g

Rome's consuls thus dissolved, as they had lost
All the remembrance both of style and place?
It not becomes. No woes are of fit weight,
To make the honour of the empire stoop:
Though I, in my peculiar self may meet
Just reprehension, that so suddenly,

And, in so fresh a grief, would greet the senate,
When private tongues, of kinsmen and allies,
Inspired with comforts, lothly are endured,

f Præfatio solennis Consulum Rom. vid Bar. Briss. de for. Lib. ii.

& Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 76. JONS.

Gallus had just before taken notice of the consuls descending from their proper places to an inferior seat, in complaisance to Cæsar's grief for the death of Drusus. Tiberius, on his entrance, reproves them for this dispiritedness. WHAL.

The face of men not seen, and scarce the day,
To thousands that communicate our loss."
Nor can I argue these of weakness; since
They take but natural ways; yet I must seek
For stronger aids, and those fair helps draw out
From warm embraces of the common-wealth.
"Our mother, great Augusta, 's struck with time,
Our self imprest with aged characters,
Drusus is gone, his children young and babes;
Our aims must now reflect on those that may
Give timely succour to these present ills,
And are our only glad-surviving hopes,
The noble issue of Germanicus,

Nero and Drusus: might it please the consul
Honour them in, they both attend without.
I would present them to the senate's care,
And raise those suns of joy that should drink up'
These floods of sorrow in your drowned eyes.
Arr. By Jove, I am not Oedipus enough

To understand this Sphynx.

Sab. The princes come.

Enter NERO and DRUSUS junior.

Tib. Approach you, noble Nero, noble Drusus. These princes, fathers, when their parent died, I gave unto their uncle, with this prayer, That though he had proper issue of his own, He would no less bring up, and foster these, Than that self-blood; and by that act confirm Their worths to him, and to posterity.

• That communicate our loss.] Share in our loss, a latinism. WHAL.

7 And raise those suns of joy that should drink up, &c.] The quarto reads,

And raise those springs of joy that should exhaust, &c.

Drusus ta'en hence, I turn my prayers to you,
And 'fore our country, and our gods, beseech
You take, and rule Angustus' nephew's sons,
Sprung of the noblest ancestors; and so
Accomplish both my duty, and your own.
Nero, and Drusus, these shall be to you
In place of parents, these your fathers, these;
And not unfitly: for you are so born,

As all your good, or ill's the common-wealth's. Receive them, you strong guardians; and blest gods,

Make all their actions answer to their bloods:
Let their great titles find increase by them,
Not they by titles. Set them as in place,
So in example, above all the Romans:
And may they know no rivals but themselves."
Let Fortune give them nothing; but attend
Upon their virtue: and that still come forth
Greater than hope, and better than their fame.
Relieve me, fathers, with your general voice.
Senators. May all the gods consent to Cæsar's
wish,

And add to any honours that may.crown
The hopeful issue of Germanicus!

Tib. We thank you, reverend fathers, in their right.

And may they know no rivals but themselves.] In the Double Falsehood, brought out by Mr. Theobald as written by Shakspeare, is this line:

"None but himself can be his parallel,"

a mode of expression, which drew on him the ridicule of wits and critics. In vindication of himself he produced many similar passages from the classics, &c. and against this verse of Jonson, in the margin of his copy, he hath written parallel, as an instance of the like kind. I will add another from the Dumb Knight, 1608, A. 1. S. 1.

"She is herself, compared with herself,

For but herself she hath no companion." WHAL.

Arr. If this were true now! but the space, the space

Between the breast and lips-Tiberius' heart
Lies a thought farther than another man's. [Aside.
Tib. My comforts are so flowing in my joys,
As, in them, all my streams of grief are lost,
No less than are land-waters in the sea,

Or showers in rivers; though their cause was such,

As might have sprinkled ev'n the gods with tears: Yet, since the greater doth embrace the less, We covetously obey.

Arr. Well acted, Cæsar.

[Aside.

Tib. And now I am the happy witness made

Of your so much desired affections

To this great issue, I could wish, the Fates
Would here set peaceful period to my days;
However to my labours, I entreat,

And beg it of this senate, some fit ease.

Arr. Laugh, fathers, laugh: have you no spleens about you?

Tib. The burden is too heavy I sustain On my unwilling shoulders; and I pray It may be taken off, and reconferred·

[Aside.

h Tacit. Lib. iv. p. 76. Ad vana et toties inrisa revolutus de reddenda Rep. utque consules, seu quis alius regimen susciperent.

It may be added that Jonson is perfectly justified in putting this language into the mouth of Arruntius; as both he and his friend Asinius Gallus, were well known to be hostile to the new order of things, and indeed had been pointed out as determined republicans by Augustus, in one of his last conversations with Tiberius. They had also detected the hypocrisy of the latter, when, on another occasion, he had expressed a wish, as here, to share the burden of the empire with the senate, and bluntly demanded what part he would choose to take on himself a question which completely silenced Tiberius, and which, though he openly expressed no displeasure at it, he neither forgot nor forgave.