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moral of the play hath an exact conformity to the action of the chief person in the drama. Sejanus is represented without any principle of conscience, ambitious, and a contemner of all religion, with the power and providence of the gods. His fall, therefore, considered as a punishment for his neglect of the gods, must naturally insinuate, that obedience to them is the only foundation of happiness; and that lawless and irregular ambition is constantly attended with destruction. This moral is inculcated in these last lines. WHAL.

This tragedy is much too lightly estimated. It wants, indeed, passion and interest for the general reader: but the scholar will find in it more to admire than blame. All the dramatis personæ, from the high spirited and untractable Agrippina, to the most supple follower of the favourite, are marked with truth and vigour but it is in the characters of Tiberius and Sejanus that the poet hath put forth his strength. The profound art and deep dissimulation of the former, as contrasted with the versatile and shallow cunning of the latter, are pourtrayed with a most skilful and discriminating hand: so fully and happily indeed has Jonson entered into the character of this subtle and sanguinary tyrant, that his drama might have been more appositely termed the triumph of Tiberius than the Fall of Sejanus.

The voluntary death of Silius in the senate-house, after a defence worthy of the best times of the republic, is an incident at once affecting and dramatical: nor is the justification of Cremutius Cordus, in the same scene, to be passed without praise. The last act is particularly striking, both from the lively and picturesque representation of the sacrifice to Fortune, and the artful developement of the plot against Sejanus. Had it concluded, as it ought, with the death of this personage, it might have been securely paralleled for spirit and fect with the catastrophe of many of our most celebrated pieces.

Jonson has beautifully pointed out the moral of this drama in the concluding lines: it is but justice to him to add, that no play of his own or later times, abounds so much in moral and political maxims of high import as SEJANUS; and though some, perhaps, may incline to doubt his "height of elocution," yet all will acknowledge, that "in fulness and frequency of sentence, he has discharged the offices of a tragic writer."

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NEVER, most equal Sisters, had any man a wit so presently excellent, as that it could raise itself; but there must come both matter, occasion, commenders, and favourers to it. If this be true, and that the fortune of all writers doth daily prove it, it behoves the careful to provide well towards these accidents; and, having acquired them, to preserve that part of reputation most tenderly, wherein the benefit of a friend is also defended. Hence is it, that I now render myself grateful, and am studious to justify the bounty of your act; to which, though your mere authority were satisfying, yet it being an age wherein poetry and the professors of it hear so ill on all sides, there will a reason be looked for in the subject. It is certain, nor can it with any forehead be opposed, that the too much license of poetasters in this time, hath much deformed their mistress; that, every day, their manifold and manifest ignorance doth stick unnatural reproaches upon her: but for their petulancy, it were an act of the greatest injustice, either to let the learned suffer, or so divine a skill (which indeed should not be attempted with unclean hands)

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Hear so ill,] A mere latinism (tam male audiunt) for-are so ill spoken of. It is used by Spenser,

"If old Aveugle's son so evil hear;"

and, again, by Jonson, in Catiline,

"And glad me doing well, though I hear ill."

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