Chapter 75

“_Arruntius._ The name Tiberius, I hope, will keep, howe’er he hath foregone The dignity and power.

_Silius._ Sure, while he lives.

_Arr._ And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail, To the brave issue of Germanicus; And they are three: too many (ha?) for him To have a plot upon?

_Sil._ I do not know The heart of his designs; but, sure, their face Looks farther than the present.

_Arr._ By the gods, If I could guess he had but such a thought, My sword should cleave him down,” &c.

The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman republican, to whom Tiberius must have appeared as much a tyrant as Sejanus, with his James-and-Charles-the-First zeal for legitimacy of descent in this passage, is amusing. Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first who could properly be called a republican. My recollections of Buchanan’s works are too faint to enable me to judge whether the historian is not a fair exception.