mous for this family to appropriate
as wives, so many ladies that in their estimate were eligible in that
character. Such, at least in the stinging jest of Lamia, was the Flavian
rule of conduct. And his friend Titus, therefore, simply as the brother of
Domitian, simply as a Flavian, he affected to regard as indirectly providing
a wife, when he urged his friend by marrying to enrol himself as a
_pillagee_ elect.

The latter jest, therefore, when once apprehended, speaks broadly and
bitingly for itself. But the other--what can it possibly mean? For centuries
has that question been reiterated; and hitherto without advancing by one
step nearer to solution. Isaac Casaubon, who about 230 years since was the
leading oracle in this field of literature, writing an elaborate and
continuous commentary upon Suetonius, found himself unable to suggest any
real aids for dispersing the thick darkness overhanging the passage. What he
says is this:--'Parum satisfaciunt mihi interpretes in explicatione hujus
Lamiae dicti. Nam quod putant _Heu taceo_ suspirium esse ejus--indicem
doloris ob abductam uxorem magni sed latentis, nobis non ita videtur; sed
notatam potius fuisse tyrannidem principis, qui omnia in suo genere pulchra
et excellentia possessoribus eriperet, unde necessitas incumbebat sua bona
dissimulandi celandique.' Not at all satisfactory to me are the
commentators in the explanation of the _dictum_ (which is here equivalent to
_dicterium_) of Lamia. For, whereas they imagine _Heu taceo_ to be a sigh of
his--the record and indication of a sorrow, great though concealed, on
behalf of the wife that had been violently torn away from him--me, I
confess, that the case does not strike in that light; but rather that a
satiric blow was aimed at the despotism of the sovereign prince, who tore
away from their possessors all objects whatsoever marked by beauty or
distinguished merit in their own peculiar class: whence arose a pressure of
necessity for dissembling and hiding their own advantages. '_Sic esse
exponendum_,' that such is the true interpretation (continues Casaubon),
'_docent illa verba_ [LAUDANTI VOCEM SUAM],' (we are instructed by those
words), [to one who praised his singing voice, &c.].

This commentary was obscure enough, and did no honour to the native good
sense of Isaac Casaubon, usually so conspicuous. For, whilst proclaiming a
settlement, in reality it settled nothing. Naturally, it made but a feeble
impression upon th