Act. iv. sc. 3--

"_Crisp._ O--oblatrant--furibund--fatuate--strenuous.
O--conscious."

It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a
periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought
together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been
adopted, and are now common, such as _strenuous_, _conscious_, &c., and a
trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might
determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of
assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the
ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakespeare himself could not
prevent the naturalisation of _accommodation_, _remuneration_, &c.; or
Swift the gross abuse even of the word _idea_.

"Fall Of Sejanus."

Act i.--

"_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.

Act ii. Speech of Sejanus:--

"Adultery! it is the lightest ill
I will commit. A race of wicked acts
Shall flow out of my anger, and o'erspread
The world's wide face, which no posterity
Shall e'er approve, nor yet keep silent," &c.

The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect, the more astonished
shall we be at the immense superiority of Shakespeare over his
contemporaries;--and yet what contemporaries!--giant minds indeed! Think of
Jonson's erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age; and
yet, in no genuine part of Shakespeare's works is there to be found such
an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other passages
ferruminated by Jonson from