_Pop_. Nay, in good faith, my Lord, I speake in earnest:
I hate that headie and adventurous crew
That goe to loose their owne to purchase but
The breath of others and the common voyce;
Them that will loose their hearing for a sound,
That by death onely seeke to get a living,
Make skarres their beautie and count losse of Limmes
The commendation of a proper man,
And so goe halting to immortality,--
Such fooles I love worse then they doe their lives."

It is indeed strange to find such lines as those in the work of an
unknown author. The verses gain strength as they advance, and the
diction is terse and keen. This one short extract would suffice to show
that the writer was a literary craftsman of a very high order.

In the fourth scene, where the conspirators are met, the writer's power
is no less strikingly shown. Here, if anywhere, his evil genius might
have led him astray; for no temptation is stronger than the desire to
indulge in rhetorical displays. Even the author of _Bothwell_, despite
his wonderful command of language, wearies us at times by his vehement
iteration. Our unknown playwright has guarded himself against this
fault; and, steeped as he was to the lips in classical learning, his
abstinence must have cost him some trouble. My notes will shew that he
had not confined himself to Tacitus, but had studied Suetonius and Dion
Cassius, Juvenal and Persius. He makes no parade of his learning, but we
see that he has lived among his characters, leaving no source of
information unexplored. The meeting of the conspirators is brought
before our eyes with wonderful vividness. Scevinus' opening speech glows
and rings with indignation. Seneca, in more temperate language, bewails
the fall of the high hopes that he had conceived of his former pupil,
finely moralizing that "High fortunes, like strong wines, do trie their
vessels." Some spirited lines are put into Lucan's mouth:--

"But to throw downe the walls and Gates of Rome
To make an entrance for an Hobby-horse;
To vaunt to th'people his ridiculous spoyles;
To come with Lawrell and with Olyves crown'd
For having been the worst of all the singers,
Is beyond Patience!"

In another passage the grandiloquence and the vanity of the poet of the
_Pharsalia_ are well depicted.

The second act opens with Antonius' suit to Poppaea, which is full of
passion and poetry, but is not allowed to usurp too much room in the
progress