Specimens of English Dramatic Poets General Books LLC, 2009 - 156 pages This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1845. Excerpt: ... Ascend then, Virgil; and where first by chance We here have turn'd thy book, do thou first read. Vir. Great Caesar hath his will: I will ascend. 'Twere simple injury to his free hand, That sweeps the cobwebs from un-used virtue, And makes her shine proportion'd to her worth, To be more nice to entertain his grace, Than he is choice and liberal to afford it. Cas. Gentlemen of our chamber, guard the doors, And let none enter; peace. Begin, good Virgil. Virgil reads part of his fourth JEneid. Vir. Meanwhile, the skies 'gan thunder, &c. This Roman Play seems written to confute those enemies of Ben. Jonson in his own days and ours, who have said that he made a pedantical use of his learning. He has here revived the whole court of Augustus, by a learned spell. We are admitted to the society of the illustrious dead. Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, converse in our own tongue more finely and poetically than they expressed themselves in their native Latin. Nothing can be imagined more elegant, refined, and court-like than the scenes between this Louis the Fourteenth of Antiquity and his Literati.--The whole essence and secret of that kind of intercourse is contained therein. The economical liberality by which greatness, seeming to wave some part of its prerogative, takes care to lose none of the essentials; the prudential liberties of ah inferior which flatter by commanded boldness and soothe with complimental sincerity. SEJANUS HIS FALL: A TRAGEDY. BY BEN. JONSON. St j anus, the morning he is condemned by the Senate, receives some tokens which presage his death. Sejanus. Pomponius. Minutius. Terentius, &c. Ter. Are these things true 1 Min. Thousands are gazing at it in the streets. Sej. What's that? Ter. Minutius tells us here, my Lord, That a new head being set u... |
