“_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.