Thou heart of our great enterprise, how much

I love these voices in thee!

Ceth. O the days

Of Sylla's sway, when the free sword took leave
To act all that it would!

Cat. And was familiar

With entrails, as our augurs

Ceth. Sons killed fathers, Brothers their brothers

Cat. And had price and praise:

All hate and license given it; all rage reins.

Ceth. Slaughter bestrid the streets, and stretched himself To seem more huge: whilst to his stained thighs

The gore he drew flowed up, and carried down

Whole heaps of limbs and bodies through his arch.
No age was spared, no sex.

Cat. Nay, no degree

Ceth. Not infants in the porch of life were free.
The sick, the old, that could but hope a day
Longer by Nature's bounty, not let stay.
Virgins and widows, matrons, pregnant wives,
All died.

Cat. "Twas crime enough that they had lives.
To strike but only those that could do hurt,

Was dull and poor.

As some, the prey.

Some fell, to make the number;

Ceth. The rugged Charon fainted, And asked a navy rather than a boat,

To ferry over the sad world that came:

The maws and dens of beasts could not receive
The bodies that those souls were frighted from ;
And even the graves were filled with men yet living,

Whose flight and fear had mixed them with the dead. Cat. And this shall be again, and more, and more, Now Lentulus, the third Cornelius,

Is to stand up in Rome.

Lent. Nay, urge not that

Is so uncertain.

Cat. How!

Lent. I mean, not cleared;

And therefore not to be reflected on.

Cat. The Sibyl's leaves uncertain! or the comments Of our grave, deep, divining men, not clear!

Lent. All prophecies, you know, suffer the torture. Cat. But this already hath confessed, without; And so been weighed, examined, and compared, As 'twere malicious ignorance in him Would faint in the belief.

Lent. Do you believe it?

Cat. Do I love Lentulus, or pray to see it?
Lent. The augurs all are constant I am meant.
Cat. They had lost their science else.
Lent. They count from Cinna-

Cat. And Sylla next-and so make you the third: All that can say the sun is risen, must think it.

Lent. Men mark me more of late, as I come forth. Cat. Why, what can they do less? Cinna and Sylla Are set and gone; and we must turn our eyes On him that is, and shines. Noble Cethegus, But view him with me here! He looks already

As if he shook a sceptre o'er the senate,

And the awed purple dropped their rods and axes.
The statues melt again, and household gods
In groans confess the travails of the city:

The

very walls sweat blood before the change; And stones start out to ruin, ere it comes.

Ceth. But he, and we, and all, are idle still.
Lent. I am your creature, Sergius; and whate'er
The great Cornelian name shall win to be,
It is not augury, nor the Sibyl's books,
But Catiline, that makes it.

Cat. I am a shadow

To honoured Lentulus, and Cethegus here;
Who are the heirs of Mars....

POETASTER; OR, HIS

ARRAIGNMENT.

AUGUSTUS CÆSAR discourses with his Courtiers concerning Poetry. CESAR, MECENAS, GALLUS, TIBULLUS, HORACE.

Cæsar. We, that have conquered still to save the con

quered,

And love to make inflictions feared, not felt;
Grieved to reprove, and joyful to reward,
More proud of reconcilement than revenge,
Resume into the late state of our love
Worthy Cornelius Gallus and Tibullus.*
You both are gentlemen; you, Cornelius,
A soldier of renown, and the first provost
That ever let our Roman eagles fly
On swarthy Egypt, quarried with her spoils.
Yet (not to bear cold forms, nor men's out-terms,
Without the inward fires, and lives of men)

* They had offended the Emperor by concealing the love of Ovid for the Princess Julia.

You both have virtues, shining through your shapes; To show, your titles are not writ on posts,

Or hollow statues; which the best men are,
Without Promethean stuffings reached from heaven.
Sweet Poesy's sacred garlands crown your gentry:
Which is, of all the faculties on earth,

The most abstract, and perfect, if she be
True born, and nursed with all the sciences.
She can so mould Rome, and her monuments,
Within the liquid marble of her lines,
That they shall stand fresh and miraculous,
Ever when they mix with innovating dust;

In her sweet streams shall our brave Roman spirits
Chase, and swim after death, with their choice deeds
Shining on their white shoulders; and therein
Shall Tiber, and our famous rivers, fall

With such attraction, that th' ambitious line
Of the round world shall to her centre shrink,
To hear their music. And for these high parts,
Cæsar shall reverence the Pierian arts.

Mec. Your majesty's high grace to poesy
Shall stand 'gainst all the dull detractions
Of leaden souls; who for the vain assumings
Of some, quite worthless of her sovereign wreaths,
Contain her worthiest prophets in contempt.

Gal. Happy is Rome of all earth's other states,
To have so true and great a president,

For her inferior spirits to imitate,

As Cæsar is; who addeth to the sun
Influence and lustre, in increasing thus
His inspirations, kindling fire in us.

Hor. Phoebus himself shall kneel at Cæsar's shrine,

And deck it with bay-garlands dewed with wine,
To quit the worship Cæsar does to him:
Where other princes, hoisted to their thrones
By Fortune's passionate and disordered power,
Sit in their height like clouds before the sun,
Hind'ring his comforts; and (by their excess
Of cold in virtue, and cross heat in vice)
Thunder and tempest on those learned heads,
Whom Cæsar with such honour doth advance.

Tib. All human business Fortune doth command
Without all order; and with her blind hand,
She, blind, bestows blind gifts: that still have nursed,
They see not who, nor how, but still the worst.
Cæs. Cæsar, for his rule, and for so much stuff
As Fortune puts in his hand, shall dispose it
(As if his hand had eyes, and soul, in it)

With worth and judgment. Hands that part with gifts,
Or will restrain their use, without desert,
Or with a misery, numbed to Virtue's right,
Work, as they had no soul to govern them,

And quite reject her: sev'ring their estates
From human order. Whosoever can,

And will not cherish Virtue, is no man.

Fetch a chair,

Eques. Virgil is now at hand, imperial Cæsar.
Cas. Rome's honour is at hand then.
And set it on our right hand; where 'tis fit,
Rome's honour and our own should ever sit.
Now he is come out of Campania,

I doubt not he hath finished all his Æneids;
Which, like another soul, I long t' enjoy.
What think you three of Virgil, gentlemen

(That are of his profession, though ranked higher),