Seneca's tragedies, and the writings of the
later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a puppet, out of
which the poet makes his own voice appear to come.

Act v. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune.

This scene is unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a
present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been
made to suspect priestcraft and a secret conspiracy against him.

"Volpone."

This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is,
from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and
sentiment, the strongest proof how impossible it is to keep up any
pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart in
any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play becomes
not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings. _Zeluco_ is an instance
of the same truth. Bonario and Celia should have been made in some way or
other principals in the plot; which they might have been, and the objects
of interest, without having been made characters. In novels, the person in
whose fate you are most interested, is often the least marked character of
the whole. If it were possible to lessen the paramountcy of Volpone
himself, a most delightful comedy might be produced, by making Celia the
ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his wife, and Bonario her lover.

"Apicaene."

This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben's comedies, and,
more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the
management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an
actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune.

Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont's speech:--

"He would have hang'd a pewterer's 'prentice once upon a Shrove
Tuesday's riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were _quiet_."

"The old copies read _quit_,--_i.e._, discharged from working, and
gone to divert themselves."--Whalley's note.

It should be "quit" no doubt, but not meaning "discharged from working,"
&c.--but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his holiday
diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the
riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but in
fact for his trade.

Act ii. sc. 1.--

"_Morose._ Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method than
by this _trunk_, to save my servants the labour of speech, and
mine ears