-rather unreasonably presumed. _Nero_--(Macready, who would
impersonate him grandly, and who, moreover, whether complimented or not
by the likeness, wears a head the very counterpart of Nero's, as every
Numismatist will vouch,)--a naturally noble spirit, warped by sensuality
and pride into a very tyrant; liberal in gifts, yet selfish in passion;
not incapable of a higher sort of love, yet liable to sudden changes,
and at times tempestuously cruel. _Nattalis_--(say Vandenhoff,)--his
favourite and evil genius, originally a Persian slave, and still wearing
the Eastern costume: a sort of Iago, spiriting up the willing Nero to
all varieties of wickedness, getting him deified, and otherwise
mystifying the poor besotted prince with all kinds of pleasure and
glory, to subserve certain selfish ends of rapine, power, and
licentiousness, and to avenge, perhaps, the misfortunes of his own
country on the chief of her destroyers. _Marcus Manlius_--(who better
than Charles Kean?--supposing these artistic combinations not to be
quite impossible,)--a fine young soldier, of course loving the heroine,
captain of Nero's body-guard, chivalrous, honourable, noble, and
faithful to his bad master amid conflicting trials. _Publius
Dentatus_--(any _bould_ speaker; besides, it would be rather too much to
engage all the actors yet awhile;)--a worthy old Roman, father of the
heroine. _Galba_, the chief mover in the catastrophe, as also the opener
of its causes, an intriguing and fierce, but well-intentioned patriot,
who ultimately becomes the next emperor. With _Curtius_ a tribune,
senators, conspirators, soldiers, priests, flamens, &c. And so, after
the ungallant fashion of theatrical play-wrights, as to a class inferior
to the very &c. of masculines--(of less intention withal than one of
those &cs. of crabbed Littleton, like an old shoe fricasseed into
savourings of all things by its inimitable Coke,)--come we to the
women-kind. _Agrippina_, (one of the school of Siddons,) empress-mother,
a strong-minded, Lady-Macbeth sort of woman, and the only person in the
world who can awe her amiable son. _Lucia,_ (_you_ cannot be spared
here, clever Helen Faucit)--the heroine, secretly a Christian affianced
to Manlius; a character of martyr's daring and woman's love. _Rufa_, a
haggard old sibyl, with both private and public reasons for detesting
Nero and Nattalis: and all the fitting female attendants to conclude the
list.

Each scene, in which each act wil