The next is, lest in some nice nostril the quotations might savour affected, I do let you know, that I abhor nothing more; and I have only done it to shew my integrity in the story, and save myself in those common torturers that bring all wit to the rack; whose noses are ever like swine, spoiling and rooting up the Muses’ gardens; and their whole bodies like moles, as blindly working under earth, to cast any, the least, hills upon virtue.  Whereas they are in Latin, and the work in English, it was presupposed none but the learned would take the pains to confer them:  the authors themselves being all in the learned tongues, save one, with whose English side I have had little to do.  To which it may be required, since I have quoted the page, to name what editions I followed:  Tacit.  Lips. in quarto, Antwerp, edit. 1600; Dio. folio, Hen.  Steph. 1592.  For the rest, as Sueton, Seneca, etc., the chapter doth sufficiently direct, or the edition is not varied.

Lastly, I would inform you, that this book, in all numbers, is not the same with that which was acted on the public stage; wherein a second:  pen had good share:  in place of which, I have rather chosen to put weaker, and no doubt, less pleasing, of mine own, than to defraud so happy a genius of his right by my loathed usurpation.

Fare you well, and if you read farther of me, and like, I shall not be afraid of it, though you praise me out.

Neque enim mihi cornea fibra est.

But that I should plant my felicity in your general saying, good, or well, etc., were a weakness which the better sort of you might worthily contemn, if not absolutely hate me for.

BenJonson;
and no such,

Quem
Palma negata macrum, donata reducit opimum.

Theargument

AELIUS Sejanus, son to Seius Strabo, a gentleman of Rome, and born at Vulsinium; after his long service in court, first under Augustus; afterward, Tiberius; grew into that favour with the latter, and won him by those arts, as there wanted nothing but the name to make him a co-partner of the empire.  Which greatness of his, Drusus, the emperor’s son, not brooking; after many smothered dislikes, it one day breaking out, the prince struck him publicly on the face.  To revenge which disgrace, Livia, the wife of Drusus (being before corrupted by him to her dishonour, and the discovery of her husband’s counsels) Sejanus practiseth with, together with her physician called Eudemus, and one Lygdus an eunuch, to poison Drusus.  This their inhuman act having successful and unsuspected passage, it emboldeneth Sejanus to further and more insolent projects, even the ambition of the empire; where finding the lets he must encounter to be many and hard, in respect of the issue of Germanicus, who were next in hope for the succession, he deviseth to make Tiberius’ self his means, and instils into his ears many doubts and suspicions, both against the princes, and their