This last line is the first of Gray's Elegy, taken by him without acknowledgment.
[228] See Suetonius for this fact.
["The public joy was so great upon the occasion of his death, that the common people ran up and down with caps upon their heads. And yet there were some, who for a long time trimmed up his tomb with spring and summer flowers, and, one while, placed his image upon his rostra dressed up in state robes, another while published proclamations in his name, as if he was yet alive, and would shortly come to Rome again, with a vengeance to all his enemies."—De XII. Cæs., lib. vi. cap. lvii.]
But I'm digressing—what on earth have Nero
And Wordsworth—both poetical buffoons, etc.—[MS.]
[229] {182} [See De Poeticâ, cap. xxiv. See, too, the Preface to Dryden's "Dedication" of the Æneis (Works of John Dryden, 1821, xiv. 130-134). Dryden is said to have derived his knowledge of Aristotle from Dacier's translation, and it is probable that Byron derived his from Dryden. See letter to Hodgson (Letters, 1891, v. 284), in which he quotes Aristotle as quoted in Johnson's Life of Dryden.]