Spring like a lion from the den, and tear
These hunters of mankind! Grant but the time,
Grant but the moment, gods! If I am wanting,
May I drag out this idiot-feignéd life
To late old age, and may posterity
Ne'er hear of Junius but as Tarquin's fool!"
The manner in which, in his fictitious rôle, in his interview with Tullia, the parricidal queen, whose prophetic soul is ominously alive to every alarming hint, he veered along the perilous edges of his feigned and his real character, the sinister alternation of jest and portent, was a passage of exciting interest, sweeping the chords of the breast from sport to awe with facile and forceful hand. The same effect was produced in a still higher degree in the interview with his son Titus, whose patriotism and temper he tested by lifting a little his false garb of folly and letting some tentative gleams of his true nature and purposes appear.
"Brutus. I'll tell a secret to thee
Worth a whole city's ransom. This it is:
Nay, ponder it and lock it in thy heart:—