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Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784

"Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons"

"
When the reader has been awakened by this rapturous preparation, he
hears the whole story of Portia in the same luxuriant style, till she
breathed out her last, a little before the _bloody proscription_, and
"Brutus complained heavily of his friends at Rome, as not having paid
due attention to his lady in the declining state of her health."
He is a great lover of modern terms. His senators and their wives are
_gentlemen and ladies_. In this review of Brutus's army, _who was under
the command of gallant men, not braver officers than true patriots_, he
tells _us_, "that Sextus, the questor, was _paymaster, secretary at war,
and commissary general_; and that the _sacred discipline_ of the Romans
required the closest connexion, like that of father and son, to subsist
between the general of an army and his questor. Cicero was _general of
the cavalry_, and the next _general officer_ was Flavius, _master of Ihe
artillery_, the elder Lentulus was _admiral_, and the younger _rode_ in
the _band of volunteers_; under these the tribunes, _with many others,
too tedious to name_." Lentulus, however, was but a subordinate officer;
for we are informed afterwards, that the Romans had made Sextus Pompeius
lord high admiral in all the seas of their dominions.


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