easily be thought extrinsic and adventitious; for if it were taken away, what would be left? or how were the four acts filled in the first draught?"

Mr. Ogle, the editor of a new edition of the Spectator, has apparently been at considerable pains to reconcile these conflicting opinions; and as his conjecture is ingenious, and offers an easy and reasonable solution of the difficulties, without attaching crime to any party, it is here laid before the reader. He takes it for granted, as indeed it is evident, that a juvenile essay of Addison on this subject, was sent by him from Oxford to Dryden and that Dr. Young, who mentions this circumstance, fell into a mistake respecting the number of acts, as Tonson, Pope, Johnson, and Hughes only speak of four; besides which, we may notice the strong internal evidence respecting their account of it, from the fifth act itself, which is particularly short in comparison to the others, “like a task performed with reluctance, and hurried to its conclusion."

He then proposes the following solution. "Addison wrote four acts of a tragedy when at Oxford, and sent them to Dryden. After his judgment had become riper, and his taste more formed, he became displeased with his performance, yet remained satisfied with the subject. He erased all that his better judgment pointed out to him as unfit to stand, and retained all those thoughts he approved. With these materials he, while abroad, may be said to have rewritten the first four acts, and to have added the fifth in England when Hughes was composing the supplementary act. This solution at least removes the dilemma in which the various accounts had placed the authors of them, and shows that there was not more variation in their accounts than is seen every day in the details of occurrences in which all the witnesses intend to tell the truth."

But when, where, and however this tragedy may have been composed, the fact is certain, that it met with the greatest success when brought upon the stage. It is stated, that when Cato

was shown to Pope he advised the author to print it, and not to risk its being acted, believing that it was better calculated to please in the closet than on the stage. But although the author's opinion coincided with that of Pope, and which indeed time has proved to be true, the importunity of his friends compelled him to the important hazard, and the violence of party-spirit made it successful beyond expectation. Unnecessary precaution was taken, as it turned out, to insure it a favourable auditory on the first night of its representation; for, as we are told by Pope," the whole nation was at that time on fire with faction. The whigs applauded every line in which liberty was mentioned, as a satire on the tories; and the tories echoed every clap to show that the satire was unfelt. Bolingbroke called Booth, who played the part of Cato, to his box, and presented him with fifty guineas for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator."

Thus supported by the emulation of parties, the play was acted night after night for a longer time than the public had probably ever before allowed to any drama. Other honours were lavished upon its author. Wits were proud to write verses in its praise. It was censured as a party-play by a scholar of Oxford, and defended in a favourable examination by Dr. Sewel. It was translated into various modern languages, and into Latin by the jesuits of St. Omer's and played by their pupils. The author was informed, that the queen would be pleased if, on its publication, it were dedicated to her; but as he had already designed that honour for Mr. Tickell, he sent it into the world without any dedication; the delicacy of friendship preventing him from inscribing it to the queen, and his duty to her from paying that compliment to any one else.

With regard to the merits of Cato, nearly all the praises have already been lavished upon it which friendship and party-spirit could bestow, and all the censure which acute malignity could suggest. The intemperate, yet perhaps sometimes just criti

cisms of Dennis, are, however, almost forgotten, while time has confirmed the first opinion of the public in its favour. Few works have been more read, fewer read with more pleasure; and, as some one has justly observed, there is scarcely a scene in the play which the reader does not wish to impress upon his

memory.

That it has its faults must, perhaps, be admitted; but how trifling are they compared with its beauties! The malignant envy of Dennis prompted him to attack both the merits of the tragedy and the opinion of the world respecting it, with all the virulence of angry criticism. Nothing has escaped his acuteness; and in giving the substance of his invectives we lay before the reader all that can be said against it.

After giving his reason for paying no regard to the opinion of the audience, he directs his censure against the author for his neglect of poetical justice; that is, for not imitating the divine dispensation, in inculcating a particular providence by punishing crime and rewarding virtue. "He not only runs counter to this," he says, "in the fate of his principal character, but everywhere makes virtue suffer and vice triumph: for not only is Cato vanquished by Cæsar, but the treachery and perfidiousness of Syphax prevail over the honest simplicity and the credulity of Juba; and the sly subtlety and dissimulation of Portius over the generous frankness and openheartedness of Marcus Dr. Johnson has answered this by saying, “that since wickedness prospers in real life, the poet is certainly at liberty to give it prosperity on the stage." But we think that our author may be vindicated on this point upon other and higher grounds than this. Addison's play was written and brought on the stage to favour the cause of patriotism and liberty; accordingly, he represents his godlike hero, after doing all that could be done to save his country, as preferring death to slavery. The play could scarcely have been made to end otherwise. Cato and Cæsar are not set before us as individuals whose vices or vir

tues we have anything to do with. It is only in relation to their public characters-one as the champion of liberty, the other as its subverter-that we are called upon to judge them. Cato is pictured as the last defender of the liberties of his country, and who, when he finds his cause hopeless, like a noble Roman, dies what a Roman would call a glorious death. Is vice rewarded here? How? Whoever read the play and wished to be Cæsar? or without admiring, almost envying, Cato? It is, in fact, he alone who triumphs; and we might as well talk of the triumph of the executioner who fired the pile of our martyr Cranmer, as of the triumph of Cæsar.

How the treachery and perfidiousness of Syphax can be said to prevail over the honest simplicity of Juba, I cannot imagine, since the sword of Marcus pierces through the heart of the hoary traitor, whom Portius sees

"Grin in the pangs of death and bite the ground;"

while Juba lives, and receives from the dying Cato his beloved Marcia. The nobleness and tenderness of Portius render it unnecessary to vindicate him from the charge of this critic.

His objections to the characters as being unnatural, are equally groundless. The strongest part of his case is the manner in which Cato receives the intelligence of the death of his son. He argues, "that for a man to receive the news of his son's death with dry eyes, and to weep at the same time for the calamities of his country, is a wretched affectation, and a miserable inconsistency." In reply, we may not only recall to our remembrance the great examples afforded us by history, and especially by the Roman, of men who have sacrificed the dearest ties of nature from motives of patriotism; but also consider again the character which the author wished to place before his audience. A severe Roman moralist, whose soul is wrapt up in the good of his country, and whose affections are all absorbed in her welfare; who regards life without liberty

as unbearable, and who therefore grieves not for a son just released from a world he himself is about to quit, but weeps for his country doomed to slavery. Besides this, we may add, that the moral character of the Romans at this period had so much of the gigantic nature of their empire, that neither their vices nor their virtues can be measured by the common standard of human nature; and surely if any man may be represented on the stage as godlike, it is Cato.

The critic is more successful in his attempt to show the absurdities into which the author has fallen by confining the action of the piece to a single place: this he has done at considerable length, and it cannot be denied but that some of his instances are very glaring. It may, however, be said in mitigation, that most of them are common to all theatrical representations. No one can read over many of our tragedies without finding inconsistencies without number of the same kind, or attend a theatre without being shocked with faults equally gross.

This censure of Dennis was amply counterbalanced at the time by the great success of the piece, both on the stage and in the closet. It has been followed by the praises of the learned and the good. It received the encomiums of Tickell and Pope, which have been succeeded by those of Voltaire, Johnson, bishop Hurd, and innumerable others. The witty Frenchman, with the taste of his nation, prefers it to Shakspeare, and expresses his wonder that we can bear the extravagances of the latter after having seen it. We cannot, however, go so far: but both Johnson and Hurd consider it the noblest production of our author; nor does it lose in our estimation by the comparison which the great moralist has made between it and Shakspeare. Without the wild luxuriance of that immortal bard, it has beauties peculiarly its own; and its just and noble sentiments, and its graceful and splendid diction, will cause it to be admired as a work of art and taste till the English language shall be no longer understood.