Nor could enjoyment pall our longing taste;
But every night was dearer than the last.
As when old Rome in a malignant hour
Deprived of some returning conqueror,
Her debt of triumph to the dead discharged,
For fame, for treasure, and her bounds enlarged:
And, while his godlike figure moved along,
Alternate passions fired the adoring throng;
Tears flowed from every eye, and shouts from every tongue. So in thy pompous lines has Cato fared,
Graced with an ample, though a late, reward:
A greater victor we in him revere;
A nobler triumph crowns his image here.
With wonder, as with pleasure, we survey
A theme so scanty wrought into a play;
So vast a pile on such foundations placed;
Like Ammon's temple reared on Libya's waste:
Behold its glowing paint! its easy weight!
Its nice proportions! and stupendous height!
How chaste the conduct, how divine the rage!
A Roman worthy on a Grecian stage!
But where shall Cato's praise begin or end;
Inclined to melt, and yet untaught to bend,
The firmest patriot, and the gentlest friend?
How great his genius, when the traitor crowd,
Ready to strike the blow their fury vowed,
Quelled by his look, and listening to his lore,
Learn, like his passions, to rebel no more!
When, lavish of his boiling blood, to prove
The cure of slavish life, and slighted love,
Brave Marcus new in early death appears,
While Cato counts his wounds, and not his years;
Who, checking private grief, the public mourns,
Commands the pity he so greatly scorns.
But when he strikes (to crown his generous part)
That honest, staunch, impracticable heart,
No tears, no sobs pursue his parting breath;
The dying Roman shames the pomp of death.
O sacred freedom! which the powers bestow
To season blessings, and to soften woe;
Plant of our growth, and aim of all our cares,
The toil of ages, and the crown of wars;
If, taught by thee, the poet's wit has flowed
In strains as precious as his hero's blood,
Preserve those strains, an everlasting charm
To keep that blood and thy remembrance warm :
Be this thy guardian image still secure ;
In vain shall force invade, or fraud allure;
Our great Palladium shall perform its part,
Fixed and enshrined in every British heart.
THE mind to virtue is by verse subdued;
And the true poet is a public good.
This Britain feels, while, by your lines inspired,
Her free-born sons to glorious thoughts are fired.
In Rome had you espoused the vanquished cause,
Inflamed her senate, and upheld her laws,
Your manly scenes had liberty restored,
And given the just success to Cato's sword:
O'er Cæsar's arms your genius had prevailed;
And the muse triumphed, where the patriot failed.
AMBR. PHILIPS.
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius and to mend the heart,
To make mankind in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold;-
For this the tragic muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream through every age;
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to virtue wondered how they wept.
Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move
The hero's glory, or the virgin's love;
In pitying love we but our weakness show,
And wild ambition well deserves its woe.
Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause,
Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws:
He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes;
Virtue confest in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was :
No common object to your sight displays,
But, what with pleasure heaven itself surveys,
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state!
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
Who sees him act, but envies every deed?
Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed ?
Ev'n then proud Cæsar, 'midst triumphal cars,
The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars,
Ignobly vain, and impotently great,
Showed Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state.
As her dead father's reverend image past,
The pomp was darkened, and the day o'ercast,
The triumph ceased-tears gushed from every eye,
The world's great victor passed unheeded by;
Her last good man dejected Rome adored,
And honoured Cæsar's less than Cato's sword.
Britons, attend:1 be worth like this approved,
And show you have the virtue to be moved.
With honest scorn the first famed Cato viewed
Rome learning arts from Greece, whom she subdued.
Our scene precariously subsists too long
On French translation, and Italian song:
Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage,
Be justly warmed with your own native rage.
Such plays alone should please a British ear,
As Cato's self had not disdained to hear.
Britons, attend.] Altered thus by the author, from "Britons, arise,” to huinour, we are told, the timid delicacy of Mr. Addison, who was in pain lest that fierce word "arise," should be misconstrued. (See Mr. Warburton's edition of Pope, Imitations of Horace, Ep. i. b. i.) One is apt, indeed, to think this caution excessive; but there was ground enough for it, as will be seen, if we reflect, that the poet himself had made Sempronius talk in this strain-" Rise, Romans, rise," (act ii. sc. 1,) a clear comment (it would have been said in that furious time) on the line in question.
SCENE, A large Hall in the Governor's Palace of Utica.
ACT I.-SCENE I.
PORTIUS, MARCUS.
POR. THE dawn is overcast, the morning lowers,
And heavily in clouds brings on the day,
The great, the important day, big with the fate
Of Cato and of Rome.2-Our father's death
Would fill up all the guilt of civil war,
And close the scene of blood. Already Cæsar
Has ravaged more than half the globe, and sees
Mankind grown thin by his destructive sword:
While the present humour of idolizing Shakspeare continues, no quarter will be given to this poem; though it be the master-piece of the author, and was the pride of the age in which it was written.—But a time will come, when, not as a tragedy, indeed, (for which the subject was unfit,) but as a work of art and taste, it will be supremely admired by all candid and judicious critics.
2 This opening of the drama is too solemn author speaks, not his "Persona dramatis." tion against this misconduct, in his ridicule of tabo, et nobile bellum," which was addressed to poet.
and declamatory. The Horace has given a cauFortunam Priami canthe tragic, as well as epic
Should he go further, numbers would be wanting
To form new battles, and support his crimes.
Ye gods, what havoc does ambition make
Among your works!
Thy steady temper, Portius,1
Can look on guilt, rebellion, fraud, and Cæsar,
In the calm lights of mild philosophy;
I'm tortured ev'n to madness, when I think
On the proud victor: every time he's named
Pharsalia rises to my view!-I see
The insulting tyrant, prancing o'er the field
Strowed with Rome's citizens, and drenched in slaughter,
His horse's hoofs wet with Patrician blood!
Oh, Portius! is there not some chosen curse,
Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven,
Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man
Who owes his greatness to his country's ruin?
POR. Believe me, Marcus, 'tis an impious greatness,
And mixt with too much horror to be envied.
How does the lustre of our father's actions,
Through the dark cloud of ills that cover him,
Break out, and burn with more triumphant brightness!
His sufferings shine, and spread a glory round him ;
Greatly unfortunate, he fights the cause
Of honour, virtue, liberty, and Rome.
His sword ne'er fell but on the guilty head;
Oppression, tyranny, and power usurped,
Draw all the vengeance of his arm upon 'em.
MAR. Who knows not this? but what can Cato do
Against a world, a base, degenerate world,
That courts the yoke, and bows the neck to Cæsar?
Pent up in Utica he vainly forms
A poor epitome of Roman greatness,
And, covered with Numidian guards, directs
A feeble army, and an empty senate,
Remnants of mighty battles fought in vain.
By heavens, such virtues, joined with such success,
Distract my very soul:
: our father's fortune
Would almost tempt us to renounce his precepts.
This a little palliates the indecorum, just now observed; and may let us see that the poet himself was aware of it (so exact was his taste); but it does not wholly excuse it.
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