fuffered to fall till you are tortured with, what might have been well fpared, an odious relation of the cruel deaths of his young for, and his daughter, a child who is first vitiated by the common executioner, to be made a legal victim of justice to the ftate. This man, the frequenter of courts, the scholar of Camden, the friend of Selden, and the companion of Sir Harry Savile, had no knowledge of decorum and decency.

But, that I may not be thought to view this author's writings with a partial malignity, let me candidly confefs there is fomething noble and affecting in the defence of Silius, whofe voluntary death in the fenate is ftriking and truly dramatic; that Tiberius's diffembled knowledge of Sejanus's defigns, with his employing Macro to check the pride and infolence of his minion, are mafterly touched; and the fine foliloquy of Sejanus, in which he enumerates the flaughter of his enemies, cannot be too much applauded,

1

To have done at once with Jonson's tragic poetry, let us now proceed to his Catiline, which Lord Dorfet calls his best love, Catiline.'

We have the author's teftimony that this play was condemned in the acting. It cannot now be known whether it was afterwards revived before the playhouses were fhut up in the beginning of the civil wars. I rather incline to think it must have been, by fome means, brought again on the stage before the Restoration; fome time after which it was revived by Charles Hart. This great actor, having a confiderable venture in the theatre, would not, without fome prospect of fuccefs, have run the rifk of decorating a piece in which such a number of characters were included.

The Duke of Buckingham and Lord Dorfet were admirers of Jonfon to a degree of idolatry; it is very probable, that, by liberal promises, they encouraged the actors to bring forward this forgotten tragedy. Certain it is, that the play was

acted

acted several times during the reign of Charles II. The action of Hart, in Catiline, was universally applauded; and this contributed to keep alive what otherwise would have foon been loft to be public.

'Hart's action,' faid the great critic, Rymer, could throw a luftre on the most wretched characters; and he so far dazzled the eyes of the spectator by it, that the deformities of the poet could not be difcerned.' Jonfon has, befides, placed Catiline in fuch fituations, and given fentiments fo correfpondent to his ambitious and favage mind, that a good actor could not fail to improve them to the delight of an intelligent audience. But, when we allow all this, and more, Catiline, upon the whole, is a very languid and tedious entertainment. Nothing but a very strong prepoffeffion in the author's favour could have induced an audience to hear with patience the speeches of Cicero, which, bating the interruptions of a line or two, are extended to the immeasurable length

of

of one hundred and feventy lines. A great deal of Salluft, and almost the whole of Cicero's Catilinarian orations, are tranflated verbally. This, in Jonson's age, was more unneceffary perhaps than in our own: the claffics were in every body's hands. The last editors of Shakspeare have, with fingular diligence, given a list of all the tranflations from the Greek and Roman authors published in the reigns of Elizabeth and James; and it is almost aftonishing to think what floods of fcience and learning were poured in from these classic fountains.

The part of Cicero must have been an intolerable burden to an actor of Stentorian lungs, unless the orations were confiderably curtailed. Major Mohun, who is celebrated by my Lord Rochefter for the wonder of actors, rejected Cicero, and took a much fhorter part, that of Cethegus, his acting of which the fame nobleman much applauds. The manners of this play are, in one place particularly, more cenfurable

than

than thofe of Sejanus. In the grand meet-. ing of the confpirators, one of them, by. action, tempts a young lad to submit to his, infamous paffion; upon his unwillingness to comply, Catiline threatens him with inftant death if he perfifts to refufe gratifying the other's more than brutal inclina, tion. This, I fuppofe, Ben would call the truth of history and highly characteris tical. But furely he must have read and tranflated Horace's Art of Poetry with little taste who could be guilty of such indecency. Jonson's women are, in general, difagreeable company; they are vicious and vulgar, and make the author smell too. much of low company and the brothel. We have indeed one modest Celia, and my good Dame Kitely, to counterbalance his large number of rampant ladies. The fcene, in Catiline, between Curius and Fulvia, by the conduct of which the conspiracy is brought to light, is naturally imagined and dramatically conducted. Jonson, by his knowledge of Roman man

ners,