are serious; and, if substantiated by evidence, leave us nothing to plead in bar of sentence but, " that last infirmity of noble minds," jealousy of a rival's fame. Let the great writer who has not felt this pour down alone his censure upon ADDISON. But from whom does the sarcasm proceed?-From POPE?-from him who provoked the memorable severity of HILL? who,

Poorly accepted FAME he ne'er repaid ;
Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approv'd,
And wanted Sour to spread the worth he lov'd.

Is it not something more than problematic, that this conduct, of which HILL SO keenly complains, He alone might not have felt, and that the coolness of ADDISON might have sprung from the petulance of POPE? Let any man, after impartially scanning either the lives or writings of these writers, pronounce from whom he conceives the offensive conduct originally sprung. The beauty of Pope's COMPOSITIONS have in no trifling degreee decorated his LIFE with a beauty which it wanted. He who lives in a state of inadequate ENMITY, who, in the language of SHAKSPERE spurns enviously at straws, was more likely to be irritated by the successful SAGE he revered than the degraded DUNCE he delighted to deride.

CATO.

Is one of those pieces upon which the public opinion has been ratified by the critic. It is read, quoted, and admired by every lover of the drama; and it has the singular fortune of conciliating the favour of such as speak with unreasonable contempt of productions more truly dramatic. The moral, the prudent, the religious of our teachers banish not the scenes of Cato from our youth, though the basis of the play is faulty and the practice of suicide is exhibited among the splendors of philosophic pomp, its infamy to us "invisible or dimly seen" struggling through the misty magic of Platonic rapsody.

It is read, it is quoted-but it is now never acted. The sentiments of patriotism inculcated are so far good, that they implant in our hearts the love of our country-but the Author was mistaken if he conceived the exemplification of this virtue perfect in CATO. A true patriot would have spared his country the miseries of hopless contention, and have abased his haughtiness of pride before the weightier consequences of recovered peace and returning concord.

With regard to the splendor of its sentences; they, it must be confessed, frequently dazzle us with a

B

false fire-their sentiments are above nature, and superior to humanity. We are happy to see our complacency restored, when the Stoic sinks at last into the man, sorrows upon the bier of a beloved son, and thus claims again the condition he had laboured to

renounce.

PARTY carried this play up to a height where to have sustained itself was impossible. Time has pronounced it to be a sensible poem, which in representation interests now no more, and must be judged alone in the closet. Criticism there has demonstrated, that as a dramatic structure it is highly beautiful; exquisite in its ornaments, graceful, and elegantly fitted up; but unhappily insecure from certain palpable defects ascertainable by a survey of its founda

PROLOGUE.

WRITTEN BY MR. POPE.

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 wonder'd 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 gen'rous 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 confess'd in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and god-like Cato was :
No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure Heav'n itself surveys;
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling in a falling state!

While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
Who sees him aft, but envies ev'ry deed?
Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed ?
Ev'n when proud Cæsar, 'midst triumphal cars,
The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars,
Ignobly vain, and impotently great,
Shew'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state;
As her dead father's rev'rend image past,
The pomp was darken'd, and the day o'ercast,
The triumph ceas'd-tears gush'd from ev'ry eye,
The world's great victor past unheeded by :
Her last good man dejected Rome ador'd,
And honour'd Cæsar's, less than Cato's sword.

Britons attend: Be worth like this approv'd, And shew you have the virtue to be mov'd. With honest scorn the first fam'd Cato view'd Rome learning arts from Greece, whom she subdu'd; Our scenes precariously subsist too long On French translation, and Italian song: Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage; Be justly warm'd with your own native rage: Such plays alone should please a British ear, As Cato's self had not disdain'd to hear.