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Bring him and rude Gabinius out.

Cic. No violence. Cæsar, be safe. To Caius Cæsar, for Statilius. [They all rise.]-Lead on. Where are the public executioners?

Bid them wait on us. On to Spinther's
house.1

Bring Lentulus forth. [He is brought out.]
-Here, you, the sad revengers
Of capital crimes against the public, take
This man unto your justice; strangle him.
Len. Thou dost well, consul. "Twas a
cast at dice,

In fortune's hand, not long since, that
thyself

Shouldst have heard these, or other words
as fatal.
[Exit Len. guarded.
Cic. Lead on to Quintus Cornificius'

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1 On to Spinther's house.] It is scarcely worth observing-but it appears to have escaped Jonson, that Cicero constantly terms this person Lentulus. Spinther was an opprobrious surname given to him from a fancied resemblance to a low comedian then on the stage, and therefore carefully avoided by the delicacy of his friends. (See my translation of Juvenal Sat. vi. V. 112).

It is impossible to arrange the scenery in this place. Jonson's little senate must have marched round the stage, with Cicero at their head, and stopped at the various side openings to receive the conspirators as they were called over, and deliver them up to the executioners. Something of this kind actually took place; but Cicero went only to Spinther's house on the Palatine hill, to receive Lentulus, whom he conducted with great silence and horror across the Forum, to what Sallust calls the Tullian dungeon, in the first ascent of the Capitoline hill, where he was strangled, together with his associates, who had

[They

are brought out.]-Here take them
To your cold hands, and let them feel death
from you.

Gab. I thank you, you do me a pleasure.
Stat. And me too.

[Exe. Gab. and Stat. guarded. Cato. So, Marcus Tullius, thou mayst now stand up,

And call it happy Rome, thou being consul.3
Great parent of thy country! go, and let
The old men of the city, ere they die,
Kiss thee, the matrons dwell about thy
neck,

The youths and maids lay up, 'gainst they
are old,

What kind of man thou wert, to tell their
nephews,

When, such a year, they read, within our
Fasti,
Thy consulship-

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He greets the fathers, and to me hath Circling the place, and trembling to see men trusted Do more than they; whilst Piety left the field,

The sad relation of the civil strife;
For, in such war, the conquest still is black.
Cic. Shall we withdraw into the house of
Concord?

Cato. No, happy consul; here let all
ears take

The benefit of this tale. If he had voice To spread unto the poles, and strike it through

The centre to the antipodes, it would ask it. Pet. The straits and needs of Catiline being such,

As he must fight with one of the two armies, That then had near enclosed him; it pleased fate

To make us the object of his desperate choice,

Wherein the danger almost poised the honour:

And as he rose, the day grew black with him,

And Fate descended nearer to the earth,
As if she meant to hide the name of things1
Under her wings, and make the world her
quarry.

At this we roused, lest one small minute's stay

Had left it to be inquired, what Rome was;
And, as we ought, armed in the confidence
Of our great cause, in form of battle stood;
Whilst Catiline came on, not with the face
Of any man, but of a public ruin.
His countenance was a civil war itself,
And all his host had standing in their looks
The paleness of the death that was to come;
Yet cried they out like vultures, and urged
on,

As if they would precipitate our fates.
Nor stayed we longer for them: but him-
self

Struck the first stroke; and with it fled a life,

Which cut, it seemed a narrow neck of land Had broke between two mighty seas, and either

Flowed into other; for so did the slaughter; And whirled about, as when two violent tides

Meet, and not yield. The Furies stood on hills,

As if she meant to hide the name of things. ] The name of things is equivalent to the things themselves. The spirit of this speech is truly noble, the images of sublimity and horror it abounds with are drawn with a happy mixture of poetry and judgment, and disposed with equal

Grieved for that side, that in so bad a cause They knew not what a crime their valour

was.

The sun stood still, and was, behind the cloud

The battle made, seen sweating, to drive up His frighted horse, whom still the noise drove backward.

And now had fierce Enyo, like a flame, Consumed all it could reach, and then itself,

Had not the fortune of the commonwealth Come, Pallas-like, to every Roman thought: Which Catiline seeing, and that now his troops

Covered that earth they had fought on, with their trunks,

Ambitious of great fame to crown his ill,
Collected all his fury, and ran in,
Armed with a glory high as his despair,
Into our battle, like a Libyan lion
Upon his hunters, scornful of our weapons,
Careless of wounds, plucking down lives
about him,

Till he had circled in himself with death:
Then fell he too, t' embrace it where it lay.
And as in that rebellion 'gainst the gods,
Minerva holding forth Medusa's head,
One of the giant-brethren felt himself
Grow marble at the killing sight, and now
Almost made stone, began to inquire, what.
flint,

What rock it was, that crept through all his limbs,

And ere he could think more, was that he feared;

So Catiline, at the sight of Rome in us,
Became his tomb: yet did his look retain
Some of his fierceness, and his hands still
moved,

As if he laboured yet to grasp the state
With those rebellious parts.

Cato. A brave bad death! Had this been honest now, and for his country,

As 'twas against it, who had e'er fall'n greater?

Cic. Honoured Petreius, Rome, not I, must thank you.

exactness and art. For the honour of our poet, it must be added that this speech is not a translation: the whole is derived from the sources of his own imagination, with no assistance from his classic masters. I look on it as the most capital description in all the works of Jonson.-WHAL.

How modestly has he spoken of him- Decreed to me: only the memory self!

Cato. He did the more.

Cic. Thanks to the immortal gods, Romans, I now am paid for all my labours, My watchings, and my dangers ! here conclude

Your praises, triumphs, honours, and rewards,

This play, like Sejanus, has been much underrated, and probably by those who never read either of them. Lord Dorset, who calls it a noble work, informs us that it was the poet's favourite; and there is no reason to dispute his authority.

The number of writers whom Jonson has consulted, and the industry and care with which he has extracted from them every circumstance conducive to the elucidation of his plot, can only be conceived by those who have occasion to search after his authorities. He has availed himself of almost every scattered hint, from the age of Sallust to that of Elizabeth, for the correct formation of his characters, and placed them before our eyes as they appear in the writings of those who lived and acted with them. Cethegus, Lentulus, and Catiline are strongly marked and clearly discriminated; but his principal personage is Cicero, whom he has drawn from the insignificance to which the violent party prejudices of Sallust strove to consign him, and placed in that high and commanding station which he is known to have actually occupied.

Of this glad day, if I may know it live
Within your thoughts, shall much affect

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But nothing is done unless Jonson be dragged in to swell the triumph of Shakspeare. Jonson" (says a great critic), "is in the serious drama as much an imitator as Shakspeare is an original." The allusion is to the Julius Cæsar and Antony and Cleopatra of the latter; and yet it is not very easy for an unprejudiced mind to discover many traits of originality in those tragedies which are not to be met with in Catiline. Whole speeches are taken from the old translation of Plutarch, and put into verse with as little expense of labour as possible, while every incident which could be turned to account is freely borrowed from the same popular source. This is reckoned a merit in Shakspeare; the obloquy which is thrown on Jonson, therefore, for the same practice, can only arise from his varying so far from the example as to have recourse to original authorities instead of translations.

"But," proceeds the critic, "he was very learned as Sampson was very strong, to his own hurt. Blind to the nature of tragedy, he pulled down all antiquity upon his head, and buried himself under it; we see nothing of Jonson, nor indeed of his admired but murdered ancients; for what shone in the historian is a cloud on the poet; and Catiline might have been a good play, if Sallust had never writ."-Conjectures on Original Composition, p. 80.

wisdom on the delivery of this oracular criticism, and doled out their modicums of regret on the fall of the unhappy poet: and yet there is as little truth as candour in it. Jonson has principally availed himself of Sallust in the early part of the history, and the version of his account of the first meetings of the conspirators, far from murdering the historian, may be classed among the most free and spirited translations to be found in this or any other language.

It scarcely seems necessary to enlarge on a story so familiar; but it may not be amiss to say a few words on the treatment which this tragedy has received. Not content with accumulating upon it all the ignorant abuse of modern times, the critics go back to the poet's days, and affirm All this is very fine, and has been repeated by that it was mightily reprobated by his contem-numbers, who have actually assumed an air of poraries, and especially by Marston; who, as that wholesale dealer in absurdity, the late editor of the Biographia Dramatica assures us, "cast in the preface to his Sophonisba, some very severe glances at its pedantry and plagiarism." The nature of the pedantry is not specified; but the plagiarism consists, it seems, in the poet's "borrowing orations from Sallust, &c., and making use of them in his tragedies of Sejanus and Catiline." Mr. Jones has given the respective dates of Sophonisba and Catiline, the for- Why "Catiline might have been a good play mer of which (he says) appeared in 1606, and the if Sallust had never writ," it is useless to inquire. latter in 1611. Admitting therefore, with this There would still have remained the Greek hislearned chronologist, that the "orations of Sal-torians, the orations of Cicero, of which Jonson lust" furnished the groundwork of Sejanus, who was born about half a century after his death, we may still hesitate to allow that Marston could "cast a glance" either mild or "severe" in 1606 at what was not visible till 1611. But no improbability is too gross to be swallowed when Jonson is the object of attack: and the stupid hostility of Mr. Jones is, after all, less reprehensible than the wanton malevolence of Steevens and others, who must have known the falsehood of the slander which they encouraged their zanies to propagate.

has made far more use than of Sallust, and many other original sources of information to spoil the play. But this gentleman, who, like most of the poet's censurers, never looked into the piece which he was reviling, well aware that Sallust had written on the subject of Catiline's conspiracy, took it for granted that Jonson had merely turned him into doggrel, and hazarded his assertion, fearless of question and confident of finding a ready belief in the prejudices of the times.

Bartholomew Fair.

BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.] This comedy was produced, at the Hope Theatre (on the Bank-side), October 31, 1614, and acted, as Jonson tells us, by the Lady Elizabeth's servants. The Lady Elizabeth was the daughter of James I.; she married the Elector Palatine, and saw many evil days both as a wife and mother: her descendants have been more fortunate, and are now on the throne of Great Britain.

The Biographia Dramatica speaks of an edition of this play in quarto, 1614. I know of no earlier one than the folio, 1631-1641, nor do I believe that it ever appeared in that form. In the title-page, it is said that it was dedicated in the year 1614 to King James; but by this expression no more is meant than that it was addressed to him in an occasional prologue, written for the purpose; though this probably led to the mistake just noticed. When this play was printed James was dead.

Bartholomew Fair was always a favourite with the people: this is easily accounted for from the ridicule with which it covers the Puritans. It was revived, as might naturally be expected, immediately after the Restoration, and was frequently honoured with a royal command by Charles, whom tradition represents as greatly delighted with the character of Cokes, which was, indeed, excellently played by Wintersel, and afterwards by Nokes, the most celebrated comic performer of those days. To this comedy, Collin, the rustic champion of Puritanism, is taken, on his visit to London, and D'Urfey gives a humorous account of his zeal and fury at the scenical disgrace of Rabbi Busy. D'Urfey pays an incidental compliment to this piece, by representing Collin as completely deceived at first, and believing that what he saw and heard of the Puritans was a scene of real life.

I am sorry to observe that the excellent folio of 1616 deserts us here. Why this drama was not admitted into it, cannot now be told, unless, as I believe was really the case, that much of that volume was carried through the press some time before it was given to the public. Be this as it may, the subsequent plays do not exhibit, to my eye, the same marks of Jonson's care as those already given : nor do I think that he concerned himself with the revision of the folio now before us, or, indeed, ever saw it, though many of the pieces contained in it are dated several years antecedent to his death.

To this comedy was prefixed the following apt motto:

Si foret in terris, rideret Democritus: nam
Spectaret populum ludis attentiùs ipsis,
Út sibi præbentem mimo spectacula plura.
Scriptores autem narrare putaret asello
Fabellam surdo.-Hor. lib. ii. epist. I.

THE

PROLOGUE.

TO THE

KING'S MAJESTY.

Your Majesty is welcome to a Fair;

Such place, such men, such language, and such ware
You must expect: with these, the zealous noise

Of your land's faction, scandalized at toys,

As babies, hobby-horses, puppet-plays,

And such-like rage, whereof the petulant ways

Yourself have known, and have been vext with long.
These for your sport, without particular wrong,
Or just complaint of any private man,
Who of himself, or shall think well, or can,
The maker doth present: and hopes to-night
To give you for a fairing true delight.

John Littlewit, a proctor.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

Trouble-all, a madman.

Zeal-of-the-land Busy, suitor to Dame Bristle, watchmen.

Purecraft, a Banbury man.1 Winwife, his rival, a gentleman.

Tom Quarlous, companion to Winwife, gamester.

a

Bartholomew Cokes, an esquire of Harrow.
Humphrey Waspe, his man.
Adam Overdo, a justice of peace.
Lanthorn Leatherhead, a hobby-horse seller
(toyman.)

Ezechiel Edgworth, a cutpurse.
Nightingale, a ballad-singer.
Mooncalf, tapster to Ursula.

Dan Jordan Knockem, a horse-courser
and a ranger of Turnbull.

Val. Cutting, a roarer, or bully.
Captain Whit, a bawd.

Haggise,

Pocher, a beadle.

Filcherell} door-keepers to the puppet-show.

Sharkwell,

Solomon, Littlewit's man.

Northern, a clothier (a Northern man.)
Puppy, a wrestler (a Western man.)

Win-the-fight Littlewit.

Dame Purecraft, her mother, and a widow.
Dame Overdo.

Grace Wellborn, ward to Justice Overdo.
Joan Trash, a gingerbread-woman.
Ursula, a pig-woman.

Alice, mistress o' the game.

Costardmonger, Mousetrap-man, Corncutter, Watch, Porters, Puppets, Passengers, Mob, Boys, &c.

A Banbury-man,] i.e., a Puritan. Our old writers have frequent allusions to the numbers of these people at Banbury: indeed, the town seems to have been chiefly inhabited by them.

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