a period of more than forty intermediate years I read it (as I have now been doing) with all the impartiality in my power, I certainly can discover inaccuracies in the diction here and there, and in the plot an absolute inaptitude to scenic exhibition, yet I think I may presume to say, that as a dramatic poem for the closet it will bear examination, though I cannot expect that any of its readers at this time would pass so favourable a judgment upon it as I was honoured with by Primate Stone and Bishop Warburton, from the latter of whom I received a letter, which I have preserved, and which I cannot withstand the temptation of inserting, though I am thoroughly conscious it bestows praises far above the merits of my humble work To Richard Cumberland, Esq. Dear Sir, Let me thank you for the sight of a very fine dramatic Poem. It is (like Mr. Mason's) much too good for a prostitute stage. Yesterday I received a letter from the Primate. He was on the point of leaving Bath for Ireland: so that my letter got to him just in time-It gives me great satisfaction, says he, that my opinion of Bishop Cumberland's grandson agrees with your's, &c. &c. I have the honour to be, Dear Sir, your very faithful And assured humble servant, IV. Gloucester. It is a singular circumstance, though perhaps not a favourable one, that in the dramatis persona of this play there is not one auxiliary character; they are all principals, and such in respect of consequence as few authors ever brought together in one point of view, for they consist of the two Consuls L. Calphurnius Piso and Aulus Gabinius, the Tribune P. Clodius, Cicero and Pomponius Atticus, Caius Piso Frugi, Terentia and Tullia, wife and daughter of Cicero, and Clodia sister of the Tribune, without one speaking attendant or interloper throughout the piece, except a very few words from one Apollodorus. To give display to characters like these the bounds of any single drama would hardly serve, and of course the arrangement was so far in judicious; yet the author, as if he had not enough on his hands, goes aside to speak of Cato in the scene betwixt Gabinius and Clodius "Gab.-Cato is still severe, is still himself: "Rough and unshaken in his squalid garb, "Clod.-No more: I sleep o'er Cato's drowsy theme. In the further progress of the same scene Pompey is mentioned, and Calphurnius Piso introduced in the following terms Gab.- -Oh! who shall attempt to read "In Pompey's face the movements of his heart? "The same calm artificial look of state, "His half-clos'd eyes in self-attention wrapt, "Clod.-See, yonder your old colleague Piso comes! "How like his grandsire's monument he looks! "He wears the dress of holy Numa's days, The brow and beard of Zeno; trace him home, "You'll find his house the school of vice and lust, "The foulest sink of Epicurus' sty, "And him the rankest swine of all the herd." I find the two first acts are wound up with some couplets in rhyme after the manner of the middle age. It will I hope be pardonable if I here insert the lines, with which Clodius concludes the first act "When flaming comets vex our frighted sphere, "Though now the nations melt with awful fear, "From the dread omen fatal ills presage, "Dire plague and famine and war's wasting rage; "In time some brighter genius may arise, "And banish signs and omens from the skies, "Expound the comet's nature and its cause, "Assign its periods and prescribe its laws, "Whilst man grown wise, with his discoveries fraught, "Shall wonder how he needed to be taught." I shall only add that the dialogue between Cicero and Atticus in the third act seems in point of poetry one of the happiest efforts of its author; in short, although this drama has not all the finishing of a veteran artist, yet in parts it has a warmth of colouring and a strength of expression, which might induce a candid reader to augur not unfavourably of the novice who composed it. to meet. It is here I begin more particularly to feel the weight of those difficulties, which at my outset I too rashly announced myself prepared When I review what I have been saying about this my first drama, and recollect what numbers are behind, I am almost tempted to shrink back from the task, to which I am committed. If indeed the candour and liberality of my readers will allow me to step out of myself, (if I may so term it) whilst I am speaking of myself, I have little to fear; but if I must be tied down to my individuality, and not allowed my fair opinion without incurring the charge of self-conceit, I am in a most unenviable situation, and must either abandon my undertaking, or abide by the conditions of it with what fortitude I can muster. If, when I am professedly the recorder of my own writings, I am to record nothing in them or about them but their simple titles and the order in which they were written, I give the reader nothing more than a catalogue, which any magazine might furnish, or the prompter's register as well supply; if on the contrary I proceed to |