PROLOGUE BY MR. POPE. SPOKEN BY MR. WILKS: 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 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 confess'd in human shape he draws, What Plato thought, and godlike 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 with a falling state! While Cato gives his little senate laws, Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed? Ignobly vain, and impotently great, On French translation, and Italian song: 1 This was first written, "Britons arise, be worth like this approv'd:" but as Addison was frighted lest he should be thought a promoter of insurrection, the line was liquidated to САТО. ACT THE FIRST. SCENE I. PORTIUS, MARcus. PORTIUS. The dawn is overcast, the morning low'r's, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, th' important day, big with the fate And close the scene of blood. Already Cæsar MARCUS. Thy steady temper, Portius, Strow'd with Rome's citizens, and drench'd in slaughter, Of honour, virtue, liberty, and Rome. His sword ne'er fell but on the guilty head; Oppression, tyranny, and power usurp'd, Draw all the vengeance of his arm upon them. MARCUS. 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, A feeble army, and an empty senate; By heavens, such virtues, join'd with such success, PORTIUS. Remember what our father oft has told us : Our understanding traces them in vain, |