Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/103

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When I do fear again, let me be struck With forked fire and unpitied die— Who fears, is worthy of calamity."

This degenerates into rant, but is better than the translation of Cicero. In the following extract from "Catiline," there is a Shakespearean strength and terseness.

In this play he had added a chorus, of which one can scarcely say anything more severe than that it abounds in the common-places of the Greek chorus, unrelieved by its occasional sublimity and beauty. This was not merely in imitation of the Greek and Roman tragedy, but was the custom in old English plays. There are choruses in the "Cleopatra and Philotas" of Jonson's predecessor, Daniel.

The play of "Catiline," like that of "Sejanus," displays great learning. But we are here wearied, as before, by the endless prolixity of the speeches. Cicero is as rhetorical in his conversations with Curtius and Fulvia, as he is when haranguing the Senate. It commences strangely. The Ghost of Sylla rises and makes a very long speech, in the midst of which the curtain is drawn and Catiline discovered in his study. The Ghost advises Catiline to perpetrate all kinds of enormities, and then disappears. Catiline soliloquizes. Then ensues a scene between Aurelia, Orestilla, and himself. Next enter Lentulus and Cethegus. The scene between Fulvia and Curtius is only one part of a grossly licentious amour, very similar to the