Page:The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets.djvu/23

Rh that he is a very good Historian, and from his Plays the Reader may gather a great deal of the Affairs of Greece, and Rome. Juno in the first Act of Julius Cæsar, gives us the History of all the Invasions of the Roman Empire, by the barbarous Nations, whether Gauls or the Cimbri, &c. to the time of Julius Cæsar, and finding none of them effectual enough to ruin the Power of the Roman State, which deriving it self originally from the Trojan Race, she could not but hate, therefore she now resolves to destroy it by Civil Wars, and to raise her Brothers Servants, the Furies, always obsequious to mischievous Commands,


 * Whilst Furies furious by my Fury made.

Says, she shall at last do the Work; with which, after a Speech of Two or Three Hundred Lines she ends the Act. Indeed my Lord seems often to have a peculiar Fancy to punning, and that in all his chief Characters; as Cæsar says in the Second Act, Great Pompey's Pomp is past and To seem uncivil in these Civil Wars.

But not to wrong my Lord in the Judgment of the Readers, by these ridiculous Quotations; they are to consider, First, that this was the Vice of the Age, not the Poet; he having in that, as well as some other things, imitated the Vices of our admirable Shakespear, and next that these punning Fits come not very often upon him. To shew that he writes in another Strain sometimes, I must give you Three or Four Lines, (my Brevity denying more large Quotations) which will give you a Taste of his better Parts.

'Tis the Reflection of Adrastus in Cræsus, the most moving Play of the Four; but to return to Cæsar. In the Second Act, Cæsar thinks it a part of his Grandeur to boast his Deeds to Anthony (who knew 'em well enough before) and betwixt 'em both, we have an Account of his Commentaries, and almost a Diary of his Actions. I can't omit one thing in this Play, in the Fifth Act he brings Brutus, Cassius, Cicero, Anthony, &c. together after the Death of Cæsar, almost in the same Circumstances as Shakespear had done in his Play of this Name. But Shakespear's Anthony and Brutus