Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 2.djvu/393

 out of the hall, upon pretence of acquainting Juba with the result of their debates, he appears to me to do a thing which is neither reasonable nor civil. Juba might certainly have better been made acquainted with the result of that debate in some private apartment of the palace. But the poet was driven upon this absurdity to make way for another; and this is, to give Juba an opportunity to demand Marcia of her father. But the quarrel and rage of Juba and Syphax, in the same Act; the invectives of Syphax against the Romans and Cato; the advice that he gives Juba in her father's hall, to bear away Marcia by force; and his brutal and clamorous rage upon his refusal, and at a time when Cato was scarcely out of sight, and perhaps not out of hearing at least, some of his guards or domesticks must necessarily be supposed to be within hearing; is a thing that it is hardly possible.

Sempronius, in the second Act, comes back once more in the same morning to the governor's hall, to carry on the conspiracy with Syphax against the Rh