Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/72

60 to you, and the advice is good. Solon thought so; nay, he went farther: and you remember the reason he gave for sitting in the council of Pisistratus, whom he had done his utmost to oppose; and who, by the way, proved a very good prince. But the epistle is not writ by Cicero, as you seem to think. It is, if I mistake not, an epistle of Dolabella to him. Cato, you say, would not be of the same mind. Cato is a most venerable name, and Dolabella was but a scoundrel with wit and valour; and yet there is better sense, nay, there is more virtue, in what Dolabella advises, than in the conduct of Cato. I must own my weakness to you. This Cato, so sung by Lucan in every page, and so much better sung by Virgil in half a line, strikes me with no great respect. When I see him painted in all the glorious colours which eloquence furnishes, I call to mind that image of him, which Tully gives in one of his letters to Atticus, or to somebody else; where he says, that having a mind to keep a debate from coming on in the senate, they made Cato rise to speak, and that he talked till the hour of proposing matters was over. Tully insinuates, that they often made this use of him. Does not the moving picture shift? Do you not behold Clarke of Taunton Dean, in the gown of a Roman senator, sending out the members to piss? The censor used sharp medicines; but, in his time, the patient had strength to bear them. The second Cato inherited this receipt without his skill; and like a true quack, he gave the remedy, because it was his only one, though it was too late. He hastened the patient's death: he not only hastened it, he made it more convulsive snd painful. The