Conscience and care die in thee; and be free
Not heaven itself from thy impiety:
Let night grow blacker with thy plots, and day,
At shewing but thy head forth, start away
From this half-sphere; and leave Rome's blinded
To embrace lusts, hatreds, slaughters, funerals,
And not recover sight till their own flames
Do light them to their ruins! All the names
Of thy confederates too be no less great
In hell than here: that when we would repeat
Our strengths in muster, we may name you all,
And furies upon you for furies call!
Whilst what you do may strike them into fears,
Or make them grieve, and wish your mischief theirs.
[Sinks.
CATILINE rises, and comes forward.
Cat. It is decreed: nor shall thy fate, O
Rome,
Resist my vow. Though hills were set on hills,
And seas met seas to guard thee, I would through;
Ay, plough up rocks, steep as the Alps, in dust,
And lave the Tyrrhene waters into clouds,
But I would reach thy head, thy head, proud
city!
5 Ay, plough up rocks, &c.] All the copies concur in reading I, the old affirmative, which Whalley mistook for the pronoun, and corrupted into I'd plough, &c., to the injury of the spi. rit of the passage. Ir the numerous editions of this play, there are many petty variations, with which it is scarcely necessary to trouble the reader; especially as, in almost every instance, that of 1616, the only one which appears to have been printed under Jonson's own eye, is carefully followed. In this place the 4to. 1635, reads "I, pluck up" &c.
Robert Baron, in his tragedy of Mirza, not content with bor
The ills that I have done cannot be safe
But by attempting greater; and I feel
A spirit within me chides my sluggish hands,
And says, they have been innocent too long.
Was I a man bred great as Rome herself,
One form'd for all her honours, all her glories,
Equal to all her titles; that could stand
Close up with Atlas, and sustain her name
As strong as he doth heaven! and was I,
Of all her brood, mark'd out for the repulse
By her no-voice, when I stood candidate.
To be commander in the Pontic war!
I will hereafter call her step-dame ever.
If she can lose her nature, I can lose
My piety, and in her stony entrails
Dig me a seat; where I will live again,
The labour of her womb, and be a burden
Weightier than all the prodigies and monsters
That she hath teem'd with, since she first knew
Mars-
Enter AURELIA ORESTILLA.
Who's there?
Aur. 'Tis I.
Cat. Aurelia?
Aur. Yes.
Cat. Appear,
And break like day, my beauty, to this circle : Upbraid thy Phoebus, that he is so long
In mounting to that point, which should give thee Thy proper splendour. Wherefore frowns my
rowing the plan and distribution of Catiline, has taken almost the whole of this and the preceding speech to himself. If we are not more honest than our ancestors, we certainly are at more pains to conceal our thefts; for Baron's plagarisms are open and undisguised.
Have I too long been absent from these lips, This cheek, these eyes? [Kisses them.] What is my trespass, speak?
Aur. It seems you know, that can accuse.
Cat. I will redeem it.
Aur. Still you say so.
Cat. When Orestilla, by her bearing well These myretirements, and stol'n times for thought, Shall give their effects leave to call her queen Of all the world, in place of humbled Rome. Aur. You court me now,
Cat. As I would always, love,
By this ambrosiac kiss, and this of nectar,
Wouldst thou but hear as gladly as I speak.
Could my Aurelia think I meant her less,
When, wooing her, I first removed a wife,
And then a son, to make my bed and house
Spacious and fit to embrace her? these were deeds
Not to have begun with, but to end with more
And greater: He that, building, stays at one
Floor, or the second, hath erected none.
'Twas how to raise thee I was meditating,
To make some act of mine answer thy love;
That love, that, when my state was now quite
sunk,
Came with thy wealth and weigh'd it up again,
And made my emergent fortune once more look
Above the main; which now shall hit the stars,
And stick my Orestilla there amongst them,
any tempest can but make the billow,
And any billow can but lift her greatness.
But I must pray my love, she will put on
Like habits with myself; I have to do
With many men, and many natures: Some
With many men, and many natures.] The following description
That must be blown and sooth'd; as Lentulus,
Whom I have heav'd with magnifying his blood,
And a vain dream out of the Sybil's books,
That a third man of that great family
Whereof he is descended, the Cornelii,
Should be a king in Rome: which I have hired
The flattering augurs to interpret Him,
Cinna and Sylla dead. Then bold Cethegus,
Whose valour I have turn'd into his poison,
And praised so into daring, as he would
Go on upon the gods, kiss lightning, wrest
The engine from the Cyclops, and give fire
At face of a full cloud, and stand his ire,
When I would bid him move. Others there are,
Whom envy to the state draws, and puts on
For contumelies received, (and such are sure
ones,)
As Curius, and the forenamed Lentulus,
Both which have been degraded in the senate,
And must have their disgraces still new rubb'd,
To make them smart, and labour of revenge.
Others whom mere ambition fires, and dole
Of provinces abroad, which they have feign'd
To their crude hopes, and I as amply promis'd:
These, Lecca, Vargunteius, Bestia, Autronius.
Some whom their wants oppress, as the idle cap-
tains
Of Sylla's troops; and divers Roman knights,
The profuse wasters of their patrimonies,
So threaten'd with their debts, as they will now
Run any desperate fortune for a change.
These, for a time, we must relieve, Aurelia,
is artful in the poet, to let us into the true characters of the several conspirators; and prepare us for their appearance. It is perfectly consonant likewise to historic truth; and is only a poetical translation of what Sallust himself hath given us in the introduction to his history of Catiline's conspiracy. WHAL.
And make our house their safeguard: like for those
That fear the law, or stand within her gripe,
For any act past or to come; such will,
From their own crimes, be factious, as from ours.
Some more there be, slight airlings, will be won
With dogs and horses, or perhaps a whore;
Which must be had: and if they venture lives
For us, Aurelia, we must hazard honours
A little. Get thee store and change of women,
As I have boys; and give them time and place,
And all connivance: be thy self, too, courtly;
And entertain and feast, sit up, and revel;
Call all the great, the fair, and spirited dames
Of Rome about thee; and begin a fashion
Of freedom and community: some will thank
thee,
Though the sour senate frown, whose heads
In fear and feeling too. We must not spare
Or cost or modesty: It can but shew
Like one of Juno's or of Jove's disguises,
In either thee or me: and will as soon,
When things succeed, be thrown by, or let fall,
As is a veil put off, a visor changed,
Or the scene shifted in our theatres-?
[Noise within. Who's that? It is the voice of Lentulus.
7 Or the scene shifted in our theatres-] This is an oversight. Jonson was too well acquainted with the Roman theatre, to attribute any thing like "shifting the scene" to it. It is not improbable, that some kind of improvement in theatrical exhibitions was taking place about this time in our chief theatres. Inigo Jones had made use of moveable scenes a few years before at Oxford, and the players could not be insensible to the advantages derived from them. Little, however, was effected; nor, indeed, would the low price of admission allow of much. The nature of scenery, as we now use the word, was certainly well
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