ld Ben would still maintain his proud height. He, no less than
Shakespeare stands on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a
master,--though his be Lattrig and Shakespeare's Skiddaw.

"The Alchemist."

Act i. sc. 2. Face's speech:--

"Will take his oath o' the Greek _Xenophon_,
If need be, in his pocket."

Another reading is "Testament."

Probably, the meaning is--that intending to give false evidence, he carried
a Greek _Xenophon_ to pass it off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid
perjury--as the Irish do, by contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead
of the book.

Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon's speech:--

"I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft:
Down is too hard."

Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were
invented in idea in the seventeenth century!

"Catiline's Conspiracy."

A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps
altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is chiefly
on this principle that the _Catiline_ has been rated so low. Take it and
_Sejanus_, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode of
relating great historical events in the liveliest and most interesting
manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes of such plays.
We might as rationally expect the excitement of the _Vicar of Wakefield_
from Goldsmith's _History of England_, as that of _Lear_, _Othello_, &c.,
from the _Sejanus_ or _Catiline_.

Act i. sc. 4.--

"_Cat._ Sirrah, what ail you?

(_He spies one of his boys not answer._)

_Pag._ Nothing.

_Best._ Somewhat modest.

_Cat._ Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot," &c.

This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural,
passage,--improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and
swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very
presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these
lines down to the words "throat opens," should be removed back so as to
follow the words "on this part of the house," in the speech of Catiline
soon after the entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, would
be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment.

Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia's speech:--

..."He is but a new fellow,
An _inmate_ here in Rome, as Catiline calls him."

A "lodger" would have been a happier imitation of the _inquilinus_ of
Sallust.

Act iv