appearance which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had
been reduced, he found his old patrons out of power, and was,
therefore, for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his
mind."--JOHNSON, _Lives of the Poets_.

87 "Mr. Addison wrote very fluently; but he was sometimes very slow and
scrupulous in correcting. He would show his verses to several
friends; and would alter almost everything that any of them hinted
at as wrong. He seemed to be too diffident of himself; and too much
concerned about his character as a poet; or (as he worded it) too
solicitous for that kind of praise, which, God knows, is but a very
little matter after all!"--POPE (_Spence's Anecdotes_).

88 "As to poetical affairs," says Pope, in 1713, "I am content at
present to be a bare looker-on.... Cato was not so much the wonder
of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the
foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party
play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly
in the world be applied to him on this occasion:--

"Envy itself is dumb--in wonder lost;
And factions strive who shall applaud him most.

"The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of
the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other; while the
author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause
proceeding more from the hands than the head.... I believe you have
heard that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord
Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, and
presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgement (as he expressed
it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual
dictator"--POPE'S "Letter to SIR W. TRUMBULL".

_Cato_ ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote
the Prologue, and Garth the Epilogue.

It is worth noticing how many things in _Cato_ keep their ground as
habitual quotations, e.g.:--

" ... big with the fate
Of Cato and of Rome."
"'Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it."
"Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury."
"I think the Romans call it Stoicism."
"My voice is still for war."
"When