CATILIN E.

D

ACT I. SCENE I.

Sylla's Ghoft.

OST thou not feel me, Rome? not yet? is night
So heavy on thee, and my weight fo light'?
Can Sylla's ghoft arife within thy walls

Lefs threat'ning, than an earthquake, the quick falls
Of thee and thine? Shake not the frighted heads
Of thy steep tow'rs? or fhrink to their first beds?
Or, as their ruin the large Tyber fills,

Make that fwell up, and drown thy feven proud hills?
What fleep is this doth feize thee fo like death,
And is not it? wake, feel her in my breath :
Behold I come, fent from the Stygian found,

Doft thou not feel me, Rome? not yet? is night

So heavy on thee, and my weight fo light?] The poet opens his play with the ghost of Sylla: this is an initation of Seneca's Thyeftes, in which the ghost of Tantalus appears, attended by the furies. Perhaps this first scene ought ra her to be confidered as a prologue. There are other inftances in the antient dramatic writers, where thefe fhadowy beings are introduced in the beginning of a play. The prologue to the Aulularia of Plautus is fpoke by the god Lar; and, what is exactly to our purpose, in the Hecuba of Euripides, the ghoft of Polydorus is the firft fpeaker in the tragedy. K

VOL. III.

As

As a dire vapour that had cleft the ground',
T'ingender with the night, and blast the day;
Or like a peftilence that should display
Infection through the world: which thus I do.
[Difcovers Catiline in his study.

Pluto be at thy counfels, and into

Thy darker bofom enter Sylla's fpirit :

All that was mine, and bad, thy breaft inherit.
Alas, how weak is that for Catiline!

Did I but fay (vain voice!) all that was mine?
All that the Gracchi, Cinna, Marius would,
What now, had I a body again, I could,
Coming from hell, what fiends would wifh fhould be,
And Hannibal could not have wifh'd to fee,
Think thou, and practife. Let the long-hid feeds
Of treason in thee now fhoot forth in deeds
Ranker than horror; and thy former facts
Not fall in mention, but to urge new acts:
Confcience of them provoke thee on to more :
Be ftill thy incefts, murders, rapes before
Thy fenfe; thy forcing first a vestal nun;
Thy parricide, late, on thy own only fon 3,
After his mother, to make empty way
For thy laft wicked nuptials; worse than they
That blaze that act of thy incestuous life,
Which got thee at once a daughter and a wife.
I leave the flaughters, that thou didst for me,

2 Bebold I come, fent from the Stygian found,

As a dire vapour, that had cleft the ground.] This is from Seneca ;
Mittor, ut dirus vapor
Tellure rupta, vel gravem populis luem
Sparfura peftis.

Thy forcing for a veftal nun;

Thyeft. ver. 87.

Thy parricide, late, on thy own ONLY fon.] This prieftefs of Vesta, defled by Catiline; is faid to have been a fifter of Tully. He killed his fon, in order to make room for his miftrefs Aurelia Oreftilla: the 4to. reads thine own natural fon; the lection I follow, is that of the eldeft folio, which I think the moft emphatical.

Of

Of fenators; for which, I hid for thee
Thy murder of thy brother, (being fo brib'd)
And writ him in the lift of my profcrib'd
After thy fact, to fave thy little fhame:
Thy inceft with thy fifter, I not name;
These are too light: fate will have thee pursue
Deeds, after which no mischief can be new;
The ruin of thy country: thou wert built
For fuch a work, and born for no lefs guilt.
What though defeated once thou'ft been, and known,
Tempt it again: that is thy act, or none.
What all the feveral ills that vifit earth,
(Brought forth by night with a finifter birth)
Plagues, famine, fire, could not reach unto,
The fword, nor furfeits; let thy fury do:
Make all paft, prefent, future ill thine own;
And conquer all example in thy one.
Nor let thy thought find any vacant time
To hate an old, but ftill a fresher crime

Drown the remembrance: let not mischief cease,
But while it is in punishing, increase 4:
Confcience and care die in thee; and be free
Not heav'n itself from thy impiety:

Let night grow blacker with thy plots, and day,
At fhewing but thy head forth, ftart away

From this half-fphere; and leave Rome's blinded walls
T'embrace lufts, hatreds, flaughters, funerals,

And not recover fight till their own flames
Do light them to their ruins. All the names

Let not mifchief ceale,

But while it is in punishing, increase.] Thefe, with the preceding and following verfes, are tranflated likewife from Seneca:

Nec vacet cuiquam vetus

Odiffe crimen; femper oriatur novum ;
Nec unum in uno; dumque punitur fcelus
Crefcat.

Jufque omne pereat ; non fit à veftris malis

Immune cælum

Nox atra fiat, excidat cælo dies.