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 hand than the head. This was the case, too, with the Prologue-writer, who was clapped into a sound Whig at the end of every two lines. I believe you have heard that, after all the applause of the opposite faction, my lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played _Cato_, into the box between one of the acts, and presented him with fifty guineas, in acknowledgment, as he expressed it, for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator. The Whigs are unwilling to be distanced this way, and therefore design a present to the same _Cato_ very speedily. Bolingbroke’s speech about a perpetual dictator was a gibe which everybody understood, directed against the devotion of the Whigs to Marlborough, and was quite honest warfare; but what, we wonder, would Mr. Irving think if Mr. Gladstone sent for him to his box, and “presented him with fifty guineas”? The actor who considers himself one of the most distinguished members of good society had not been thought of in those days. One wonders, too, in passing, where a fine gentleman kept his money, and whether the purse of the stage, which is always ready to be flung to a deserving object, was a reality in the days of Queen Anne? Fifty guineas is a somewhat heavy charge for the pocket; however, perhaps, Lord Bolingbroke had come specially provided, or he had a secretary handy who did not mind the bulging of his coat. Of this great tragedy, which turned the head of London, and which the two great political parties vied with each other in applauding, there are but a few lines virtually existing nowadays. To be sure, it is in print with the rest of Addison’s works, to be read by whosoever will; but very few avail themselves of that privilege. ’T is not in mortals to command success. But we ’ll do more, Sempronius; we ’ll deserve it is the chief relic, and that of a very prosaic common sense and familiar kind, which the great tragedy has left us. “Plato, thou reasonest well!” is another quotation, which is, perhaps, more frequently used in a jocular than serious sense. But for these scraps _Cato_ is as dead as most of his contemporaries; and we do not even remember the great tragedy when we hear the name of its author. We think, indeed, only of the “Spectator” if we have read a little in the literature of the period; but if we have no special tastes and studies that way, of Sir Roger de Coverley alone; for Sir Roger is Addison’s gift to his country and the world, the creation by which his name will always be known.