“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_.