I shall dismiss the Examination into these his latent Beauties, when
I have made a short Comment upon a remarkable Passage from _Julius
Cæsar_, which is inexpressibly fine in its self, *and greatly
discovers our Author’s Knowledge and Researches into Nature.

Between the acting of a dreadful Thing,
And the first Motion, all the _Interim_ is
Like a Phantasma, or a hideous Dream:
The Genius, and the mortal Instruments
Are then in Council; and the State of Man,
Like to a little Kingdom, suffers then
The Nature of an Insurrection.

That nice Critick _Dionysius_ of _Halicarnassus_ confesses, that he
could not find those great Strokes, which he calls the _terrible
Graces_, in any of the Historians, which he frequently met with in
_Homer_. I believe, the Success would be the same likewise, if we
sought for them in any other of _our_ Authors besides our _British_
HOMER, _Shakespeare_. This Description of the Condition of
Conspirators has a Pomp and Terror in it, that perfectly astonishes.
Our excellent Mr. _Addison_, whose Modesty made him sometimes
diffident in his own Genius, but whose exquisite Judgment always led
him to the safest Guides, as we may see by those many fine Strokes
in his _Cato_ borrow’d from the _Philippics_ of _Cicero_, has
paraphrased this fine Description; but we are no longer to expect
those _terrible Graces_, which he could not hinder from evaporating
in the Transfusion.

O think, what anxious Moments pass between
The Birth of Plots, and their last fatal Periods.