Nature, or in other words Providence, has wisely contrived for the
preservation of mankind. Now, does it not follow, from what has
been said, that for a man to receive the news of his son's death
with dry eyes, and to weep at the same time for the calamities of
his country, is a wretched affectation and a miserable
inconsistency? Is not that, in plain English, to receive with dry
eyes the news of the deaths of those for whose sake our country is a
name so dear to us, and at the same time to shed tears for those for
whose sakes our country is not a name so dear to us?"

But this formidable assailant is less resistible when he attacks the
probability of the action and the reasonableness of the plan. Every
critical reader must remark that Addison has, with a scrupulosity
almost unexampled on the English stage, confined himself in time to
a single day, and in place to rigorous unity. The scene never
changes, and the whole action of the play passes in the great hall
of Cato's house at Utica. Much, therefore, is done in the hall for
which any other place had been more fit; and this impropriety
affords Dennis many hints of merriment and opportunities of triumph.
The passage is long; but as such disquisitions are not common, and
the objections are skilfully formed and vigorously urged, those who
delight in critical controversy will not think it tedious:--

"Upon the departure of Portius, Sempronius makes but one soliloquy,
and immediately in comes Syphax, and then the two politicians are at
it immediately. They lay their heads together, with their snuff-
boxes in their hands, as Mr. Bayes has it, and feague it away. But,
in the midst of that wise scene, Syphax seems to give a seasonable
caution to Sempronius:--