savage and shocking, and that the intervention of Edmund destroys
the simplicity of the story. These objections may, I think, be
answered, by repeating, that the cruelty of the daughters is an
historical fact, to which the poet has added little, having only
drawn it into a series by dialogue and action. But I am not able to
apologise with equal plausibility for the extrusion of Gloucester's
eyes, which seems an act too horrid to be endured in dramatick
exhibition, and such as must always compel the mind to relieve its
distress by incredulity. Yet let it be remembered that our authour
well knew what would please the audience for which he wrote.

The injury done by Edmund to the simplicity of the action is abundantly
recompensed by the addition of variety, by the art with which he
is made to co-operate with the chief design and the opportunity
which he gives the poet of combining perfidy with perfidy, and
connecting the wicked son with the wicked daughters, to impress
this important moral, that villany is never at a stop, that crimes
lead to crimes, and at last terminate in ruin.

But though this moral be incidentally enforced, Shakespeare has
suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause contrary
to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and,
what is yet more strange, to the faith of chronicles. Yet this
conduct is justified by the Spectator, who blames Tate for giving
Cordelia success and happiness in his alteration, and declares,
that, in his opinion, the tragedy has lost half its beauty. Dennis
has remarked, whether justly or not, that, to secure the favourable
reception of Cato, "the town was poisoned with much false and
abominable criticism," and that endeavours had been used to discredit
and decry poetical justice. A play in which the wicked prosper,