'I am a reader in ordinary, and I cannot defend the introduction of the First Catilinarian oration, at full length, into a play. Catiline is a very middling play. The characters are certainly discriminated, but with no delicacy. Jonson makes Cethegus a mere vulgar ruffian. He quite fogets that all the conspirators were gentlemen, noblemen, politicians, probably scholars. He has seized only the coarsest peculiarities of character. As to the conduct of the piece, nothing can be worse than the long debates and narratives which make up half of it.'