Chapter 81

“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_.