s Play, my lord brings
Brutus, Cassius, Cicero, Anthony, &c. together, after the death of
Caesar, almost in the same circumstances Shakespear has done in his
Play of this name; but the difference between the Anthony and Brutus
of Shakespear, and these characters drawn by the earl of Stirling, is
as great, as the genius of the former transcended the latter. This is
the most regular of his lordship's plays in the unity of action. The
story of this Play is to be found in all the Roman Histories written
since the death of that Emperor.

His lordship has acknowledged the stile of his dramatic works not to
be pure, for which in excuse he has pleaded his country, the Scotch
dialect then being in a very imperfect state. Having mentioned the
Scotch dialect, it will not be improper to observe, that it is at this
time much in the same degree of perfection, that the English language
was, in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth; there are
idioms peculiar to the Scotch, which some of their best writers have
not been able entirely to forget, and unless they reside in England
for some time, they seldom overcome them, and their language is
greatly obscured by these means; but the reputation which some Scotch
writers at present enjoy, make it sufficiently clear, that they are
not much wanting in perspicuity or elegance, of which Mr. Hume, the
ingenious author of Essays Moral and Political, is an instance. In the
particular quality of fire, which is indispensible in a good writer,
the Scotch authors have rather too much of it, and are more apt to be
extravagantly animated, than correctly dull.

Besides these Plays, our author wrote several other Poems of a
different kind, viz. Doomsday, or the Great Day of the Lord's
Judgment, first printed 1614, and a Poem divided into 12 Book, which
the author calls Hours; In this Poem is the following emphatic line,
when speaking of the divine vengeance falling upon the wicked; he
calls it

A weight of wrath, more than ten worlds could
bear.

A very ingenious gentleman of Oxford, in a conversation with the
author of this Life, took occasion to mention the above line as the
best he had ever read consisting of monysyllables, and is indeed one
of the most affecting lines to be met with in any poet. This Poem,
says Mr. Coxeter, 'in his MS. notes, was reprinted in 1720, by
A. Johnston, who in his preface says, that he had the honour of
transmitting the author's works to the great Mr. Addi