It is, indeed, difficult to understand how, if any "stage-play could preserve liberty," such a play as Cato should do the work. The polished declamation is made up of the platitudes common to Whigs and Tories; and Bolingbroke gave the cue to his own party when he presented fifty guineas to Cato's representative for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator. The Whigs, said Pope, design a second present when they can contrive as good a saying. Bolingbroke was, of course, aiming at Marlborough, and his interpretation was intrinsically as plausible as any that could have been devised by his antagonists. Each side could adopt Cato as easily as rival sects can quote the Bible; and it seems possible that Addison may have suggested to Pope that nothing in Cato could really offend his principles. Addison, as Pope also tells us, thought the prologue ambiguous, and altered "Britons, arise!" to "Britons, attend!" lest the phrase should be thought to hint at a new revolution. Addison advised Pope about this time not to be content with the applause of "half the nation," and perhaps regarded him as one who, by the fact of his external position with regard to parties, would be a more appropriate sponsor for the play.
Whatever the intrinsic significance of Cato, circumstances gave it a political colour; and Pope, in a lively description of the first triumphant night to his friend Caryll, says, that as author of the successful and very spirited prologue, he was clapped into a Whig, sorely against his will, at every two lines. Shortly before he had spoken in the warmest terms to the same correspondent of the admirable moral tendency of the work; and perhaps he had not realized the full party significance till he became conscious of the impression produced upon the audience. Not
