Caedimus, inque vicem praebemus crura sagittis.

I cast my eyes but by chance on Catiline; and in the three or four last pages, found enough to conclude that Jonson writ not correctly.

  —­Let the long-hid seeds
  Of treason, in thee, now shoot forth in deeds
  Ranker than horror.

In reading some bombast speeches of Macbeth, which are not to be understood, he used to say that it was horror; and I am much afraid that this is so.

  Thy parricide late on thy only son,
  After his mother, to make empty way
  For thy last wicked nuptials, worse than they
  That blaze that act of thy incestuous life,
  Which gained thee at once a daughter and a wife.

The sense is here extremely perplexed; and I doubt the word they is false grammar.

  —­And be free
  Not heaven itself from thy impiety.

A synchysis, or ill-placing of words, of which Tully so much complains in oratory.

  The waves and dens of beasts could not receive
  The bodies that those souls were frighted from.

The preposition in the end of the sentence; a common fault with him, and which I have but lately observed in my own writings.

  What all the several ills that visit earth,
  Plague, famine, fire, could not reach unto,
  The sword, nor surfeits, let thy fury do.

Here are both the former faults:  for, besides that the preposition unto is placed last in the verse, and at the half period, and is redundant, there is the former synchysis in the words “the sword, nor surfeits” which in construction ought to have been placed before the other.

Catiline says of Cethegus, that for his sake he would

  Go on upon the gods, kiss lightning, wrest
  The engine from the Cyclops, and give fire
  At face of a full cloud, and stand his ire.

To “go on upon,” is only to go on twice[4].  To “give fire at face of a full cloud,” was not understood in his own time; “and stand his ire,” besides the antiquated word ire, there is the article his, which makes false construction:  and giving fire at the face of a cloud, is a perfect image of shooting, however it came to be known in those days to Catiline.

  —­Others there are,
  Whom envy to the state draws and pulls on,
  For contumelies received; and such are sure ones.

Ones, in the plural number:  but that is frequent with him; for he says, not long after,

  Caesar and Crassus, if they be ill men,
  Are mighty ones. 
  Such men, they do not succour more the cause, &c.

They redundant.

  Though heaven should speak with all his wrath at once,
  We should stand upright and unfeared.

His is ill syntax with heaven; and by unfeared he means unafraid:  Words of a quite contrary signification.