“Cato,” a tragedy by Mr. Joseph Addison, was produced with much success at Drury Lane Theatre in 1713. It is now well nigh forgotten, but the following soliloquy was generally inserted in the school books of the last generation:—
ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.
It must be so—Plato thou reason’st well—
Else why this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
’Tis the Divinity that stirs within us;
’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,