Then, to cap the climax of poetic condescension, little Alexander honoured "Cato" with a flowing prologue wherein he set forth, archaically enough, that "To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart, To make mankind in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold: For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage, Commanding tears to stream through every age; Tyrants no more their savage nature kept, And foes to virtue wonder'd how they wept." At last came the eventful evening of April 13, when "Cato" saw the light.

The theatre was packed, just as Steele promised that it should be, yet the audience would have been large had Dick never existed.
There were no press agents to "boom" matters, but as it became known that the Whigs stood sponsors for the tragedy there was a corresponding desire to be in either at its triumph or its death.

The result has passed into history.

The characters were, for the most part, finely acted, and the play was admired for its lofty sentiments and elegance of expression, while the Tories, _mirabile dictu_, vied with their enemies in enthusiastic tokens of approval.

The Whigs went to the theatre expecting to appropriate all of Mr.Addison's illusions to the sacred cause of liberty, and what must have been their horror on finding that the Tories, refusing to be discomfited by any of those illusions, applauded as violently as did the friends of Hanover?
Pope has left us a description of this first night, in a letter to Sir William Trumbull.