Dodsley, it appears that his friend Mr. Robert Dodsley gave him one hundred pounds for the copy, with his usual reservation of the right of one edition[1].
Irene, considered as a poem, is intitled to the praise of superiour excellence[2]. Analysed into parts, it will furnish a rich store of noble sentiments, fine imagery, and beautiful language; but it is deficient in pathos, in that delicate power of touching the human feelings, which is the principal end of the drama[3]. Indeed Garrick has complained to me, that Johnson not only had not the faculty of producing the impressions of tragedy, but that he had not the sensibility to perceive them. His great friend Mr. Walmsley's prediction, that he would 'turn out a fine tragedy-writer[4],' was, therefore, ill-founded. Johnson was wise enough to be convinced that he had not the talents necessary to write successfully for the stage, and never made another attempt in that species of composition[5].
- ↑ Mr. Croker says that 'it appears by a MS. note in Isaac Reed's copy of Murphy's Life, that the receipts of the third, sixth, and ninth nights, after deducting sixty guineas a night for the expenses of the house, amounted to £195 17s.: Johnson cleared therefore, with the copyright, very nearly £300.' Irene was sold at the price of 1s. 6d. a copy (Gent. Mag. xix. 96); so that Dodsley must have looked for a very large sale.
- ↑ See Post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection for Johnson's estimate of Irene in later life.
- ↑ Aaron Hill (vol. ii. p. 355), in a letter to Mr. Mallett, gives the following account of Irene after having seen it: 'I was at the anomalous Mr. Johnson's benefit, and found the play his proper representative; strong sense ungraced by sweetness or decorum.' Boswell.
- ↑ See ante, p. 118.
- ↑ Murphy (Life, p. 53) says that 'some years afterwards, when he knew Johnson to be in distress, he asked Garrick why he did not produce another tragedy for his Lichfield friend? Garrick's answer was remarkable: "When Johnson writes tragedy, declamation roars, and passion sleeps: when Shakespeare wrote, he dipped his pen in his own heart."' Johnson was perhaps aware of the causes of his failure as a tragedy-writer. In his criticism of Addison's Cato he says:—'Of Cato it has been not unjustly determined, that it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant
