quiet and retirement, but soon
returned to Lichfield, to complete it. The same year that saw these
successive disappointments, witnessed also Johnson's return to London,
with his tragedy completed, and its rejection by Fleetwood, the
patentee, at that time, of Drury lane theatre. Twelve years elapsed,
before it was acted, and, after many alterations by his pupil and
companion, Garrick, who was then manager of the theatre, it was, by his
zeal, and the support of the most eminent performers of the day, carried
through a representation of nine nights. Johnson's profits, after the
deduction of expenses, and together with the hundred pounds, which he
received from Robert Dodsley, for the copy, were nearly three hundred
pounds. So fallacious were the hopes cherished by Walmsley, that Johnson
would "turn out a fine tragedy writer[b]."

"The tragedy of Irene," says Mr. Murphy, "is founded on a passage in
Knolles's History of the Turks;" an author highly commended in the
Rambler, No. 122. An incident in the life of Mahomet the great, first
emperor of the Turks, is the hinge, on which the fable is made to move.
The substance of the story is shortly this:--In 1453, Mahomet laid siege
to Constantinople, and, having reduced the place, became enamoured of a
fair Greek, whose name was Irene. The sultan invited her to embrace the
law of the prophet, and to grace his throne. Enraged at this intended
marriage, the janizaries formed a conspiracy to dethrone the emperor. To
avert the impending danger, Mahomet, in a full assembly of the grandees,
"catching, with one hand," as Knolles relates it, "the fair Greek by the
hair of her head, and drawing his falchion with the other, he, at one
blow, struck off her head, to the great terror of them all; and, having
so done, said unto them, 'Now, by this, judge whether your emperor is
able to bridle his affections or not[c].'" We are not unjust, we
conceive, in affirming, that there is an interest kept alive in the
plain and simple narrative of the old historian, which is lost in the
declamatory tragedy of Johnson.

It is sufficient, for our present purpose, to confess that he _has_
failed in this his only dramatic attempt; we shall endeavour, more
fully, to show _how_ he has failed, in our discussion of his powers as a
critic. That they were not blinded to the defects of others, by his own
inefficiency in dramatic composition, is fully proved by his judicious
remarks on Cato, which was constructed