on a plan similar to Irene: and
the strongest censure, ever passed on this tragedy, was conveyed in
Garrick's application of Johnson's own severe, but correct critique, on
the wits of Charles, in whose works

"Declamation roar'd, while passion slept."[d]

"Addison speaks the language of poets," says Johnson, in his preface to
Shakespeare, "and Shakespeare of men. We find in Cato innumerable
beauties, which enamour us of its author, but we see nothing that
acquaints us with human sentiments, or human actions; we place it with
the fairest and the noblest progeny which judgment propagates by
conjunction with learning; but Othello is the vigorous and vivacious
offspring of observation, impregnated by genius. Cato affords a splendid
exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners, and delivers just and
noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated and harmonious; but its
hopes and fears communicate no vibration to the heart: the composition
refers us only to the writer; we pronounce the name of Cato, but we
think on Addison." The critic's remarks on the same tragedy, in his Life
of Addison, are as applicable as the above to his own production. "Cato
is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama; rather a succession of just
sentiments in elegant language, than a representation of natural
affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing
here 'excites or assuages emotion:' here is no 'magical power of raising
phantastick terrour or wild anxiety.' The events are expected without
solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we
have no care; we consider not what they are doing, or what they are
suffering; we wish only to know what they have to say."

But, while we thus pronounce Johnson's failure in the production of
dramatic effect, we will not withhold our tribute of admiration from
Irene, as a moral piece. For, although a remark of Fox's on an
unpublished tragedy of Burke's, that it was rather rhetorical than
poetical, may be applied to the work under consideration; still it
abounds, throughout, with the most elevated and dignified lessons of
morality and virtue. The address of Demetrius to the aged Cali, on the
dangers of procrastination[e]; Aspasia's reprobation of Irene's
meditated apostasy[f]; and the allusive panegyric on the British
constitution[g], may be enumerated, as examples of its excellence in
sentiment and diction.

Lastly, we may consider Irene, as one other illustri