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name of the tragedy, we muft fuppofe that Johnson confidered Irene as the heroine, yet the reader feels more concern, even for the ftoic virtue and cool fondness of Afpafia. The former is too much of a mixed character; neither her goodness, nor her weakness, nor her depravity are predominant. She has not fufficient virtue to awaken our fympathy for the fufferings of innocence, nor fufficient vice to arouse our terror at the punishment of guilt. The fpeeches are oftener the recollections of past feelings, than the ebullitions of immediate passions, started by the paffing actions of the fcene. Little is made prefent to the spectator's mind, and of that little, nothing has life. His critique upon the tragic poets, of the commencement of this century, is, perhaps, in no inftance; more true than it is of himself.

From bard to bard the frigid caution crept,
And declamation roar'd whil paffion flept

Yet ftill did virtue deign the ftage to tread,
Philofophy remain'd, though nature fled.

He has nothing of the fire of Lee, or the pathos of Otway. He is more declamatory than Rowe, and Irene, if poffible, is colder than "Cato." There is not, throughout the play, a fingle fituation to excite curiofity, and raise a conflict of paffions. The fentiments are just and always moral, but feldom appropriated to the character, and generally too philofophic. His poetical imagery is neither ftriking nor abundant. The language in which the thoughts are conveyed, is, in general, vigorous, accurately polished, and regularly mufical. It would be difficult to felect a paffage in dramatic poetry more nobly conceived, or finely expressed, than the reply of Demetrius to the complaint of his friend, that no prodigy from Heaven had foretold the calamities of Greece.

A thousand horrid prodigies foretold it;
A feeble government, eluded laws,
A factious populace, luxurious nobles,
And all the maladies of finking states.
When public villany, too strong for justice,
Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin,
Can brave Leontius call for any wonders,
Which cheats interpret, and which fools regard?
When fome neglected fabric nods beneath
The weight of years, and totters to the tempest,
Muft Heaven dispatch the meffengers of light,
Or wake the dead to warn us. of its fall ?

As an alloy to the beauties of this paffage, impartial criticifm is compelled to turn to another, which is furely little fhort of nonfenfe, and well worthy of a place in the treatise of "Scriblerus."

Oft have I rag'd, when their wide-wafting cannon
Lay pointed at our batteries, yet unform'd,

And broke the meditated lines of war.

Irene may be added to fome other plays in our language, which have loft their place in the theatre, but continue to pleafe in the closet. As it is the drama of our

great English moralift, the present writer fhould wish to fee it revived.

Of the poetical compofitions, which are known to be of his writing, the Imitations of Juvenal are the beft; and are, perhaps, the nobleft imitations to be found in any language. They are not so close as those done by Pope from Horace, but they are infinitely more spirited and energetic. In Pope, the most peculiar images of Roman life are adapted with fingular addrefs to our own times; in Johnson, the fimilitude is only in general paffages, fuitable to every age in which refinement has degenerated into depravity.

His London breathes the true vehement contemptuous indignation of Juvenal's fatire. It is more popular in its fubject, and more animated in its compofition, than his Vanity of Human Wishes. It blazes forth with the genuine fire of poetry, in the liveliness of its correfpondent allusions, the

energy of its expreffions, and the frequency of its apostrophes. The Vanity of Human Wishes is more grave, moral, fententious, and stately. In his London he often takes nothing more than the fubject from the Roman poet, proves or illustrates it according to the originality of his own conceptions, or the warmth of his own fancy; and fometimes, too, he deferts him altogether, and that not only where the modefty of an English ear, and the inapplicability of the original to modern 'customs require it, but in places where the topics and the moral ufe is as applicable to London as they are to ancient Rome. Thus he has either totally neglected, or but flightly imitated that beautiful paffage beginning at ver. 1371

Dat teftem Romæ tam fanctum, quam fuit hofpes
Numinis Idæi, &c.

and ending with ver. 190,

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