Wishes_ fifteen. Though indirectly valuable, as increasing his
reputation, such work was not very profitable. The most promising career
in a pecuniary sense was still to be found on the stage. Novelists were
not yet the rivals of dramatists, and many authors had made enough by a
successful play to float them through a year or two. Johnson had
probably been determined by his knowledge of this fact to write the
tragedy of _Irene_. No other excuse at least can be given for the
composition of one of the heaviest and most unreadable of dramatic
performances, interesting now, if interesting at all, solely as a
curious example of the result of bestowing great powers upon a totally
uncongenial task. Young men, however, may be pardoned for such blunders
if they are not repeated, and Johnson, though he seems to have retained
a fondness for his unlucky performance, never indulged in play writing
after leaving Lichfield. The best thing connected with the play was
Johnson's retort to his friend Walmsley, the Lichfield registrar. "How,"
asked Walmsley, "can you contrive to plunge your heroine into deeper
calamity?" "Sir," said Johnson, "I can put her into the spiritual
court." Even Boswell can only say for _Irene_ that it is "entitled to
the praise of superior excellence," and admits its entire absence of
dramatic power. Garrick, who had become manager of Drury Lane, produced
his friend's work in 1749. The play was carried through nine nights by
Garrick's friendly zeal, so that the author had his three nights'
profits. For this he received £195 17_s_. and for the copy he had £100.
People probably attended, as they attend modern representations of
legitimate drama, rather from a sense of duty, than in the hope of
pleasure. The heroine originally had to speak two lines with a bowstring
round her neck. The situation produced cries of murder, and she had to
go off the stage alive. The objectionable passage was removed, but
_Irene_ was on the whole a failure, and has never, I imagine, made
another appearance. When asked how he felt upon his ill-success, he