stage, and was to speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck.
The audience cried out "Murder! Murder!" She several times attempted to
speak; but in vain. At last she was obliged to go off the stage alive.'
This passage was afterwards struck out, and she was carried off to be
put to death behind the scenes, as the play now has it. The Epilogue,
as Johnson informed me, was written by Sir William Yonge. I know not how
his play came to be thus graced by the pen of a person then so eminent
in the political world.

Notwithstanding all the support of such performers as Garrick,
Barry, Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Pritchard, and every advantage of dress
and decoration, the tragedy of Irene did not please the publick. Mr.
Garrick's zeal carried it through for nine nights, so that the authour
had his three nights' profits; and from a receipt signed by him, now in
the hands of Mr. James 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.

When asked how he felt upon the ill success of his tragedy, he replied,
'Like the Monument;' meaning that he continued firm and unmoved as
that column. And let it be remembered, as an admonition to the genus
irritabile of dramatick writers, that this great man, instead of
peevishly complaining of the bad taste of the town, submitted to its
decision without a murmur. He had, indeed, upon all occasions, a great
deference for the general opinion: 'A man (said he) who writes a book,
thinks himself wiser or wittier than the rest of mankind; he supposes
that he can instruct or amuse them, and the publick to whom he appeals,
must, after all, be the judges of his pretensions.'

On occasion of his play being brought upon the stage, Johnson had a