The tragedy of Irene 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.’” The story is simple, and it remained for the author to amplify it, with proper episodes, and give it complication and variety.  The catastrophe is changed, and horror gives place to terror and pity.  But, after all, the fable is cold and languid.  There is not, throughout the piece, a single situation to excite curiosity, and raise a conflict of passions.  The diction is nervous, rich, and elegant; but splendid language, and melodious numbers, will make a fine poem—­not a tragedy.  The sentiments are beautiful, always happily expressed, but seldom appropriated to the character, and generally too philosophic.  What Johnson has said of the tragedy of Cato, may be applied to Irene:  “It is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama; rather a succession of just sentiments, in elegant language, than a representation of natural affections.  Nothing excites or assuages emotion.  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, nor what they are suffering; we wish only to know, what they have to say.  It is unaffecting elegance, and chill philosophy.”  The following speech, in the mouth of a Turk, who is supposed to have heard of the British constitution, has been often selected from the numberless beauties with which Irene abounds: 

  “If there be any land, as fame reports,
  Where common laws restrain the prince and subject;
  A happy land, where circulating power
  Flows through each member of th’ embodied state,
  Sure, not unconscious of the mighty blessing,
  Her grateful sons shine bright with ev’ry virtue;
  Untainted with the lust of innovation;
  Sure, all unite to hold her league of rule,
  Unbroken, as the sacred chain of nature,
  That links the jarring elements in peace.”

These are British sentiments.  Above forty years ago, they found an echo in the breast of applauding audiences; and to this hour they are the voice of the people, in defiance of the metaphysics, and the new lights of certain politicians, who would gladly find their private advantage in the disasters of their country; a race of men, “quibus nulla ex honesto spes.”