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Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2

T >> Thomas Moore >> Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2




I quote these words as creditable to the feeling and good sense of
Sheridan. Whatever may be thought of particular faiths and sects, a
belief in a life beyond this world is the only thing that pierces through
the walls of our prison-house, and lets hope shine in upon a scene, that
would be otherwise bewildered and desolate. The proselytism of the
Atheist is, indeed, a dismal mission. That believers, who have each the
same heaven in prospect, should invite us to join them on their
respective ways to it, is at least a benevolent officiousness,--but that
he, who has no prospect or hope himself, should seek for companionship in
his road to annihilation, can only be explained by that tendency in human
creatures to count upon each other in their despair, as well as their
hope.

In the speech upon his own motion relative to the existence of seditious
practices in the country, there is some lively ridicule, upon the panic
then prevalent. For instance:--

"The alarm had been brought forward in great pomp and form on Saturday
morning. At night all the mail-coaches were stopped; the Duke of Richmond
stationed himself, among other curiosities, at the Tower; a great
municipal officer, too, had made a discovery exceedingly beneficial to
the people of this country. He meant the Lord Mayor of London, who had
found out that there was at the King's Arms at Cornhill a Debating
Society, where principles of the most dangerous tendency were propagated;
where people went to buy treason at sixpence a head; where it was
retailed to them by the glimmering of an inch of candle; and five
minutes, to be measured by the glass, were allowed to each traitor to
perform his part in overturning the State."

It was in the same speech that he gave the well-known and happy turn to
the motto of the Sun newspaper, which was at that time known to be the
organ of the Alarmists. "There was one paper," he remarked, "in
particular, said to be the property of members of that House, and
published and conducted under their immediate direction, which had for
its motto a garbled part of a beautiful sentence, when it might, with
much more propriety, have assumed the whole--

"Solem quis dicere falsum
Audeat? Ille etiam cacos instare tumultus
Saepe monet, fraudemque et operta tumescere bella."

Among the subjects that occupied the greatest share of his attention
during this Session, was the Memorial of Lord Auckland to the
States-General,--which document he himself brought under the notice of
Parliament as deserving of severe reprobation for the violent and
vindictive tone which it assumed towards the Commissioners of the
National Convention. It was upon one of the discussions connected with
this subject that a dispute, as to the correct translation of the word
"_malheureux_" was maintained with much earnestness between him and
Lord Melville--two persons, the least qualified, perhaps, of any in the
House, to volunteer as either interpreters or pronouncers of the French
language. According to Sheridan, "_ces malheureux_" was to be
translated "these wretches," while Lord Melville contended, to the no
small amusement of the House, that "_mollyroo_" (as he pronounced
it,) meant no more than "these unfortunate gentlemen."

In the November of this year Mr. Sheridan lost by a kind of death which
must have deepened the feeling of the loss, the most intimate of all his
companions, Tickell. If congeniality of dispositions and pursuits were
always a strengthener of affection, the friendship between Tickell and
Sheridan ought to have been of the most cordial kind; for they resembled
each other in almost every particular--in their wit, their wants, their
talent, and their thoughtlessness. It is but too true, however, that
friendship in general gains far less by such a community of pursuit than
it loses by the competition that naturally springs out of it; and that
two wits or two beauties form the last sort of alliance, in which we
ought to look for specimens of sincere and cordial friendship. The
intercourse between Tickell and Sheridan was not free from such
collisions of vanity. They seem to have lived, indeed, in a state of
alternate repulsion and attraction; and, unable to do without the
excitement of each other's vivacity, seldom parted without trials of
temper as well as of wit. Being both, too, observers of character, and
each finding in the other rich materials for observation, their love of
ridicule could not withstand such a temptation, and they freely
criticised each other to common friends, who, as is usually the case,
agreed with both. Still, however, there was a whim and sprightliness even
about their mischief, which made it seem rather an exercise of ingenuity
than an indulgence of ill nature; and if they had not carried on this
intellectual warfare, neither would have liked the other half so well.

The two principal productions of Tickell, the "Wreath of Fashion" and
"Anticipation," were both upon temporary subjects, and have accordingly
passed into oblivion. There are, however, some graceful touches of
pleasantry in the poem; and the pamphlet, (which procured for him not
only fame but a place in the Stamp-office,) contains passages of which
the application and the humor have not yet grown stale. As Sheridan is
the hero of the Wreath of Fashion, it is but right to quote the verses
that relate to him; and I do it with the more pleasure, because they also
contain a well-merited tribute to Mrs. Sheridan. After a description of
the various poets of the day that deposit their offerings in Lady
Millar's "Vase of Sentiment," the author thus proceeds:--


"At Fashion's shrine behold a gentler bard
Gaze on the mystic vase with fond regard--
But see, Thalia checks the doubtful thought,
'Canst thou, (she cries,) with sense, with genius fraught,
Canst thou to Fashion's tyranny submit,
Secure in native, independent wit?
Or yield to Sentiment's insipid rule,
By Taste, by Fancy, chac'd through Scandal's school?
Ah no--be Sheridan's the comic page,
Or let me fly with Garrick from the stage.
Haste then, my friend, (for let me boast that name,)
Haste to the opening path of genuine fame;
Or, if thy muse a gentler theme pursue,
Ah, 'tis to love and thy Eliza due!
For, sure, the sweetest lay she well may claim,
Whose soul breathes harmony o'er all her frame;
While wedded love, with ray serenely clear,
Beams from her eye, as from its proper sphere."


In the year 1781, Tickell brought out at Drury-Lane an opera called "The
Carnival of Venice," on which there is the following remark in Mrs.
Crouch's Memoirs:--"Many songs in this piece so perfectly resemble in
poetic beauty those which adorn The Duenna, that they declare themselves
to be the offspring of the same muse." I know not how far this conjecture
may be founded, but there are four pretty lines which I remember in this
opera, and which, it may be asserted without hesitation, Sheridan never
wrote. He had no feeling for natural scenery, [Footnote: In corroboration
of this remark, I have been allowed to quote the following passage of a
letter written by a very eminent person, whose name all lovers of the
Picturesque associate with their best enjoyment of its beauties:--

"At one time I saw a good deal of Sheridan--he and his first wife passed
some time here, and he is an instance that a taste for poetry and for
scenery are not always united. Had this house been in the midst of
Hounslow Heath, he could not have taken less interest in all around it:
his delight was in shooting, all and every day, and my game-keeper said
that of all the gentlemen he had ever been out with he never knew so bad
a shot."] nor is there a trace of such a sentiment discoverable through
his poetry. The following, as well as I can recollect, are the lines:--


"And while the moon shines on the stream,
And as soft music breathes around,
The feathering oar returns the gleam,
And dips in concert to the sound."


I have already given a humorous Dedication of the Rivals, written by
Tickell on the margin of a copy of that play in my possession. I shall
now add another piece of still more happy humor, with which he has
filled, in very neat hand-writing, the three or four first pages of the
same copy.

"The Rivals, a Comedy--one of the best in the English language--written
as long ago as the reign of George the Third. The author's name was
Sheridan--he is mentioned by the historians of that age as a man of
uncommon abilities, very little improved by cultivation. His confidence
in the resources of his own genius and his aversion to any sort of labor
were so great that he could not be prevailed upon to learn either to read
or write. He was, for a short time, Manager of one the play-houses, and
conceived the extraordinary and almost incredible project of composing a
play extempore, which he was to recite in the Green-room to the actors,
who were immediately to come on the stage and perform it. The players
refusing to undertake their parts at so short a notice, and with so
little preparation, he threw up the management in disgust.

"He was a member of the last Parliaments that were summoned in England,
and signalized himself on many occasions by his wit and eloquence, though
he seldom came to the House till the debate was nearly concluded, and
never spoke, unless he was drunk. He lived on a footing of great intimacy
with the famous Fox, who is said to have concerted with him the audacious
attempt which he made, about the year 1783, to seize the whole property
of the East India Company, amounting at that time to above
12,000,000_l_. sterling, and then to declare himself Lord Protector
of the realm by the title of Carlo Khan. This desperate scheme actually
received the consent of the lower House of Parliament, the majority of
whom were bribed by Fox, or intimidated by his and Sheridan's threats and
violence: and it is generally believed that the Revolution would have
taken place, if the Lords of the King's Bedchamber had not in a body
surrounded the throne and shown the most determined resolution not to
abandon their posts but with their lives. The usurpation being defeated,
Parliament was dissolved and loaded with infamy. Sheridan was one of the
few members of it who were re-elected:--the Burgesses of Stafford, whom
he had kept in a constant state of intoxication for near three weeks,
chose him again to represent them, which he was well qualified to do.

"Fox's Whig party being very much reduced, or rather almost annihilated,
he and the rest of the conspirators remained quiet for some time; till,
in the year 1788, the French, in conjunction with Tippoo Sultan, having
suddenly seized and divided between themselves the whole of the British
possessions in India, the East India Company broke, and a national
bankruptcy was apprehended. During this confusion Fox and his partisans
assembled in large bodies, and made a violent attack in Parliament on
Pitt, the King's first minister:--Sheridan supported and seconded him.
Parliament seemed disposed to inquire into the cause of the calamity: the
nation was almost in a state of actual rebellion; and it is impossible
for us, at the distance of three hundred years, to form any judgment what
dreadful consequences might have followed, if the King, by the advice of
the Lords of the Bedchamber, had not dissolved the Parliament, and taken
the administration of affairs into his own hands, and those of a few
confidential servants, at the head of whom he was pleased to place one
Mr. Atkinson, a merchant, who had acquired a handsome fortune in the
Jamaica trade, and passed universally for a man of unblemished integrity.
His Majesty having now no farther occasion for Pitt, and being desirous
of rewarding him for his past services, and, at the same time, finding an
adequate employment for his great talents, caused him to enter into holy
orders, and presented him with the Deanery of Windsor; where he became an
excellent preacher, and published several volumes of sermons, all of
which are now lost.

"To return to Sheridan:--on the abrogation of Parliaments, he entered
into a closer connection than ever with Fox and a few others of lesser
note, forming together as desperate and profligate a gang as ever
disgraced a civilized country. They were guilty of every species of
enormity, and went so far as even to commit robberies on the highway,
with a degree of audacity that could be equalled only by the ingenuity
with which they escaped conviction. Sheridan, not satisfied with eluding,
determined to mock the justice of his country, and composed a Masque
called 'The Foresters,' containing a circumstantial account of some of
the robberies he had committed, and a good deal of sarcasm on the
pusillanimity of those whom he had robbed, and the inefficacy of the
penal laws of the kingdom. This piece was acted at Drury-Lane Theatre
with great applause, to the astonishment of all sober persons, and the
scandal of the nation. His Majesty, who had long wished to curb the
licentiousness of the press and the theatres, thought this a good
opportunity. He ordered the performers to be enlisted into the army, the
play-house to be shut up, and all theatrical exhibitions to be forbid on
pain of death, Drury-Lane play-house was soon after converted into a
barrack for soldiers, which it has continued to be ever since. Sheridan
was arrested, and, it was imagined, would have suffered the rack, if he
had not escaped from his guard by a stratagem, and gone over to Ireland
in a balloon with which his friend Fox furnished him. Immediately on his
arrival in Ireland, he put himself at the head of a party of the most
violent Reformers, commanded a regiment of Volunteers at the siege of
Dublin in 1791, and was supposed to be the person who planned the scheme
for tarring and feathering Mr. Jenkinson, the Lord Lieutenant, and
forcing him in that condition to sign the capitulation of the Castle. The
persons who were to execute this strange enterprise had actually got into
the Lord Lieutenant's apartment at midnight, and would probably have
succeeded in their project, if Sheridan, who was intoxicated with
whiskey, a strong liquor much in vogue with the Volunteers, had not
attempted to force open the door of Mrs. ----'s bed-chamber, and so given
the alarm to the garrison, who instantly flew to arms, seized Sheridan
and every one of his party, and confined them in the castle-dungeon.
Sheridan was ordered for execution the next day, but had no sooner got
his legs and arms at liberty, than he began capering, jumping, dancing,
and making all sorts of antics, to the utter amazement of the spectators.
When the chaplain endeavored, by serious advice and admonition, to bring
him to a proper sense of his dreadful situation, he grinned, made faces
at him, tried to tickle him, and played a thousand other pranks with such
astonishing drollery, that the gravest countenances became cheerful, and
the saddest hearts glad. The soldiers who attended at the gallows were so
delighted with his merriment, which they deemed magnanimity, that the
sheriffs began to apprehend a rescue, and ordered the hangman instantly
to do his duty. He went off in a loud horse-laugh, and cast a look
towards the Castle, accompanied with a gesture expressive of no great
respect.

"Thus ended the life of this singular and unhappy man--a melancholy
instance of the calamities that attend the misapplication of great and
splendid ability. He was married to a very beautiful and amiable woman,
for whom he is said to have entertained an unalterable affection. He had
one son, a boy of the most promising hopes, whom he would never suffer to
be instructed in the first rudiments of literature. He amused himself,
however, with teaching the boy to draw portraits with his toes, in which
he soon became so astonishing a proficient that he seldom failed to take
a most exact likeness of every person who sat to him.

"There are a few more plays by the same author, all of them excellent.

"For further information concerning this strange man, vide 'Macpherson's
Moral History,' Art. '_Drunkenness_.'"




CHAPTER VII.

SPEECH IN ANSWER TO LORD MORNINGTON.--COALITION OF THE WHIG SECEDERS WITH
MR. PITT.--MR. CANNING.--EVIDENCE ON THE TRIAL OF HORNE TOOKE.--THE
"GLORIOUS FIRST OF JUNE."--MARRIAGE OF MR. SHERIDAN.--PAMPHLET OF MR.
REEVES.--DEBTS OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.--SHAKSPEARE MANUSCRIPTS.--TRIAL
OF STONE.--MUTINY AT THE NORE.--SECESSION OF MR. FOX FROM PARLIAMENT.


In the year 1794, the natural consequences of the policy pursued by Mr.
Pitt began rapidly to unfold themselves both at home and abroad.
[Footnote: See, for a masterly exposure of the errors of the War, the
Speech of Lord Lansdowne this year on bringing forward his Motion for
Peace.

I cannot let the name of this Nobleman pass, without briefly expressing
the deep gratitude which I feel to him, not only for his own kindness to
me, when introduced, as a boy, to his notice, but for the friendship of
his truly Noble descendant, which I, in a great degree, owe to him, and
which has long been the pride and happiness of my life.] The confederated
Princes of the Continent, among whom the gold of England was now the sole
bond of union, had succeeded as might be expected from so noble an
incentive, and, powerful only in provoking France, had by every step they
took but ministered to her aggrandizement. In the mean time, the measures
of the English Minister at home were directed to the two great objects of
his legislation--the raising of supplies and the suppressing of sedition;
or, in other words, to the double and anomalous task of making the people
pay for the failures of their Royal allies, and suffer for their sympathy
with the success of their republican enemies. It is the opinion of a
learned Jesuit that it was by _aqua regia_ the Golden Calf of the
Israelites was dissolved--and the cause of Kings was the Royal solvent,
in which the wealth of Great Britain now melted irrecoverably away. While
the successes, too, of the French had already lowered the tone of the
Minister from projects of aggression to precautions of defence, the
wounds which in the wantonness of alarm, he had inflicted on the
liberties of the country, were spreading an inflammation around them that
threatened real danger. The severity of the sentence upon Muir and Palmer
in Scotland, and the daring confidence with which charges of High Treason
were exhibited against persons who were, at the worst, but indiscreet
reformers, excited the apprehensions of even the least sensitive friends
of freedom. It is, indeed, difficult to say how far the excited temper of
the Government, seconded by the ever ready subservience of state-lawyers
and bishops, might have proceeded at this moment, had not the acquittal
of Tooke and his associates, and the triumph it diffused through the
country, given a lesson to Power such as England is alone capable of
giving, and which will long be remembered, to the honor of that great
political safeguard,--that Life-preserver in stormy times,--the Trial by
Jury.

At the opening of the Session, Mr. Sheridan delivered his admirable
answer to Lord Mornington, the report of which, as I have already said,
was corrected for publication by himself. In this fine speech, of which
the greater part must have been unprepared, there is a natural
earnestness of feeling and argument that is well contrasted with the able
but artificial harangue that preceded it. In referring to the details
which Lord Mornington had entered into of the various atrocities
committed in France, he says:--

"But what was the sum of all that he had told the House? that great and
dreadful enormities had been committed, at which the heart shuddered, and
which not merely wounded every feeling of humanity, but disgusted and
sickened the soul. All this was most true; but what did all this prove?
What, but that eternal and unalterable truth which had always presented
itself to his mind, in whatever way he had viewed the subject, namely,
that a long established despotism so far degraded and debased human
nature, as to render its subjects, on the first recovery of their rights,
unfit for the exercise of them. But never had he, or would he meet but
with re probation that mode of argument which went, in fact, to
establish, as an inference from this truth, that those who had been long
slaves, ought therefore to remain so for over! No; the lesson ought to
be, he would again repeat, a tenfold horror of that despotic form of
government, which had so profaned and changed the nature of civilized
man, and a still more jealous apprehension of any system tending to
withhold the rights and liberties of our fellow-creatures. Such a form of
government might be considered as twice cursed; while it existed, it was
solely responsible for the miseries and calamities of its subjects; and
should a day of retribution come, and the tyranny be destroyed, it was
equally to be charged with all the enormities which the folly or frenzy
of those who overturned it should commit.

"But the madness of the French people was not confined to their
proceedings within their own country; we, and all the Powers of Europe,
had to dread it. True; but was not this also to be accounted for? Wild
and unsettled as their state of mind was, necessarily, upon the events
which had thrown such power so suddenly into their hands, the surrounding
States had goaded them into a still more savage state of madness, fury,
and desperation. We had unsettled their reason, and then reviled their
insanity; we drove them to the extremities that produced the evils we
arraigned; we baited them like wild beasts, until at length we made them
so. The conspiracy of Pilnitz, and the brutal threats of the Royal
abettors of that plot against the rights of nations and of men, had, in
truth, to answer for all the additional misery, horrors, and iniquity,
which had since disgraced and incensed humanity. Such has been your
conduct towards France, that you have created the passions which you
persecute; you mark a nation to be cut off from the world; you covenant
for their extermination; you swear to hunt them in their inmost recesses;
you load them with every species of execration; and you now come forth
with whining declamations on the horror of their turning upon you with
the fury which you inspired."

Having alluded to an assertion of Condorcet, quoted by Lord Mornington,
that "Revolutions are always the work of the minority," he adds
livelily:--

"--If this be true, it certainly is a most ominous thing for the enemies
of Reform in England; for, if it holds true, of necessity, that the
minority still prevails, in national contests, it must be a consequence
that the smaller the minority the more certain must be the success. In
what a dreadful situation then must the Noble Lord be and all the
Alarmists!--for, never surely was a minority so small, so thin in number
as the present. Conscions, however, that M. Condorcet was mistaken in our
object, I am glad to find that we are terrible in proportion as we are
few; I rejoice that the liberality of secession which has thinned our
ranks has only served to make us more formidable. The Alarmists will hear
this with new apprehensions; they will no doubt return to us with a view
to diminish our force, and encumber us with their alliance in order to
reduce us to insignificance."

We have here another instance, in addition to the many that have been
given, of the beauties that sprung up under Sheridan's correcting hand.
This last pointed sentence was originally thus: "And we shall swell our
numbers in order to come nearer in a balance of insignificance to the
numerous host of the majority."

It was at this time evident that the great Whig Seceders would soon yield
to the invitations of Mr. Pitt and the vehement persuasions of Burke, and
commit themselves still further with the Administration by accepting of
office. Though the final arrangements to this effect were not completed
till the summer, on account of the lingering reluctance of the Duke of
Portland and Mr. Windham, Lord Loughborough and others of the former
Opposition had already put on the official livery of the Minister. It is
to be regretted that, in almost all cases of conversion to the side of
power, the coincidence of some worldly advantage with the change should
make it difficult to decide upon the sincerity or disinterestedness of
the convert. That these Noble Whigs were sincere in their alarm there is
no reason to doubt; but the lesson of loyalty they have transmitted would
have been far more edifying, had the usual corollary of honors and
emoluments not followed, and had they left at least one instance of
political conversion on record, where the truth was its own sole reward,
and the proselyte did not subside into the placeman. Mr. Sheridan was
naturally indignant at these desertions, and his bitterness overflows in
many passages of the speech before us. Lord Mornington having contrasted
the privations and sacrifices demanded of the French by their Minister of
Finance with those required of the English nation, he says in answer:--

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