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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





The theatrical season of 1798 introduced to the public the German drama
of "The Stranger," translated by Mr. Thompson, and (as we are told by
this gentleman in his preface) altered and improved by Sheridan. There is
reason, however, to believe that the contributions of the latter to the
dialogue were much more considerable than he was perhaps willing to let
the translator acknowledge. My friend Mr. Rogers has heard him, on two
different occasions, declare that he had written every word of the
Stranger from beginning to end; and, as his vanity could not be much
interested in such a claim, it is possible that there was at least some
virtual foundation for it.

The song introduced in this play, "I have a silent sorrow here," was
avowedly written by Sheridan, as the music of it was by the Duchess of
Devonshire--two such names, so brilliant in their respective spheres, as
the Muses of Song and Verse have seldom had the luck to bring together.
The originality of these lines has been disputed; and that expedient of
borrowing which their author _ought_ to have been independent of in
every way, is supposed to have been resorted to by his indolence on this
occasion. Some verses by Tickell are mentioned as having supplied one of
the best stanzas; but I am inclined to think, from the following
circumstances, that this theft of Sheridan was of that venial and
domestic kind--from himself. A writer, who brings forward the accusation
in the Gentleman's Magazine, (vol. lxxi. p. 904,) thus states his
grounds:--

"In a song which I purchased at Bland's music-shop in Holborn in the year
1794, intitled, 'Think not, my love' and professing to be set to music by
Thomas Wright. (I conjecture, Organist of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and
composer of the pretty Opera called Rusticity.) are the following words:--

"The song to which the writer alludes, "Think not, my love," was given to
me, as a genuine production of Mr. Sheridan, by a gentleman nearly
connected with his family; and I have little doubt of its being one of
those early love-strains which, in his _tempo de' dolci sospiri_, he
addressed to Miss Linley. As, therefore, it was but "a feather of his
own" that the eagle made free with, he may be forgiven. The following is
the whole of the song:--

"This treasured grief, this loved despair,
My lot forever be;
But, dearest, may the pangs I bear
Be never known to thee!'

"Now, without insisting that the opening thought in Mr. Sheridan's famous
song has been borrowed from that of 'Think not, my love,' the second
verse is manifestly such a theft of the lines I have quoted as entirely
overturns Mr. Sheridan's claim to originality in the matter, unless
'Think not, my love,' has been written by him, and he can be proved to
have only stolen from himself."

"Think not, my love, when secret grief
Preys on my saddened heart,
Think not I wish a mean relief.
Or would from sorrow part.

"Dearly I prize the sighs sincere,
That my true fondness prove.
Nor would I wish to check the tear,
That flows from hapless love!

"Alas! tho' doom'd to hope in vain
The joys that love requite,
Yet will I cherish all its pain,
With sad, but dear delight.

"This treasured grief, this lov'd despair,
My lot for ever be;
But, dearest, may the pangs I bear
Be never known to thee!"

Among the political events of this year, the rebellion of Ireland holds a
memorable and fearful preeminence. The only redeeming stipulation which
the Duke of Portland and his brother Alarmists had annexed to their
ill-judged Coalition with Mr. Pitt was, that a system of conciliation and
justice should, at last, be adopted towards Ireland. Had they but carried
thus much wisdom into the ministerial ranks with them, their defection
might have been pardoned for the good it achieved, and, in one respect at
least, would have resembled the policy of those Missionaries, who join in
the ceremonies of the Heathen for the purpose of winning him over to the
truth. On the contrary, however, the usual consequence of such coalitions
with Power ensued,--the good was absorbed in the evil principle, and, by
the false hope which it created, but increased the mischief. Lord
Fitzwilliam was not only deceived himself, but, still worse to a noble
and benevolent nature like his, was made the instrument of deception and
mockery to millions. His recall, in 1795, assisted by the measures of his
successor, drove Ireland into the rebellion which raged during the
present year, and of which the causes have been so little removed from
that hour to this, that if the people have become too wise to look back
to it, as an example, it is assuredly not because their rulers have much
profited by it as a lesson.

I am aware that, on the subject of Ireland and her wrongs, I can ill
trust myself with the task of expressing what I feel, or preserve that
moderate, historical tone, which it has been my wish to maintain through
the political opinions of this work. On every other point, my homage to
the high character of England, and of her institutions, is prompt and
cordial;--on this topic alone, my feelings towards her have been taught
to wear "the badge of bitterness." As a citizen of the world, I would
point to England as its brightest ornament,--but, as a disfranchised
Irishman, I blush to belong to her. Instead, therefore, of hazarding any
farther reflections of my own on the causes and character of the
Rebellion of 1798, I shall content myself with giving an extract from a
Speech which Mr. Sheridan delivered on the subject, in the June of that
year:--

"What! when conciliation was held out to the people of Ireland, was there
any discontent? When the government of Ireland was agreeable to the
people, was there any discontent? After the prospect of that conciliation
was taken away,--after Lord Fitzwilliam was recalled,--after the hopes
which had been raised were blasted,--when the spirit of the people was
beaten down, insulted, despised, I will ask any gentleman to point out a
single act of conciliation which has emanated from the Government of
Ireland? On the contrary; has not that country exhibited one continual
scene of the most grievous oppression, of the most vexatious proceedings;
arbitrary punishments inflicted; torture declared necessary by the
highest authority in the sister-kingdom next to that of the legislature?
And do gentlemen say that the indignant spirit which is roused by such
exercise of government is unprovoked? Is this conciliation? Is this
lenity? Has everything been done to avert the evils of rebellion? It is
the fashion to say, and the Address holds the same language, that the
rebellion which now rages in the sister-kingdom has been owing to the
machinations of 'wicked men.' Agreeing to the amendment proposed, it was
my first intention to move that these words should be omitted. But, Sir,
the fact they assert is true. It is, indeed, to the measures of wicked
men that the deplorable state of Ireland is to be imputed. It is to those
wicked Ministers who have broken the promises they held out, who betrayed
the party they seduced into their views, to be the instruments of the
foulest treachery that ever was practised against any people. It is to
those wicked Ministers who have given up that devoted country to
plunder,--resigned it a prey to this faction, by which it has so long
been trampled upon, and abandoned it to every species of insult and
oppression by which a country was ever overwhelmed, or the spirit of a
people insulted, that we owe the miseries into which Ireland is plunged,
and the dangers by which England is threatened. These evils are the
doings of wicked Ministers, and applied to them, the language of the
Address records a fatal and melancholy truth."

The popularity which the conduct of Mr. Sheridan, on the occasion of the
Mutiny, had acquired for him,--everywhere but among his own immediate
party,--seems to have produced a sort of thaw in the rigor of his
opposition to Government; and the language which he now began to hold,
with respect to the power and principles of France, was such as procured
for him, more than once in the course of the present Session, the
unaccustomed tribute of compliments from the Treasury-bench. Without, in
the least degree, questioning his sincerity in this change of tone, it
may be remarked, that the most watchful observer of the tide of public
opinion could not have taken it at the turn more seasonably or skilfully.
There was, indeed, just at this time a sensible change in the feeling of
the country. The dangers to which it had been reduced were great, but the
crisis seemed over. The new wings lent to Credit by the paper-currency,
--the return of the navy to discipline and victory,--the disenchantment
that had taken place with respect to French principles, and the growing
persuasion, since strengthened into conviction, that the world has never
committed a more gross mistake than in looking to the French as teachers
of liberty,--the insulting reception of the late pacific overtures at
Lisle, and that never-failing appeal to the pride and spirit of
Englishmen, which a threat of invading their sacred shore brings with
it,--all these causes concurred, at this moment, to rally the people of
England round the Government, and enabled the Minister to extract from
the very mischiefs which himself had created the spirit of all others
most competent to bear and surmount them. Such is the elasticity of a
free country, however, for the moment, misgoverned,--and the only glory
due to the Minister under whom such a people, in spite of misgovernment,
flourishes, is that of having proved, by the experiment, how difficult it
is to ruin them.

While Mr. Sheridan took these popular opportunities of occasionally
appearing before the public, Mr. Fox persevered, with but little
interruption, in his plan of secession from Parliament altogether. From
the beginning of the Session of this year, when, at the instance of his
constituents, he appeared in his place to oppose the Assessed Taxes Bill,
till the month of February, 1800, he raised his voice in the House but
upon two questions,--each "dignus vindice,"--the Abolition of the
Slave-Trade, and a Change of System in Ireland. He had thrown into his
opposition too much real feeling and earnestness to be able, like
Sheridan, to soften it down, or shape it to the passing temper of the
times. In the harbor of private life alone could that swell subside; and,
however the country missed his warning eloquence, there is little doubt
that his own mind and heart were gainers by a retirement, in which he had
leisure to "prune the ruffled wings" of his benevolent spirit,--to
exchange the ambition of being great for that of being useful, and to
listen, in the stillness of retreat, to the lessons of a mild wisdom, of
which, had his life been prolonged, his country would have felt the full
influence.

From one of Sheridan's speeches at this time we find that the change
which had lately taken place in his public conduct had given rise to some
unworthy imputations upon his motives. There are few things less politic
in an eminent public man than a too great readiness to answer accusations
against his character. For, as he is, in general, more extensively read
or heard than his accusers, the first intimation, in most cases, that the
public receives of any charge against him will be from his own answer to
it. Neither does the evil rest here;--for the calumny remains embalmed in
the defence, long after its own ephemeral life is gone. To this unlucky
sort of sensitiveness Mr. Sheridan was but too much disposed to give way,
and accordingly has been himself the chronicler of many charges against
him, of which we should have been otherwise wholly ignorant. Of this
nature were the imputations founded on his alleged misunderstanding with
the Duke of Portland, in 1789, to which I have already made some
allusion, and of which we should have known nothing but for his own
notice of it. His vindication of himself, in 1795, from the suspicion of
being actuated by self-interest, in his connection with the Prince, or of
having received from him, (to use his own expressions,) "so much as the
present of a horse or a picture," is another instance of the same kind,
where he has given substance and perpetuity to rumor, and marked out the
track of an obscure calumny, which would otherwise have been forgotten.
At the period immediately under our consideration he has equally enabled
us to collect, from his gratuitous defence of himself, that the line
lately taken by him in Parliament, on the great questions of the Mutiny
and Invasion, had given rise to suspicions of his political steadiness,
and to rumors of his approaching separation from Mr. Fox.

"I am sorry," he said, on one occasion, "that it is hardly possible for
any man to speak in this House, and to obtain credit for speaking from a
principle of public spirit; that no man can oppose a Minister without
being accused of faction, and none, who usually opposed, can support a
Minister, or lend him assistance in anything, without being accused of
doing so from interested motives. I am not such a coxcomb as to say, that
it is of much importance what part I may take; or that it is essential
that I should divide a little popularity, or some emolument, with the
ministers of the Crown; nor am I so vain as to imagine, that my services
might be solicited. Certainly they have not. That might have arisen from
want of importance in myself, or from others, whom I have been in the
general habit of opposing, conceiving that I was not likely either to
give up my general sentiments, or my personal attachments. However that
may be, certain it is, they never have made any attempt to apply to me
for my assistance."

In reviewing his parliamentary exertions during this year, it would be
injustice to pass over his speech on the Assessed Taxes Bill, in which,
among other fine passages, the following vehement burst of eloquence
occurs:

"But we have gained, forsooth, several ships by the victory of the First
of June,--by the capture of Toulon,--by the acquisition of those
charnel-houses in the West Indies, in which 50,000 men have been lost to
this country. Consider the price which has been paid for these successes.
For these boasted successes, I will say, give me back the blood of
Englishmen which has been shed in this fatal Contest.--give me back the
250 millions of debt which it has occasioned.--give me back the honor of
the country which has been tarnished,--give me back the credit of the
country, which has been destroyed,--give me back the solidity of the Bank
of England, which has been overthrown; the attachment of the people to
their ancient Constitution, which has been shaken by acts of oppression
and tyrannical laws,--give me back the kingdom of Ireland, the connection
of which is endangered by a cruel and outrageous system of military
coercion,--give me back that pledge of eternal war, which must be
attended with inevitable ruin !"

The great success which had attended The Stranger, and the still
increasing taste for the German Drama, induced Mr. Sheridan, in the
present year, to embark his fame even still more responsibly in a venture
to the same romantic shores. The play of Pizarro was brought out on the
24th of May, 1799. The heroic interest of the plot, the splendor of the
pageantry, and some skilful appeals to public feeling in the dialogue,
obtained for it at once a popularity which has seldom been equalled. As
far, indeed, as multiplied representations and editions are a proof of
success, the legitimate issue of his Muse might well have been jealous of
the fame and fortune of their spurious German relative. When the author
of the Critic made Puff say, "Now for my magnificence,--my noise and my
procession!" he little anticipated the illustration which, in twenty
years afterwards, his own example would afford to that ridicule. Not that
in pageantry, when tastefully and subordinately introduced, there is any
thing to which criticism can fairly object:--it is the dialogue of this
play that is unworthy of its author, and ought never, from either motives
of profit or the vanity of success, to have been coupled with his name.
The style in which it is written belongs neither to verse nor prose, but
is a sort of amphibious native of both,--neither gliding gracefully
through the former element, nor walking steadily on the other. In order
to give pomp to the language, inversion is substituted for metre; and one
of the worst faults of poetry, a superfluity of epithet, is adopted,
without that harmony which alone makes it venial or tolerable.

It is some relief however, to discover, from the manuscripts in my
possession, that Mr. Sheridan's responsibility for the defects of Pizarro
is not very much greater than his claim to a share in its merits. In the
plot, and the arrangement of the scenes, it is well known, there is but
little alteration from the German original. The omission of the comic
scene of Diego, which Kotzebue himself intended to omit,--the judicious
suppression of Elvira's love for Alonzo,--the introduction, so striking
in representation, of Rolla's passage across the bridge, and the
re-appearance of Elvira in the habit of a nun, form, I believe, the only
important points in which the play of Mr. Sheridan deviates from the
structure of the original drama. With respect to the dialogue, his share
in its composition is reducible to a compass not much more considerable.
A few speeches, and a few short scenes, re-written, constitute almost the
whole of the contribution he has furnished to it. The manuscript-
translation, or rather imitation, of the "Spaniards in Pern,"
which he used as the ground-work of Pizarro, has been preserved among his
papers:--and, so convenient was it to his indolence to take the style as
he found it, that, except, as I have said, in a few speeches and scenes,
which might be easily enumerated, he adopted, with scarcely any
alteration, the exact words of the translator, whose taste, therefore,
(whoever he may have been,) is answerable for the spirit and style of
three-fourths of the dialogue. Even that scene where Cora describes the
"white buds" and "crimson blossoms" of her infant's teeth, which I have
often heard cited as a specimen of Sheridan's false ornament, is indebted
to this unknown paraphrast for the whole of its embroidery.

But though he is found to be innocent of much of the contraband matter,
with which his co-partner in this work had already vitiated it, his own
contributions to the dialogue are not of a much higher or purer order. He
seems to have written down, to the model before him, and to have been
inspired by nothing but an emulation of its faults. His style,
accordingly, is kept hovering in the same sort of limbo, between blank
verse and prose,--while his thoughts and images, however shining and
effective on the stage, are like the diamonds of theatrical royalty, and
will not bear inspection off it. The scene between Alonzo and Pizarro, in
the third act, is one of those almost entirely rewritten by Sheridan; and
the following medley group of personifications affords a specimen of the
style to which his taste could descend:--

"Then would I point out to him where now, in clustered villages, they
live like brethren, social and confiding, while through the burning day
Content sits basking on the cheek of Toil, till laughing Pastime leads
them to the hour of rest."

The celebrated harangue of Rolla to the Peruvians, into which Kemble used
to infuse such heroic dignity, is an amplification of the following
sentences of the original, as I find them given in Lewis's manuscript
translation of the play:--

"_Rolla_. You Spaniards fight for gold; we for our country.

"_Alonzo_. They follow an adventurer to the field; we a monarch whom
we love.

"_Atalib_. And a god whom we adore!"

This speech, to whose popular sentiments the play owed much of its
success, was chiefly made up by Sheridan of loans from his own oratory.
The image of the Vulture and the Lamb was taken, as I have already
remarked, from a passage in his speech on the trial of Hastings;--and he
had, on the subject of Invasion, in the preceding year, (1798,) delivered
more than once the substance of those patriotic sentiments, which were
now so spirit-stirring in the mouth of Rolla. For instance, on the King's
Message relative to preparation for Invasion:--


"The Directory may instruct their guards to make the fairest professions
of how their army is to act; but of these professions surely not one can
be believed. The victorious Buonaparte may say that he comes like a
minister of grace, with no other purpose than to give peace to the
cottager, to restore citizens to their rights, to establish real freedom,
and a liberal and humane government. But can there be an Englishman so
stupid, so besotted, so befooled, as to give a moment's credit to such
ridiculous professions? ... What, then, is their object? They come for
what they really want: they come for ships, for commerce, for credit, and
for capital. Yes; they come for the sinews, the bones--for the marrow and
the very heart's blood of Great Britain. But let us examine what we are
to purchase at this price. Liberty, it appears, is now their staple
commodity: but attend, I say, and examine how little of real liberty they
themselves enjoy, who are so forward and prodigal in bestowing it on
others."


The speech of Rolla in the prison-scene is also an interpolation of his
own,--Kotzebue having, far more judiciously, (considering the unfitness
of the moment for a _tirade_,) condensed the reflections of Rolla
into the short exclamation, "Oh, sacred Nature! thou art still true to
thyself," and then made him hurry into the prison to his friend.

Of the translation of this play by Lewis, which has been found among the
papers, Mr. Sheridan does not appear to have made any use;--except in so
far as it may have suggested to him the idea of writing a song for Cora,
of which that gentleman had set him an example in a ballad, beginning

"Soft are thy slumbers, soft and sweet,
Hush thee, hush thee, hush thee, boy."

The song of Mr. Lewis, however, is introduced, with somewhat less
violence to probability, at the beginning of the Third Act, where the
women are waiting for the tidings of the battle, and when the intrusion
of a ballad from the heroine, though sufficiently unnatural, is not quite
so monstrous as in the situation which Sheridan has chosen for it.

The following stanza formed a part of the song, as it was originally
written:--

'Those eyes that beam'd this morn the light of youth,
This morn I saw their gentle rays impart
The day-spring sweet of hope, of love, of truth,
The pure Aurora of my lover's heart.
Yet wilt thou rise, oh Sun, and waste thy light,
While my Alonzo's beams are quench'd in night.'

The only question upon which he spoke this year was the important measure
of the Union, which he strenuously and at great length opposed. Like
every other measure, professing to be for the benefit of Ireland, the
Union has been left incomplete in the one essential point, without which
there is no hope of peace or prosperity for that country. As long as
religious disqualification is left to "lie like lees at the bottom of
men's hearts," [Footnote: "It lay like lees at the bottom of men's
hearts; and, if the vessel was but stirred, it would come up."--BACON,
Henry VII.] in vain doth the voice of Parliament pronounce the word
"Union" to the two Islands--a feeling, deep as the sea that breaks
between them, answers back, sullenly, "Separation."

Through the remainder of Mr. Sheridan's political career it is my
intention, for many reasons, to proceed with a more rapid step; and
merely to give the particulars of his public conduct, together with such
documents as I can bring to illustrate it, without entering into much
discussion or comment on either.

Of his speeches in 1800,--during which year, on account, perhaps, of the
absence of Mr. Fox from the House, he was particularly industrious,--I
shall select a few brief specimens for the reader. On the question of the
Grant to the Emperor of Germany, he said:--

"I do think, Sir, Jacobin principles never existed much in this country;
and even admitting they had, I say they have been found so hostile to
true liberty, that, in proportion as we love it, (and, whatever may be
said, I must still consider liberty an inestimable blessing,) we must
hate and detest these principles. But more,--I do not think they even
exist in France. They have there died the best of deaths; a death I am
more pleased to see than if it had been effected by foreign force,--they
have stung themselves to death, and died by their own poison."

The following is a concise and just summary of the causes and effects of
the French Revolutionary war:--

"France, in the beginning of the Revolution, had conceived many romantic
notions; she was to put an end to war, and produce, by a pure form of
government, a perfectibility of mind which before had never been
realized. The Monarchs of Europe, seeing the prevalence of these new
principles, trembled for their thrones. France, also, perceiving the
hostility of Kings to her projects, supposed she could not be a Republic
without the overthrow of thrones. Such has been the regular progress of
cause and effect; but who was the first aggressor, with whom the jealousy
first arose, need not now be a matter of discussion. Both the Republic
and the Monarchs who opposed her acted on the same principles;--the
latter said they must exterminate Jacobins, and the former that they must
destroy monarchs. From this source have all the calamities of Europe
flowed; and it is now a waste of time and argument to inquire further
into the subject."

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