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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




"When I see in many of these letters the infirmities of age made a
subject of mockery and ridicule; when I see the feelings of a son treated
by Mr. Middleton as puerile and contemptible; when I see an order given
by Mr. Hastings to harden that son's heart, to choke the struggling
nature in his bosom; when I see them pointing to the son's name, and to
his standard while marching to oppress the mother, as to a banner that
gives dignity, that gives a holy sanction and a reverence to their
enterprise; when I see and hear these things done--when I hear them
brought into three deliberate Defences set up against the Charges of the
Commons--my Lords, I own I grow puzzled and confounded, and almost begin
to doubt whether, where such a defence can be offered, it may not be
tolerated.

"And yet, my Lords, how can I support the claim of filial love by
argument--much less the affection of a son to a mother--where love loses
its awe, and veneration is mixed with tenderness? What can I say upon
such a subject, what can I do but repeat the ready truths which, with the
quick impulse of the mind, must spring to the lips of every man on such a
theme? Filial love! the morality of instinct, the sacrament of nature and
duty--or rather let me say it is miscalled a duty, for it flows from the
heart without effort, and is its delight, its indulgence, its enjoyment.
It is guided, not by the slow dictates of reason; it awaits not
encouragement from reflection or from thought; it asks no aid of memory;
it is an innate, but active, consciousness of having been the object of a
thousand tender solicitudes, a thousand waking watchful cares, of meek
anxiety and patient sacrifices unremarked and unrequited by the object.
It is a gratitude founded upon a conviction of obligations, not
remembered, but the more binding because not remembered,--because
conferred before the tender reason could acknowledge, or the infant
memory record them--a gratitude and affection, which no circumstances
should subdue, and which few can strengthen; a gratitude, in which even
injury from the object, though it may blend regret, should never breed
resentment; an affection which can be increased only by the decay of
those to whom we owe it, and which is then most fervent when the
tremulous voice of age, resistless in its feebleness, inquires for the
natural protector of its cold decline.

"If these are the general sentiments of man, what must be their
depravity, what must be their degeneracy, who can blot out and erase from
the bosom the virtue that is deepest rooted in the human heart, and
twined within the cords of life itself--aliens from nature, apostates
from humanity! And yet, if there is a crime more fell, more foul--if
there is any thing worse than a wilful persecutor of his mother--it is to
see a deliberate, reasoning instigator and abettor to the deed:--this it
is that shocks, disgusts, and appals the mind more than the other--to
view, not a wilful parricide, but a parricide by compulsion, a miserable
wretch, not actuated by the stubborn evils of his own worthless heart,
not driven by the fury of his own distracted brain, but lending his
sacrilegious hand, without any malice of his own, to answer the abandoned
purposes of the human fiends that have subdued his will!--To condemn
crimes like these, we need not talk of laws or of human rules--their
foulness, their deformity does not depend upon local constitutions, upon
human institutes or religious creeds:--they are crimes--and the persons
who perpetrate them are monsters who violate the primitive condition,
upon which the earth was given to man--they are guilty by the general
verdict of human kind."

In some of the sarcasms we are reminded of the quaint contrasts of his
dramatic style. Thus:--

"I must also do credit to them whenever I see any thing like lenity in
Mr. Middleton or his agent:--they do seem to admit here, that it was not
worth while to commit a massacre for the discount of a small note of
hand, and to put two thousand women and children to death, in order to
procure prompt payment."

Of the length to which the language of crimination was carried, as well
by Mr. Sheridan as by Mr. Burke, one example, out of many, will suffice.
It cannot fail, however, to be remarked that, while the denunciations and
invectives of Burke are filled throughout with a passionate earnestness,
which leaves no doubt as to the sincerity of the hate and anger professed
by him,--in Sheridan, whose nature was of a much gentler cast, the
vehemence is evidently more in the words than in the feeling, the tone of
indignation is theatrical and assumed, and the brightness of the flash
seems to be more considered than the destructiveness of the fire:--

"It is this circumstance of deliberation and consciousness of his
guilt--it is this that inflames the minds of those who watch his
transactions, and roots out all pity for a person who could act under
such an influence. We conceive of such tyrants as Caligula and Nero, bred
up to tyranny and oppression, having had no equals to control them--no
moment for reflection--we conceive that, if it could have been possible
to seize the guilty profligates for a moment, you might bring conviction
to their hearts and repentance to their minds. But when you see a cool,
reasoning, deliberate tyrant--one who was not born and bred to
arrogance,--who has been nursed in a mercantile line--who has been used
to look round among his fellow-subjects--to transact business with his
equals--to account for conduct to his master, and, by that wise system of
the Company, to detail all his transactions--who never could fly one
moment from himself, but must be obliged every night to sit down and hold
up a glass to his own soul--who could never be blind to his deformity,
and who must have brought his conscience not only to connive at but to
approve of it--_this_ it is that distinguishes it from the worst
cruelties, the worst enormities of those, who, born to tyranny, and
finding no superior, no adviser, have gone to the last presumption that
there were none above to control them hereafter. This is a circumstance
that aggravates the whole of the guilt of the unfortunate gentleman we
are now arraigning at your bar."

We now come to the Peroration, in which, skilfully and without appearance
of design, it is contrived that the same sort of appeal to the purity of
British justice, with which the oration opened, should, like the
repetition of a solemn strain of music, recur at its close,--leaving in
the minds of the Judges a composed and concentrated feeling of the great
public duty they had to perform, in deciding upon the arraignment of
guilt brought before them. The Court of Directors, it appeared, had
ordered an inquiry into the conduct of the Begums, with a view to the
restitution of their property, if it should appear that the charges
against them were unfounded; but to this proceeding Mr. Hastings
objected, on the ground that the Begums themselves had not called for
such interference in their favor, and that it was inconsistent with the
"Majesty of Justice" to condescend to volunteer her services. The pompous
and Jesuitical style in which this singular doctrine [Footnote: "If
nothing (says Mr. Mill) remained to stain the reputation of Mr. Hastings
but the principles avowed in this singular pleading, his character, among
the friends of justice, would be sufficiently determined."] is expressed,
in a letter addressed by the Governor-general to Mr. Macpherson, is thus
ingeniously turned to account by the orator, in winding up his masterly
statement to a close:--

'And now before I come to the last magnificent paragraph, let me call the
attention of those who, possibly, think themselves capable of judging of
the dignity and character of justice in this country;--let me call the
attention of those who, arrogantly perhaps, presume that they understand
what the features, what the duties of justice are here and in India;--let
them learn a lesson from this great statesman, this enlarged, this
liberal philosopher:--'I hope I shall not depart from the simplicity of
official language, in saying that the Majesty of Justice ought to be
approached with solicitation, not descend to provoke or invite it, much
less to debase itself by the suggestion of wrongs and the promise of
redress, with the denunciation of punishment before trial, and even
before accusation.' This is the exhortation which Mr. Hastings makes to
his counsel. This is the character which he gives of British justice.

* * * * *

"But I will ask Your Lordships, do you approve this representation? Do
you feel that this is the true image of Justice? Is this the character of
British justice? Are these her features? Is this her countenance? Is this
her gait or her mien? No, I think even now I hear you calling upon me to
turn from this vile libel, this base caricature, this Indian pagod,
formed by the hand of guilty and knavish tyranny, to dupe the heart of
ignorance,--to turn from this deformed idol to the true Majesty of
Justice here. _Here_, indeed, I see a different form, enthroned by
the sovereign hand of Freedom,--awful without severity--commanding
without pride--vigilant and active without restlessness or
suspicion--searching and inquisitive without meanness or debasement--not
arrogantly scorning to stoop to the voice of afflicted innocence, and in
its loveliest attitude when bending to uplift the suppliant at its feet.

"It is by the majesty, by the form of that Justice, that I do conjure and
implore Your Lordships to give your minds to this great business; that I
exhort you to look, not so much to words, which may be denied or quibbled
away, but to the plain facts,--to weigh and consider the testimony in
your own minds: we know the result must be inevitable. Let the truth
appear and our cause is gained. It is this, I conjure Your Lordships, for
your own honor, for the honor of the nation, for the honor of human
nature, now entrusted to your care,--it is this duty that the Commons of
England, speaking through us, claims at your hands.

"They exhort you to it by every thing that calls sublimely upon the heart
of man, by the Majesty of that Justice which this bold man has libelled,
by the wide fame of your own tribunal, by the sacred pledge by which you
swear in the solemn hour of decision, knowing that that decision will
then bring you the highest reward that ever blessed the heart of man, the
consciousness of having done the greatest act of mercy for the world,
that the earth has ever yet received from any hand but Heaven.--My Lords,
I have done."

Though I have selected some of the most remarkable passages of this
Speech, [Footnote: I had selected many more, but must confess that they
appeared to me, when in print, so little worthy of the reputation of the
Speech, that I thought it would be, on the whole, more prudent to omit
them. Even of the passages, here cited, I speak rather from my
imagination of what they must have been, than from my actual feeling of
what they are. The character, given of such Reports, by Lord
Loughborough, is, no doubt, but too just. On a motion made by Lord
Stanhope, (April 29, 1794), that the short-hand writers, employed on
Hastings's trial, should be summoned to the bar of the House, to read
their minutes, Lord Loughborough, in the course of his observations on
the motion, said, "God forbid that ever their Lordships should call on
the short-hand writers to publish their notes; for, of all people,
short-hand writers were ever the farthest from correctness, and there
were no man's words they ever heard that they again returned. They were
in general ignorant, as acting mechanically; and by not considering the
antecedent, and catching the sound, and not the sense, they perverted the
sense of the speaker, and made him appear as ignorant as themselves."] it
would be unfair to judge of it even from these specimens. A Report,
_verbatim_, of any effective speech must always appear diffuse and
ungraceful in the perusal. The very repetitions, the redundancy, the
accumulation of epithets which gave force and momentum in the career of
delivery, but weaken and encumber the march of the style, when read.
There is, indeed, the same sort of difference between a faithful
short-hand Report, and those abridged and polished records which Burke
has left us of his speeches, as there is between a cast taken directly
from the face, (where every line is accurately preserved, but all the
blemishes and excrescences are in rigid preservation also,) and a model,
over which the correcting hand has passed, and all that was minute or
superfluous is generalized and softened away.

Neither was it in such rhetorical passages as abound, perhaps, rather
lavishly, in this Speech, that the chief strength of Mr. Sheridan's
talent lay. Good sense and wit were the great weapons of his
oratory--shrewdness in detecting the weak points of an adversary, and
infinite powers of raillery in exposing it. These were faculties which he
possessed in a greater degree than any of his contemporaries; and so well
did he himself know the stronghold of his powers, that it was but rarely,
after this display in Westminster Hall, that he was tempted to leave it
for the higher flights of oratory, or to wander after Sense into that
region of metaphor, where too often, like Angelica in the enchanted
palace of Atlante, she is sought for in vain. [Footnote: Curran used to
say laughingly, "When I can't talk sense, I talk metaphor."] His
attempts, indeed, at the florid or figurative style, whether in his
speeches or his writings, were seldom very successful. That luxuriance of
fancy, which in Burke was natural and indigenous, was in him rather a
forced and exotic growth. It is a remarkable proof of this difference
between them, that while, in the memorandums of speeches left behind by
Burke, we find, that the points of argument and business were those which
he prepared, trusting to the ever ready wardrobe of his fancy for their
adornment,--in Mr. Sheridan's notes it is chiefly the decorative
passages, that are worked up beforehand to their full polish; while on
the resources of his good sense, ingenuity, and temper, he seems to have
relied for the management of his reasonings and facts. Hence naturally it
arises that the images of Burke, being called up on the instant, like
spirits, to perform the bidding of his argument, minister to it
throughout, with an almost coordinate agency; while the figurative
fancies of Sheridan, already prepared for the occasion, and brought forth
to adorn, not assist, the business of the discourse, resemble rather
those sprites which the magicians used to keep inclosed in phials, to be
produced for a momentary enchantment, and then shut up again.

In truth, the similes and illustrations of Burke form such an intimate,
and often essential, part of his reasoning, that if the whole strength of
the Samson does not lie in those luxuriant locks, it would at least be
considerably diminished by their loss. Whereas, in the Speech of Mr.
Sheridan, which we have just been considering, there is hardly one of the
rhetorical ornaments that might not be detached, without, in any great
degree, injuring the force of the general statement. Another consequence
of this difference between them is observable in their respective modes
of transition, from what may be called the _business_ of a speech
its more generalized and rhetorical parts. When Sheridan rises, his
elevation is not sufficiently prepared; he starts abruptly and at once
from the level of his statement, and sinks down into it again with the
same suddenness. But Burke, whose imagination never allows even business
to subside into mere prose, sustains a pitch throughout which accustoms
the mind to wonder, and, while it prepares us to accompany him in his
boldest flights, makes us, even when he walks, still feel that he has
wings:--

"_Même quand l'oiseau marche, on sent qu'il a des ailes._"

The sincerity of the praises bestowed by Burke on the Speech of his
brother Manager has sometimes been questioned, but upon no sufficient
grounds. His zeal for the success of the Impeachment, no doubt, had a
considerable share in the enthusiasm, with which this great effort in its
favor filled him. It may be granted, too, that, in admiring the
apostrophes that variegate this speech, he was, in some degree, enamored
of a reflection of himself;

"_Cunctaque miratur, quibus est mirabilis ipse._"

He sees reflected there, in fainter light.
All that combines to make himself so bright.

But whatever mixture of other motives there may have been in the feeling,
it is certain that his admiration of the Speech was real and unbounded.
He is said to have exclaimed to Mr. Fox, during the delivery of some
passages of it, "There,--that is the true style;--something between
poetry and prose, and better than either." The severer taste of Mr. Fox
dissented, as might be expected, from this remark. He replied, that "he
thought such a mixture was for the advantage of neither--as producing
poetic prose, or, still worse, prosaic poetry." It was, indeed, the
opinion of Mr. Fox, that the impression made upon Burke by these somewhat
too theatrical tirades is observable in the change that subsequently took
place in his own style of writing; and that the florid and less chastened
taste which some persons discover in his later productions, may all be
traced to the example of this speech. However this may be, or whether
there is really much difference, as to taste, between the youthful and
sparkling vision of the Queen of France in 1792, and the interview
between the Angel and Lord Bathurst in 1775, it is surely a most unjust
disparagement of the eloquence of Burke, to apply to it, at any time of
his life, the epithet "flowery,"--a designation only applicable to that
ordinary ambition of style, whose chief display, by necessity, consists
of ornament without thought, and pomp without substance. A succession of
bright images, clothed in simple, transparent language,--even when, as in
Burke, they "crowd upon the aching sense" too dazzlingly,--should never
be confounded with that mere verbal opulence of style, which mistakes the
glare of words for the glitter of ideas, and, like the Helen of the
sculptor Lysippus, makes finery supply the place of beauty. The
figurative definition of eloquence in the Book of Proverbs--"Apples of
gold in a net-work of silver"--is peculiarly applicable to that
enshrinement of rich, solid thoughts in clear and shining language, which
is the triumph of the imaginative class of writers and orators,--while,
perhaps, the net-work, _without_ the gold inclosed, is a type
equally significant of what is called "flowery" eloquence.

It is also, I think, a mistake, however flattering to my country, to call
the School of Oratory, to which Burke belongs, _Irish_. That
Irishmen are naturally more gifted with those stores of fancy, from which
the illumination of this high order of the art must be supplied, the
names of Burke, Grattan, Sheridan, Curran, Canning, and Plunkett,
abundantly testify. Yet had Lord Chatham, before any of these great
speakers were heard, led the way, in the same animated and figured strain
of oratory; [Footnote: His few noble sentences on the privilege of the
poor man's cottage are universally known. There is also his fanciful
allusion to the confluence of the Saone and Rhone, the traditional
reports of which vary, both as to the exact terms in which it was
expressed, and the persons to whom he applied it. Even Lord Orford does
not seem to have ascertained the latter point. To these may be added the
following specimen:--"I don't inquire from what quarter the wind cometh,
but whither it goeth; and, if any measure that comes from the Right
Honorable Gentleman tends to the public good, my bark is ready." Of a
different kind is that grand passage,--"America, they tell me, has
resisted--I rejoice to hear it,"--which Mr. Grattan used to pronounce
finer than anything in Demosthenes.] while another Englishman, Lord
Bacon, by making Fancy the hand-maid of Philosophy, had long since set an
example of that union of the imaginative and the solid, which, both in
writing and in speaking, forms the characteristic distinction of this
school.

The Speech of Mr. Sheridan in Westminster Hall, though so much inferior
in the opinion of Mr. Fox and others, to that which he had delivered on
the same subject in the House of Commons, seems to have produced, at the
time, even a more lively and general sensation;--possibly from the nature
and numerousness of the assembly before which it was spoken, and which
counted among its multitude a number of that sex, whose lips are in
general found to be the most rapid conductors of fame.

But there was _one_ of this sex, more immediately interested in his
glory, who seems to have felt it as women alone can feel. "I have delayed
writing," says Mrs. Sheridan, in a letter to her sister-in-law, dated
four days after the termination of the Speech, "till I could gratify
myself and you by sending you the news of our dear Dick's triumph!--of
_our_ triumph I may call it; for surely, no one, in the slightest
degree connected with him, but must feel proud and happy. It is
impossible, my dear woman, to convey to you the delight, the
astonishment, the adoration, he has excited in the breasts of every class
of people! Every party-prejudice has been overcome by a display of
genius, eloquence and goodness, which no one with any thing like a heart
about them, could have listened to without being the wiser and the better
for the rest of their lives. What must _my_ feelings be!--you can
only imagine. To tell you the truth, it is with some difficulty that I
can 'let down my mind,' as Mr. Burke said afterwards, to talk or think on
any other subject. But pleasure, too exquisite, becomes pain, and I am at
this moment suffering for the delightful anxieties of last week."

It is a most happy combination when the wife of a man of genius unites
intellect enough to appreciate the talents of her husband, with the
quick, feminine sensibility, that can thus passionately feel his success.
Pliny tells us, that his Calpurnia, whenever he pleaded an important
cause, had messengers ready to report to her every murmur of applause
that he received; and the poet Statius, in alluding to his own victories
at the Albanian Games, mentions the "breathless kisses," with which his
wife, Claudia, used to cover the triumphal garlands he brought home. Mrs.
Sheridan may well take her place beside these Roman wives;--and she had
another resemblance to one of them, which was no less womanly and
attractive. Not only did Calpurnia sympathize with the glory of her
husband abroad, but she could also, like Mrs. Sheridan, add a charm to
his talents at home, by setting his verses to music and singing them to
her harp,--"with no instructor," adds Pliny, "but Love, who is, after
all, the best master."

This letter of Mrs. Sheridan thus proceeds:--"You were perhaps alarmed by
the account of S.'s illness in the papers; but I have the pleasure to
assure you he is now perfectly well, and I hope by next week we shall be
quietly settled in the country, and suffered to repose, in every sense of
the word; for indeed we have, both of us, been in a constant state of
agitation, of one kind or other, for some time back.

"I am very glad to hear your father continues so well. Surely he must
feel happy and proud of such a son. I take it for granted you see the
newspapers: I assure you the accounts in them are not exaggerated, and
only echo the exclamation of admiration that is in every body's mouth. I
make no excuse for dwelling on this subject: I know you will not find it
tedious. God bless you--I am an invalid at present, and not able to write
long letters."

The agitation and want of repose, which Mrs. Sheridan here complains of,
arose not only from the anxiety which she so deeply felt, for the success
of this great public effort of her husband, but from the share which she
herself had taken, in the labor and attention necessary to prepare him
for it. The mind of Sheridan being, from the circumstances of his
education and life, but scantily informed upon all subjects for which
reading is necessary, required, of course, considerable training and
feeding, before it could venture to grapple with any new or important
task. He has been known to say frankly to his political friends, when
invited to take part in some question that depended upon authorities,
"You know I'm an ignoramus--but here I am--instruct me and I'll do my
best." It is said that the stock of numerical lore, upon which he
ventured to set up as the Aristarchus of Mr. Pitt's financial plans, was
the result of three weeks' hard study of arithmetic, to which he doomed
himself, in the early part of his Parliamentary career, on the chance of
being appointed, some time or other, Chancellor of the Exchequer. For
financial display it must be owned that this was rather a crude
preparation. But there are other subjects of oratory, on which the
outpourings of information, newly acquired, may have a freshness and
vivacity which it would be vain to expect, in the communication of
knowledge that has lain long in the mind, and lost in circumstantial
spirit what it has gained in general mellowness. They, indeed, who have
been regularly disciplined in learning, may be not only too familiar with
what they know to communicate it with much liveliness to others, but too
apt also to rely upon the resources of the memory, and upon those cold
outlines which it retains of knowledge whose details are faded. The
natural consequence of all this is that persons, the best furnished with
general information, are often the most vague and unimpressive on
particular subjects; while, on the contrary, an uninstructed man of
genius, like Sheridan, who approaches a topic of importance for the first
time, has not only the stimulus of ambition and curiosity to aid him in
mastering its details, but the novelty of first impressions to brighten
his general views of it--and, with a fancy thus freshly excited, himself,
is most sure to touch and rouse the imaginations of others.

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