ON a list of Sheridan’s unpublished works, Mr. Sichel has this entry (Sheridan, vol. II, p. 458): — [?1773] “Heroic Epistle and Postscript.” [Mentioned in a letter to him from Linley, evidently of this date.] He comments elsewhere (vol. I, p. 401): —
“Linley, who seems to have exhorted him to do justice to his talents, dropped hints that An Heroic Epistle and Postscript (possibly a parody of Mason) proceeded from his young friend’s pen.”
Since An Heroic Postscript “to the Public, occasioned by their favourable reception of a late Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers” was not printed till 1774, the conjectural date is incorrect. That Sheridan was supposed to have written “an answer to the celebrated Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers” is proved by the “Account of Sheridan” in The European Magazine for February, 1782, which (mentioning The Epistles of Aristoænetus) added that “about the same period he printed several works, which are known only to his intimate friends; and some perhaps not even to them.” It noted this “Answer” as being attributed to him “without being able either to confirm or deny the report.” There is no doubt that the only poem which satisfies the descriptions given by Linley and The European Magazine is “A Familiar Epistle to the Author of The Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers and of The Heroic Epistle to the Public, London. Printed for J. Wilkie, 1774.” It must be remembered that John Wilkie, of St. Paul’s Churchyard, was then Sheridan’s publisher; he had issued The Love Epistles of Aristænetus in August, 1771, and was to issue The Rivals in February, 1775. There was no more likely publisher for any work of Sheridan’s. On November 17th, 1774, he wrote to Thomas Linley, that he was “just now sending to the press” a book which he thought would do him some credit, “if it leads to nothing else.” Evidently he had hopes that it might lead to “something else,” possibly (I suggest) political patronage. “It may be observed, however, that he had not at this juncture” said The European Magazine, “devoted himself to the measures of opposition, or connected himself with those who are at present adverse to government.”
A Familiar Epistle is an examen of Mason’s Heroic Postscript to the Public as Clio’s Protest, very much like it in style and plan, is an examen of The Bath Picture. It is an attack on “Patriotism,” as then construed in party politics:
The verse, tho’ grac’d with Fashion’s prize,
On Party built, with Party dies;
Thus your unfinish’d, feeble rhymes,
Form’d as you own, to catch the times...
Like insects in an early spring
Shall just have life to buz and sting.
It reprobates the continual charge of private vice against public
characters: —
They know how rare the lib’ral muse
Will stoop to personal abuse,
Or make the scandal of the day
The burthen of a factious lay.
It is in the same metre as Clio’s Protest, though a little less liberal in its double-endings. From its topical nature, a great deal of it is obscure in its allusions, but there are some pointed and lively passages: —
All petty rogues, to prove your strength —
You may attack with names at length;
But when you mean to maul your betters,
Choose Dashes, and Initial Letters.
Thus when of Scottish Home you speak,
You name him plump, without a break:
But a more cautious style assume
When you attack great D * * d H * e.
Thus, slurring on poor Mallet’s fame,
First boldly charge, then write the name.
But when your satire C s would vex
Best note him with an F and X.
— We treat the first, as cooks are thought
To dress small grigs, entire as caught.
But as large eels first lose their bowels
We gut our great names of their vowels.
Then, roasted well on Satire’s bars,
We serve them up with forc’d-meat stars.
The Familiar Epistle ridicules the claim of its author that his Heroic Epistle, from its attack on the Navy-Board, forced them to conduct the great Review of the Fleet at Portsmouth in 1773: —
One single dash of Sancho’s pen
Produc’d — .the Monarch — Ships — and Men!
Wond’rous! — great England’s naval line
Call’d forth, dread bard, by one of thine!
It ends curiously with a determination of the poet to relinquish ... its peevish tone, Tho’ aim’d at pride and spleen alone, and devote his muse to Love, to gain the smiles “of her, to whom my numbers speak,” or to tell some simple tale of woe:
While yet she reads, one sigh shall be
More precious far than fame to me,
And ending, let, uncheck’d, appear,
The silent plaudit of a tear.
This indeed fits the mood of Sheridan in 1774. All things considered, A Familiar Epistle seems to have been correctly attributed to him. If it were so, it throws a newlight upon his political beginnings.