FURTHER PURCHASE OF THEATRICAL PROPERTY. — MONODY TO THE MEMORY OF GARRICK. — ESSAY ON METRE.-THE CRITIC. — ESSAY ON ABSENTEES. — POLITICAL CONNECTIONS. — THE “ENGLISHMAN.” — ELECTED FOR STAFFORD.
The document in Mr. Sheridan’s handwriting, already mentioned, from which I have stated the sums paid in 1776 by him, Dr. Ford, and Mr. Linley, for Garrick’s moiety of the Drury Lane Theatre, thus mentions the new purchase, by which he extended his interest in this property in the year 1778:— “Mr. Sheridan afterwards was obliged to buy Mr. Lacy’s moiety at a price exceeding 45,000l.: this was in the year 1778.” He then adds — what it may be as well to cite, while I have the paper before me, though relating to subsequent changes in the property:— “In order to enable Mr. S. to complete this purpose, he afterwards consented to divide his original share between Dr. Ford and Mr. Linley, so as to make up each of theirs a quarter. But the price at which they purchased from Mr. Sheridan was not at the rate which he bought from Lacy, though at an advance on the price paid to Garrick. Mr. S. has since purchased Dr. Ford’s quarter for the sum of 17,000l., subject to the increased incumbrance of the additional renters.”
By what spell all these thousands were conjured up, it would be difficult accurately to ascertain. That happy art — in which the people of this country are such adepts — of putting the future in pawn for the supply of the present, must have been the chief resource of Mr. Sheridan in all these later purchases.
Among the visible signs of his increased influence in the affairs of the theatre, was the appointment, this year, of his father to be manager; — a reconciliation having taken place between them, which was facilitated, no doubt, by the brightening prospects of the son, and by the generous confidence which his prosperity gave him in making the first advances towards such a reunion.
One of the novelties of the year was a musical entertainment called The Camp, which was falsely attributed to Mr. Sheridan at the time, and has since been inconsiderately admitted into the Collection of his Works. This unworthy trifle (as appears from a rough copy of it in my possession) was the production of Tickell, and the patience with which his friend submitted to the imputation of having written it was a sort of “martyrdom of fame” which few but himself could afford.
At the beginning of the year 1779 Garrick died, and Sheridan, as chief mourner, followed him to the grave. He also wrote a Monody to his memory, which was delivered by Mrs. Yates, after the play of the West Indian, in the month of March following. During the interment of Garrick in Poet’s Corner, Mr. Burke had remarked that the statue of Shakspeare seemed to point to the grave where the great actor of his works was laid. This hint did not fall idly on the ear of Sheridan, as the following fixation of the thought, in the verses which he afterwards wrote, proved: —
“The throng that mourn’d, as their dead favorite pass’d,
The grac’d respect that claim’d him to the last;
While Shakspeare’s image, from its hallow’d base,
Seem’d to prescribe the grave and point the place.”
This Monody, which was the longest flight ever sustained by its author in verse, is more remarkable, perhaps, for refinement and elegance, than for either novelty of thought or depth of sentiment. There is, however, a fine burst of poetical eloquence in the lines beginning “Superior hopes the poet’s bosom fire;” and this passage, accordingly, as being the best in the poem, was, by the gossiping critics of the day, attributed to Tickell, — from the same laudable motives that had induced them to attribute Tickell’s bad farce to Sheridan. There is no end to the variety of these small missiles of malice, with which the Gullivers of the world of literature are assailed by the Lilliputians around them.
The chief thought which pervades this poem, — namely, the fleeting nature of the actor’s art and fame, — had already been more simply expressed by Garrick himself in his Prologue to The Clandestine Marriage: —
“The painter’s dead, yet still he charms the eye;
While England lives, his fame can never die;
But he who struts his hour upon the stage,
Can scarce protract his fame through half an age;
Nor pen nor pencil can the actor save;
The art and artist have one common grave.”
Colley Cibber, too, in his portrait (if I remember right) of Betterton, breaks off into the same reflection, in the following graceful passage, which is one of those instances, where prose could not be exchanged for poetry without loss:— “Pity it is that the momentary beauties, flowing from an harmonious elocution, cannot, like those of poetry, be their own record; that the animated graces of the player can live no longer than the instant breath and motion that presents them, or, at best, can but faintly glimmer through the memory of a few surviving spectators.”
With respect to the style and versification of the Monody, the heroic couplet in which it is written has long been a sort of Ulysses’ bow, at which Poetry tries her suitors, and at which they almost all fail. Redundancy of epithet and monotony of cadence are the inseparable companions of this metre in ordinary hands; nor could all the taste and skill of Sheridan keep it wholly free from these defects in his own. To the subject of metre, he had, nevertheless, paid great attention. There are among his papers some fragments of an Essay [Footnote: Or rather memorandums collected, as was his custom, with a view to the composition of such an Essay. He had been reading the writings of Dr. Foster, Webb, &c. on this subject, with the intention, apparently, of publishing an answer to them. The following (which is one of the few consecutive passages I can find in these notes) will show how little reverence he entertained for that ancient prosody, upon which, in the system of English education, so large and precious a portion of human life is wasted:— “I never desire a stronger proof that an author is on a wrong scent on these subjects, than to see Quintilian, Aristotle, &c., quoted on a point where they have not the least business. All poetry is made by the ear, which must be the sole judge — it is a sort of musical rhythmus. If then we want to reduce our practical harmony to rules, every man, with a knowledge of his own language and a good ear, is at once competent to the undertaking. Let him trace it to music — if he has no knowledge, let him inquire.
“We have lost all notion of the ancient accent; — we have lost their pronunciation; — all puzzling about it is ridiculous, and trying to find out the melody of our own verse by theirs is still worse. We should have had all our own metres, if we never had heard a word of their language, — this I affirm. Every nation finds out for itself a national melody; and we may say of it, as of religion, no place has been discovered without music. A people, likewise, as their language improves, will introduce a music into their poetry, which is simply (that is to say, the numerical part of poetry, which must be distinguished from the imaginary) the transferring the time of melody into speaking. What then have the Greeks or Romans to do with our music? It is plain that our admiration of their verse is mere pedantry, because we could not adopt it. Sir Philip Sidney failed. If it had been melody, we should have had it; our language is just as well calculated for it.
“It is astonishing that the excessive ridiculousness of a Gradus or Prosodial Dictionary has never struck our scholars. The idea of looking into a book to see whether the sound of a syllable be short or long is absolutely as much a bull of Boeotian pedantry as ever disgraced Ireland.” He then adds, with reference to some mistakes which Dr. Foster had appeared to him to have committed in his accentuation of English words:— “What strange effects has this system brought about! It has so corrupted the ear, that absolutely our scholars cannot tell an English long syllable from a short one. If a boy were to make the a in ‘cano’ or ‘amo’ long, Dr. F. would no doubt feel his ear hurt, and yet….”
Of the style in which some of his observations are committed to paper, the following is a curious specimen:— “Dr. Foster says that short syllables, when inflated with that emphasis which the sense demands, swell in height, length, and breadth beyond their natural size. — The devil they do! Here is a most omnipotent power in emphasis. Quantity and accent may in vain toil to produce a little effect, but emphasis comes at once and monopolizes the power of them both.”]
which he had commenced on the nature of poetical accent and emphasis; and the adaptation of his verses to the airs in the Duenna — even allowing for the aid which he received from Mrs. Sheridan — shows a degree of musical feeling, from which a much greater variety of cadence might be expected, than we find throughout the versification of this poem. The taste of the time, however, was not prepared for any great variations in the music of the couplet. The regular foot-fall, established so long, had yet been but little disturbed; and the only license of this kind hazarded through the poem— “All perishable” — was objected to by some of the author’s critical friends, who suggested, that it would be better thus: “All doom’d to perish.”
Whatever in more important points may be the inferiority of the present school of poetry to that which preceded it, in the music of versification there can be but little doubt of its improvement; nor has criticism, perhaps, ever rendered a greater service to the art, than in helping to unseal the ears of its worshippers to that true spheric harmony of the elders of song, which, during a long period of our literature, was as unheard as if it never existed.
The Monody does not seem to have kept the stage more than five or six nights; — nor is this surprising. The recitation of a long, serious address must always be, to a certain degree, ineffective on the stage; and, though this subject contained within it many strong sources of interest, as well personal as dramatic, they were not, perhaps, turned to account by the poet with sufficient warmth and earnestness on his own part, to excite a very ready response of sympathy in others. Feeling never wanders into generalities — it is only by concentrating his rays upon one point that even Genius can kindle strong emotion; and, in order to produce any such effect in the present instance upon the audience, Garrick himself ought to have been kept prominently and individually before their eyes in almost every line. Instead of this, however, the man is soon forgotten in his Art, which is then deliberately compared with other Arts, and the attention, through the greater part of the poem, is diffused over the transitoriness of actors in general, instead of being brought strongly to a focus upon the particular loss just sustained. Even in those parts which apply most directly to Garrick, the feeling is a good deal diluted by this tendency to the abstract; and, sometimes, by a false taste of personification, like that in the very first line, —
“If dying excellence deserves a tear,”
where the substitution of a quality of the man for the man himself [Footnote: Another instance of this fault occurs in his song “When sable Night:” —
“As some fond mother, o’er her babe deploring,
Wakes its beauty with a tear;”
where the clearness and reality of the picture are spoiled by the affectation of representing the beauty of the child as waked, instead of the child itself.] puts the mind, as it were, one remove farther from the substantial object of its interest, and disturbs that sense of reality, on which the operations even of Fancy itself ought to be founded.
But it is very easy to play the critic — so easy as to be a task of but little glory. For one person who could produce such a poem as this, how many thousands exist and have existed, who could shine in the exposition of its faults! Though insufficient, perhaps, in itself, to create a reputation for an author, yet, as a “stella Coronae” — one of the stars in that various crown, which marks the place of Sheridan in the firmament of Fame, — it not only well sustains its own part in the lustre, but draws new light from the host of brilliancy around it.
It was in the course of this same year that he produced the entertainment of the Critic — his last legitimate offering on the shrine of the Dramatic Muse. In this admirable farce we have a striking instance of that privilege which, as I have already said, Genius assumes, of taking up subjects that had passed through other hands, and giving them a new value and currency by his stamp. The plan of a Rehearsal was first adopted for the purpose of ridiculing Dryden, by the Duke of Buckingham; but, though there is much laughable humor in some of the dialogue between Bayes and his friends, the salt of the satire altogether was not of a very conservative nature, and the piece continued to be served up to the public long after it had lost its relish. Fielding tried the same plan in a variety of pieces — in his Pasquin, his Historical Register, his Author’s Farce, his Eurydice, &c., — but without much success, except in the comedy of Pasquin, which had, I believe, at first a prosperous career, though it has since, except with the few that still read it for its fine tone of pleasantry, fallen into oblivion. It was reserved for Sheridan to give vitality to this form of dramatic humor, and to invest even his satirical portraits — as in the instance of Sir Fretful Plagiary, which, it is well known, was designed for Cumberland — with a generic character, which, without weakening the particular resemblance, makes them representatives for ever of the whole class to which the original belonged. Bayes, on the contrary, is a caricature — made up of little more than personal peculiarities, which may amuse as long as reference can be had to the prototype, but, like those supplemental features furnished from the living subject by Taliacotius, fall lifeless the moment the individual that supplied them is defunct.
It is evident, however, that Bayes was not forgotten in the composition of The Critic. His speech, where the two Kings of Brentford are singing in the clouds, may be considered as the exemplar which Sheridan had before him in writing some of the rehearsal scenes of Puff: —
“Smith. Well, but methinks the sense of this song is not very plain.
“Bayes. Plain! why did you ever hear any people in the clouds sing plain? They must be all for flight of fancy at its fullest range, without the least check or control upon it. When once you tie up spirits and people in clouds to speak plain, you spoil all.”
There are particular instances of imitation still more direct. Thus in
The Critic:
“Enter SIR WALTER RALEIGH and SIR CHRISTOPHER HATTON.
“Sir Christ. H. True, gallant Raleigh. —
“Dangle. What, had they been talking before?
“Puff. Oh yes, all the way as they came along.”
In the same manner in The Rehearsal, where the Physician and Usher of the two Kings enter: —
“Phys. Sir, to conclude —
“Smith. What, before he begins?
“Bayes. No, Sir, you must know they had been talking of this a pretty while without.
“Smith. Where? in the tyring room?
“Bayes. Why, ay, Sir. He’s so dull.”
Bayes, at the opening of the Fifth Act, says, “Now, gentlemen, I will be bold to say, I’ll show you the greatest scene that England ever saw; I mean not for words, for those I don’t value, but for state, show, and magnificence.” Puff announces his grand scene in much the same manner:— “Now then for my magnificence! my battle! my noise! and my procession!”
In Fielding, too, we find numerous hints or germs, that have come to their full growth of wit in The Critic. For instance, in Trapwit (a character in “Pasquin”) there are the rudiments of Sir Fretful as well as of Puff: —
“Sneerwell. Yes, faith, I think I would cut that last speech.
“Trapwit. Sir, I’ll sooner cut off an ear or two; Sir, that’s the very best thing in the whole play….
“Trapwit. Now, Mr. Sneerwell, we shall begin my third and last act; and I believe I may defy all the poets who have ever writ, or ever will write, to produce its equal: it is, Sir, so crammed with drums and trumpets, thunder and lightning, battles and ghosts, that I believe the audience will want no entertainment after it.”
The manager, Marplay, in “The Author’s Farce,” like him of Drury Lane in the Critic, “does the town the honor of writing himself;” and the following incident in “The Historical Register” suggested possibly the humorous scene of Lord Burleigh: —
“Enter Four Patriots from different Doors, who meet in the centre and shake Hands.
“Sour-wit. These patriots seem to equal your greatest politicians in their silence.
“Medley. Sir, what they think now cannot well be spoke, but you may conjecture a good deal from their shaking their heads.”
Such coincidences, whether accidental or designed, are at least curious, and the following is another of somewhat a different kind:— “Steal! (says Sir Fretful) to be sure they may; and egad, serve your best thoughts as gipsies do stolen children, disfigure them, to make ’em pass for their own.” [Footnote: This simile was again made use of by him in a speech upon Mr. Pitt’s India Bill, which he declared to be “nothing more than a bad plagiarism on Mr. Fox’s, disfigured, indeed, as gipsies do stolen children, in order to make them pass for their own.”] Churchill has the same idea in nearly the same language: —
“Still pilfers wretched plans and makes them worse,
Like gipsies, lest the stolen brat be known,
Defacing first, then claiming for their own.”
The character of Puff, as I have already shown, was our author’s first dramatic attempt; and, having left it unfinished in the porch as he entered the temple of Comedy, he now, we see, made it worthy of being his farewell oblation in quitting it. Like Eve’s flowers, it was his
“Early visitation, and his last.”
We must not, however, forget a lively Epilogue which he wrote this year, for Miss Hannah More’s tragedy of Fatal Falsehood, in which there is a description of a blue-stocking lady, executed with all his happiest point. Of this dense, epigrammatic style, in which every line is a cartridge of wit in itself, Sheridan was, both in prose and verse, a consummate master; and if any one could hope to succeed, after Pope, in a Mock Epic, founded upon fashionable life, it would have been, we should think, the writer of this epilogue. There are some verses, written on the “Immortelle Emilie” of Voltaire, in which her employments, as a savante and a woman of the world, are thus contrasted: —
“Tout lui plait, tout convient a son vaste genie,
Les livres, les bijoux, les compas, les pompons,
Les vers, les diamans, les beribis, l’optique,
L’algebre, les soupers, le Latin, les jupons,
L’opera, les proces, le bal, et la physique.”
How powerfully has Sheridan, in bringing out the same contrasts, shown the difference between the raw material of a thought, and the fine fabric as it comes from the hands of a workman: —
“What motley cares Corilla’s mind perplex,
Whom maids and metaphors conspire to vex!
In studious deshabille behold her sit,
A letter’d gossip and a housewife wit:
At once invoking, though for different views,
Her gods, her cook, her milliner, and muse.
Round her strew’d room a frippery chaos lies,
A chequer’d wreck of notable and wise.
Bills, books, caps, couplets, combs, a varied mass,
Oppress the toilet and obscure the glass;
Unfinished here an epigram is laid,
And there a mantua-maker’s bill unpaid.
There new-born plays foretaste the town’s applause,
There dormant patterns pine for future gauze.
A moral essay now is all her care,
A satire next, and then a bill of fare.
A scene she now projects, and now a dish,
Here Act the First, and here ‘Remove with Fish.’
Now, while this eye in a fine frenzy rolls,
That soberly casts up a bill for coals;
Black pins and daggers in one leaf she sticks.
And tears, and threads, and bowls, and thimbles mix.”
We must now prepare to follow the subject of this Memoir into a field of display, altogether different, where he was in turn to become an actor before the public himself, and where, instead of inditing lively speeches for others, he was to deliver the dictates of his eloquence and wit from his own lips. However the lovers of the drama may lament this diversion of his talents, and doubt whether even the chance of another School for Scandal were not worth more than all his subsequent career, yet to the individual himself, full of ambition, and conscious of versatility of powers, such an opening into a new course of action and fame, must have been like one of those sudden turnings of the road in a beautiful country, which dazzle the eyes of a traveller with new glories, and invite him on to untried paths of fertility and sunshine.
It has been before remarked how early, in a majority of instances, the dramatic talent has come to its fullest maturity. Mr. Sheridan would possibly never have exceeded what he had already done, and his celebrity had now reached that point of elevation, where, by a sort of optical deception in the atmosphere of fame, to remain stationary is to seem, in the eyes of the spectators, to fall. He had, indeed, enjoyed only the triumphs of talent, and without even descending to those ovations, or minor triumphs, which in general are little more than celebrations of escape from defeat, and to which they, who surpass all but themselves, are often capriciously reduced. It is questionable, too, whether, in any other walk of literature, he would have sustained the high reputation which he acquired by the drama. Very rarely have dramatic writers, even of the first rank, exhibited powers of equal rate, when out of the precincts of their own art; while, on the other hand, poets of a more general range, whether epic, lyric, or satiric, have as rarely succeeded on the stage. There is, indeed, hardly one of our celebrated dramatic authors (and the remark might be extended to other countries) who has left works worthy of his reputation in any other line; and Mr. Sheridan, perhaps, might only have been saved from adding to the list of failures, by such a degree of prudence or of indolence as would have prevented him from making the attempt. He may, therefore, be said to have closed his account with literature, when not only the glory of his past successes, but the hopes of all that he might yet have achieved, were set down fully, and without any risk of forfeiture, to his credit; and, instead of being left, like Alexander, to sigh for new worlds to vanquish, no sooner were his triumphs in one sphere of action complete than another opened to invite him to new conquests.
We have already seen that Politics, from the very commencement of his career, had held divided empire with Literature in the tastes and studies of Mr. Sheridan; and, even in his fullest enjoyment of the smiles of the Comic Muse, while he stood without a rival in her affections, the “Musa severior” of politics was estranging the constancy of his —
“Te tenet, absentes alios suspirat amores”
“E’en while perfection lies within his arms, He strays in thought, and sighs for other charms.”
Among his manuscripts there are some sheets of an Essay on Absentees, which, from the allusions it contains to the measures then in contemplation for Ireland, must have been written, I rather think, about the year 1778 — when the School for Scandal was in its first career of success, and the Critic preparing, at no very long interval, to partake its triumph. It is obvious, from some expressions used in this pamphlet, that his intention was, if not to publish it in Ireland, at least to give it the appearance of having been written there — and, except the pure unmixed motive of rendering a service to his country, by the discussion of a subject so closely connected with her interests, it is difficult to conceive what inducement he could have had to select at that moment such a topic for his pen. The plain, unpretending style of the greater part of the composition sufficiently proves that literary display was not the object of it; while the absence of all criminatory matter against the government precludes the idea of its having originated in party zeal.
As it is curious to observe how soberly his genius could yoke itself to grave matter of fact, after the winged excursions in which it had been indulging, I shall here lay some paragraphs of this pamphlet before the reader.
In describing the effects of the prevailing system of pasturage — one of the evils attributed by him to Absentees, — he thus, with occasional irradiations of eloquence and ingenuity, expresses himself: —
“Now it must ever be the interest of the Absentee to place his estates in the hands of as few tenants as possible, by which means there will be less difficulty or hazard in collecting his rents, and less intrusted to an agent, if his estate require one. The easiest method of effecting this is by laying the land out for pasturage, and letting it in gross to those who deal only in ‘a fatal living crop’ — whose produce we are not allowed a market for when manufactured, while we want art, honesty, and encouragement to fit it for home consumption. Thus the indolent extravagance of the lord becomes subservient to the interest of a few mercenary graziers — shepherds of most unpastoral principles — while the veteran husbandman may lean on the shattered, unused plough, and view himself surrounded with flocks that furnish raiment without food. Or, if his honesty be not proof against the hard assaults of penury, he may be led to revenge himself on these dumb innovators of his little field — then learn too late that some portion of the soil is reserved for a crop more fatal even than that which tempted and destroyed him.
“Without dwelling on the particular ill effects of non-residence in this case, I shall conclude with representing that principal and supreme prerogative which the Absentee foregoes — the prerogative of mercy, of charity. The estated resident is invested with a kind of relieving providence — a power to heal the wounds of undeserved misfortune — to break the blows of adverse fortune, and leave chance no power to undo the hopes of honest persevering industry. There cannot surely be a more happy station than that wherein prosperity and worldly interest are to be best forwarded by an exertion of the most endearing offices of humanity. This is his situation who lives on the soil which furnishes him with means to live. It is his interest to watch the devastation of the storm, the ravage of the flood — to mark the pernicious extremes of the elements, and, by a judicious indulgence and assistance, to convert the sorrows and repinings of the sufferer into blessings on his humanity. By such a conduct he saves his people from the sin of unrighteous murmurs, and makes Heaven his debtor for their resignation.
“It will be said that the residing in another kingdom will never erase from humane minds the duty and attention which they owe to those whom they have left to cultivate their demesnes. I will not say that absence lessens their humanity, or that the superior dissipation which they enjoy in it contracts their feelings to coarser enjoyments — without this, we know that agents and stewards are seldom intrusted with full powers of aiding and remitting. In some, compassion would be injustice. They are, in general, content with the virtue of justice and punctuality towards their employer; part of which they conceive to be a rigorous exaction of his rents, and, where difficulty occurs, their process is simply to distrain and to eject — a rigor that must ever be prejudicial to an estate, and which, practised frequently, betrays either an original negligence, or want of judgment in choosing tenants, or an extreme inhumanity towards their incidental miscarriages.
“But, granting an undiminished benevolence to exist on the part both of the landlord and the agent, yet can we expect any great exertion of pathetic eloquence to proceed from the latter to palliate any deficiency of the tenants? — or, if there were, do we not know how much lighter an impression is made by distresses related to us than by those which are ‘oculis subjecta fidelibus? The heart, the seat of charity and compassion, is more accessible to the senses than the understanding. Many, who would be unmoved by any address to the latter, would melt into charity at the eloquent persuasion of silent sorrow. When he sees the widow’s tear, and hears the orphan’s sigh, every one will act with a sudden uniform rectitude, because he acts from the divine impulse of ‘free love dealt equally to all.’”
The blind selfishness of those commercial laws, which England so long imposed upon Ireland, — like ligatures to check the circulation of the empire’s life-blood, — is thus adverted to:
“Though I have mentioned the decay of trade in Ireland as insufficient to occasion the great increase of emigration, yet is it to be considered as an important ill effect, arising from the same cause. It may be said that trade is now in higher repute in Ireland, and that the exports and imports (which are always supposed the test of it) are daily increasing. This may be admitted to be true, yet cannot it be said that the trade of the kingdom flourishes. The trade of a kingdom should increase in exact proportion to its luxuries, and those of the nations connected with it. Therefore it is no argument to say, that, on examining the accounts of customs fifty years back, they appear to be trebled now; for England, by some sudden stroke, might lose such a proportion of its trade, as would ruin it as a commercial nation, yet the amount of what remained might be tenfold of what it enjoyed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Trade, properly speaking, is the commutations of the product of each country — this extends itself to the exchange of commodities in which art has fixed a price. Where a nation hath free power to export the works of its industry, the balance in such articles will certainly be in its favor. Thus had we in Ireland power to export our manufactured silks, stuffs, and woollens, we should be assured that it would be our interest to import and cultivate their materials. But, as this is not the case, the gain of individuals is no proof that the nation is benefited by such commerce. For instance, the exportation of un-wrought wool may be very advantageous to the dealer, and, through his hands, bring money, or a beneficial return of commodities into the kingdom; but trace the ill effects of depopulating such tracts of land as are necessary for the support of flocks to supply this branch, and number those who are deprived of support and employment by it, and so become a dead weight on the community — we shall find that the nation in fact will be the poorer for this apparent advantage. This would be remedied were we allowed to export it manufactured; because the husbandman might get his bread as a manufacturer.
“Another principal cause that the trade may increase, without proportionally benefiting the nation, is that a great part of the stock which carries on the foreign trade of Ireland belongs to those who reside out of the country — thus the ultimate and material profits on it are withdrawn to another kingdom. It is likewise to be observed, that, though the exportations may appear to exceed the importations, yet may this in part arise from the accounts of the former being of a more certain nature, and those of the latter very conjectural, and always falling short of the fact.”
Though Mr. Sheridan afterwards opposed a Union with Ireland, the train of reasoning which he pursued in this pamphlet naturally led him to look forward to such an arrangement between the two countries, as, perhaps, the only chance of solving the long-existing problem of their relationship to each other.
“It is the state, (he continues,) the luxury, and fashions of the wealthy, that give life to the artificers of elegance and taste; — it is their numerous train that sends the rapid shuttle through the loom; — and, when they leave their country, they not only beggar these dependents, but the tribes that lived by clothing them.
“An extravagant passion for luxuries hath been in all nations a symptom of an approaching dissolution. However, in commercial states, while it predominates only among the higher ranks, it brings with it the conciliating advantage of being greatly beneficial to trade and manufactures. But, how singularly unfortunate is that kingdom, where the luxurious passions of the great beggar those who should be supported by them, — a kingdom, whose wealthy members keep equal pace with their numbers in the dissipated and fantastical pursuits of life, without suffering the lower class to glean even the dregs of their vices. While this is the case with Ireland the prosperity of her trade must be all forced and unnatural; and if, in the absence of its wealthy and estated members, the state already feels all the disadvantages of a Union, it cannot do better than endeavor at a free trade by effecting it in reality.”
Having demonstrated, at some length, the general evil of absenteeism, he thus proceeds to inquire into the most eligible remedy for it: —
“The evil complained of is simply the absence of the proprietors of a certain portion of the landed property. This is an evil unprovided against by the legislature; — therefore, we are not to consider whether it might not with propriety have been guarded against, but whether a remedy or alleviation of it can now be attempted consistently with the spirit of the Constitution. On examining all the most obvious methods of attempting this, I believe there will appear but two practicable. The First will be by enacting a law for the frequent summoning the proprietors of landed property to appear de facto at stated times. The Second will be the voting a supply to be raised from the estates of such as do never reside in the kingdom.
“The First, it is obvious, would be an obligation of no use, without a penalty was affixed to the breach of it, amounting to the actual forfeiture of the estate of the recusant. This, we are informed, was once the case in Ireland. But at present, whatever advantage the kingdom might reap by it, it could not possibly be reconciled to the genius of the Constitution: and, if the fine were trifling, it would prove the same as the second method, with the disadvantage of appearing to treat as an act of delinquency what in no way infringes the municipal laws of the kingdom.
“In the Second method the legislature is, in no respect, to be supposed to regard the person of the Absentee. It prescribes no place of residence to him, nor attempts to summon or detain him. The light it takes up the point in is this — that the welfare of the whole is injured by the produce of a certain portion of the soil being sent out of the kingdom…. It will be said that the produce of the soil is not exported by being carried to our own markets; but if the value received in exchange for it, whatever it be, whether money or commodities, be exported, it is exactly the same in its ultimate effects as if the grain, flocks, &c. were literally sent to England. In this light, then, if the state is found to suffer by such an exportation, its deducting a small part from the produce is simply a reimbursing the public, and putting the loss of the public (to whose welfare the interest of individuals is always to be subservient) upon those very members who occasion that loss.
“This is only to be effected by a tax.”
Though to a political economist of the present day much of what is so loosely expressed in these extracts will appear but the crudities of a tyro in the science, yet, at the time when they were written, — when both Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke could expatiate on the state of Ireland, without a single attempt to develop or enforce those simple, but wise principles of commercial policy, every one of which had been violated in the restrictions on her industry, — it was no small merit in Mr. Sheridan to have advanced even thus far in a branch of knowledge so rare and so important.
In addition to his own early taste for politics, the intimacies which he had now formed with some of the most eminent public men of the day must have considerably tended to turn his ambition in that direction. At what time he first became acquainted with Mr. Fox I have no means of ascertaining exactly. Among the letters addressed to him by that statesman, there is one which, from the formality of its style, must have been written at the very commencement of their acquaintance — but, unluckily, it is not dated. Lord John Townshend, who first had the happiness of bringing two such men together, has given the following interesting account of their meeting, and of the impressions which they left upon the minds of each other. His lordship, however, has not specified the period of this introduction: —
“I made the first dinner-party at which they met, having told Fox that all the notions he might have conceived of Sheridan’s talents and genius from the comedy of The Rivals, &c. would fall infinitely short of the admiration of his astonishing powers, which I was sure he would entertain at the first interview. The first interview between them (there were very few present, only Tickell and myself, and one or two more) I shall never forget. Fox told me, after breaking up from dinner, that he had always thought Hare, after my uncle, Charles Townshend, the wittiest man he ever met with, but that Sheridan surpassed them both infinitely; and Sheridan told me next day that he was quite lost in admiration of Fox, and that it was a puzzle to him to say what he admired most, his commanding superiority of talent and universal knowledge, or his playful fancy, artless manners, and benevolence of heart, which showed itself in every word he uttered.”
With Burke Mr. Sheridan became acquainted at the celebrated Turk’s Head Club, — and, if any incentive was wanting to his new passion for political distinction, the station to which he saw his eloquent fellow- countryman exalted, with no greater claims from birth or connection than his own, could not have failed to furnish it. His intimacy with Mr. Windham began, as we have seen, very early at Bath, and the following letter, addressed to him by that gentleman from Norfolk, in the year 1778, is a curious record not only of the first political movements of a person so celebrated as Mr. Windham, but of the interest with which Sheridan then entered into the public measures of the day: —
“Jan. 5, 1778.
“I fear my letter will greatly disappoint your hopes. [Footnote: Mr. Windham had gone down to Norfolk, in consequence of a proposed meeting in that county, under the auspices of Lord Townshend, for the purpose of raising a subscription in aid of government, to be applied towards carrying on the war with the American colonies. In about three weeks after the date of this letter, the meeting was held, and Mr. Windham, in a spirited answer to Lord Townshend, made the first essay of his eloquence in public.] I have no account to send you of my answering Lord Townshend — of hard-fought contests — spirited resolves — ballads, mobs, cockades, and Lord North burnt in effigy. We have had a bloodless campaign, but not from backwardness in our troops, but for the most creditable reason that can be — want of resolution in the enemy to encounter us. When I got down here early this morning, expecting to find a room prepared, a chair set for the president, and nothing wanting but that the orators should begin, I was surprised to learn that no advertisement had appeared on the other part; but that Lord T. having dined at a meeting, where the proposal was received very coldly, had taken fright, and for the time at least had dropped the proposal. It had appeared, therefore, to those whom I applied to (and I think very rightly) that till an advertisement was inserted by them, or was known for certain to be intended, it would not be proper for any thing to be done by us. In this state, therefore, it rests. The advertisement which we agreed upon is left at the printer’s, ready to be inserted upon the appearance of one from them. We lie upon our arms, and shall begin to act upon any motion of the enemy. I am very sorry that things have taken this turn, as I came down in full confidence of being able to accomplish something distinguished. I had drawn up, as I came along, a tolerably good paper, to be distributed to-morrow in the streets, and settled pretty well in my head the terms of a protest — besides some pretty smart pieces of oratory, delivered upon Newmarket Heath. I never felt so much disposition to exert myself before — I hope from my never having before so fair a prospect of doing it with success. When the coach comes in, I hope I shall receive a packet from you, which shall not be lost, though it may not be used immediately.
“I must leave off writing, for I have got some other letters to send by to-night’s post. Writing in this ink is like speaking with respect to the utter annihilation of what is past; — by the time it gets to you, perhaps, it may have become legible, but I have no chance of reading over my letter myself.
“I shall not suffer this occasion to pass over entirely without benefit.
“Believe me yours most truly,
“W. WlNDHAM.
“Tell Mrs. Sheridan that I hope she will have a closet ready, where I may remain till the heat of the pursuit is over. My friends in France have promised to have a vessel ready upon the coast.
“Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Esq.,
“Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”
The first political service rendered by Mr. Sheridan to the party with whom he now closely connected himself, was the active share which he took in a periodical paper called The Englishman, set up by the Whigs for the purpose of seconding, out of parliament, the crimination and invective of which they kept up such a brisk fire within. The intention, as announced by Sheridan in the first Number, [Footnote: Published 13th of March, 1779.] was, like Swift in the Drapier’s Letters, to accommodate the style of the publication to the comprehension of persons in “that class of the community, who are commonly called the honest and industrious.” But this plan, — which not even Swift, independent as was his humor of the artifices of style, could adhere to, — was soon abandoned, and there is in most of Sheridan’s own papers a finesse and ingenuity of allusion, which only the most cultivated part of his readers could fully enjoy. For instance, in exposing the inconsistency of Lord North, who had lately consented in a Committee of the whole House, to a motion which he had violently opposed in the House itself, — thus “making (says Sheridan) that respectable assembly disobey its own orders, and the members reject with contempt, under the form of a Chairman, the resolutions they had imposed on themselves under the authority of a Speaker;” — he proceeds in a strain of refined raillery, as little suited to the “honest and industrious” class of the community, as Swift’s references to Locke, Molyneux, and Sydney, were to the readers for whom he also professed to write: —
“The burlesque of any plan, I know, is rather a recommendation of it to Your Lordship; and the ridicule you might throw on this assembly, by continuing to support this Athanasian distinction of powers in the unity of an apparently corporate body, might in the end compensate to you for the discredit you have incurred in the attempt.
“A deliberative body of so uncommon a form, would probably be deemed a kind of STATE MONSTER by the ignorant and the vulgar. This might at first increase their awe for it, and so far counteract Your Lordship’s intentions. They would probably approach it with as much reverence as Stephano does the monster in the Tempest:— ‘What, one body and two voices — a most delicate monster!’ However, they would soon grow familiarized to it, and probably hold it in as little respect as they were wished to do. They would find it on many occasions ‘a very shallow monster,’ and particularly ‘a most poor credulous monster,’ — while Your Lordship, as keeper, would enjoy every advantage and profit that could be made of it. You would have the benefit of the two voices, which would be the MONSTER’S great excellencies, and would be peculiarly serviceable to Your Lordship. With ‘the forward voice’ you would aptly promulgate those vigorous schemes and productive resources, in which Your Lordship’s fancy is so pregnant; while ‘the backward voice’ might be kept solely for recantation. The MONSTER, to maintain its character, must appear no novice in the science of flattery, or in the talents of servility, — and while it could never scruple to bear any burdens Your Lordship should please to lay on it, you would always, on the approach of a storm, find a shelter under its gabardine.”
The most celebrated of these papers was the attack upon Lord George Germaine, written also by Mr. Sheridan, — a composition which, for unaffected strength of style and earnestness of feeling, may claim a high rank among the models of political vituperation. To every generation its own contemporary press seems always more licentious than any that had preceded it; but it may be questioned, whether the boldness of modern libel has ever gone beyond the direct and undisguised personality, with which one cabinet minister was called a liar and another a coward, in this and other writings of the popular party at that period. The following is the concluding paragraph of this paper against Lord George Germaine, which is in the form of a Letter to the Freeholders of England: —
“It would be presuming too much on your attention, at present, to enter into an investigation of the measures and system of war which this minister has pursued, — these shall certainly be the subject of a future paper. At present I shall only observe that, however mortifying it may be to reflect on the ignominy and disasters which this inauspicious character has brought on his country, yet there are consoling circumstances to be drawn even from his ill success. The calamities which may be laid to his account are certainly great; but, had the case been otherwise, it may fairly be questioned whether the example of a degraded and reprobated officer (preposterously elevated to one of the first stations of honor and confidence in the state) directing the military enterprises of this country with unlooked-for prosperity, might not ultimately be the cause of more extensive evils than even those, great as they are, which we at present experience: whether from so fatal a precedent we might not be led to introduce characters under similar disqualifications into every department: — to appoint Atheists to the mitre, Jews to the exchequer, — to select a treasury-bench from the Justitia, to place Brown Dignam on the wool-sack, and Sir Hugh Palliser at the head of the admiralty.”
The Englishman, as might be expected from the pursuits and habits of those concerned in it, was not very punctually conducted, and after many apologies from the publisher for its not appearing at the stated times, (Wednesdays and Saturdays,) ceased altogether on the 2d of June. From an imperfect sketch of a new Number, found among Mr. Sheridan’s manuscripts, it appears that there was an intention of reviving it a short time after — probably towards the autumn of the same year, from the following allusion to Mr. Gibbon, whose acceptance of a seat at the Board of Trade took place, if I recollect right, in the summer of 1779: —
“This policy is very evident among the majority in both houses, who, though they make no scruple in private to acknowledge the total incapacity of ministers, yet, in public, speak and vote as if they believed them to have every virtue under heaven; and, on this principle, some gentlemen, — as Mr. Gibbon, for instance, — while, in private, they indulge their opinion pretty freely, will yet, in their zeal for the public good, even condescend to accept a place, in order to give a color to their confidence in the wisdom of the government.”
It is needless to say that Mr. Sheridan had been for some time among the most welcome guests at Devonshire House — that rendezvous of all the wits and beauties of fashionable life, where Politics was taught to wear its most attractive form, and sat enthroned, like Virtue among the Epicureans, with all the graces and pleasures for handmaids.
Without any disparagement of the manly and useful talents, which are at present no where more conspicuous than in the upper ranks of society, it may be owned that for wit, social powers, and literary accomplishments, the political men of the period under consideration formed such an assemblage as it would be flattery to say that our own times can parallel. The natural tendency of the excesses of the French Revolution was to produce in the higher classes of England an increased reserve of manner, and, of course, a proportionate restraint on all within their circle, which have been fatal to conviviality and humor, and not very propitious to wit — subduing both manners and conversation to a sort of polished level, to rise above which is often thought almost as vulgar as to sink below it. Of the greater ease of manners that existed some forty or fifty years ago, one trifling, but not the less significant, indication was the habit, then prevalent among men of high station, of calling each other by such familiar names as Dick, Jack, Tom, &c. [Footnote: Dick Sheridan, Ned Burke, Jack Townshend, Tom Grenville, &c. &c.] — a mode of address that brings with it, in its very sound, the notion of conviviality and playfulness, and, however unrefined, implies, at least, that ease and sea-room, in which wit spreads its canvas most fearlessly.
With respect to literary accomplishments, too, — in one branch of which, poetry, almost all the leading politicians of that day distinguished themselves — the change that has taken place in the times, independently of any want of such talent, will fully account for the difference that we witness, in this respect, at present. As the public mind becomes more intelligent and watchful, statesmen can the less afford to trifle with their talents, or to bring suspicion upon their fitness for their own vocation, by the failures which they risk in deviating into others. Besides, in poetry, the temptation of distinction no longer exists — the commonness of that talent in the market, at present, being such as to reduce the value of an elegant copy of verses very far below the price it was at, when Mr. Hayley enjoyed an almost exclusive monopoly of the article.
In the clever Epistle, by Tickell, “from the Hon. Charles Fox, partridge-shooting, to the Hon. John Townshend, cruising,” some of the most shining persons in that assemblage of wits and statesmen, who gave a lustre to Brooks’s Club-House at the period of which we are speaking, are thus agreeably grouped: —
“Soon as to Brooks’s thence thy footsteps bend, [Footnote: The well-known lines on Brooks himself are perhaps the perfection of this drawing-room style of humor: —
“And know, I’ve bought the best champagne from Brooks;
From liberal Brooks, whose speculative skill
Is hasty credit, and a distant bill;
Who, nurs’d in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade,
Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid.”]
What gratulations thy approach attend!
See Gibbon rap his box-auspicious sign
That classic compliment and wit combine;
See Beauclerk’s cheek a tinge of red surprise,
And friendship give what cruel health denies; —
* * * * *
On that auspicious night, supremely grac’d
With chosen guests, the pride of liberal taste,
Not in contentious heat, nor madd’ning strife,
Not with the busy ills, nor cares of life,
We’ll waste the fleeting hours — far happier themes
Shall claim each thought and chase ambition’s dreams.
Each beauty that sublimity can boast
He best shall tell, who still unites them most.
Of wit, of taste, of fancy we’ll debate,
If Sheridan, for once, be not too late:
But scarce a thought on politics we’ll spare,
Unless on Polish politics, with Hare.
Good-natur’d Devon! oft shall then appear
The cool complacence of thy friendly sneer:
Oft shall Fitzpatrick’s wit and Stanhope’s case
And Burgoyne’s manly sense unite to please.
And while each guest attends our varied feats
Of scattered covies and retreating fleets,
Me shall they wish some better sport to gain,
And Thee more glory, from the next campaign.”
In the society of such men the destiny of Mr. Sheridan could not be long in fixing. On the one side, his own keen thirst for distinction, and on the other, a quick and sanguine appreciation of the service that such talents might render in the warfare of party, could not fail to hasten the result that both desired.
His first appearance before the public as a political character was in conjunction with Mr. Fox, at the beginning of the year 1780, when the famous Resolutions on the State of the Representation, signed by Mr. Fox as chairman of the Westminster Committee, together with a Report on the same subject from the Sub-committee, signed by Sheridan, were laid before the public. Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage were the professed objects of this meeting; and the first of the Resolutions, subscribed by Mr. Fox, stated that “Annual Parliaments are the undoubted right of the people of England.”
Notwithstanding this strong declaration, it may be doubted whether Sheridan was, any more than Mr. Fox, a very sincere friend to the principle of Reform; and the manner in which he masked his disinclination or indifference to it was strongly characteristic both of his humor and his tact. Aware that the wild scheme of Cartwright and others, which these resolutions recommended, was wholly impracticable, he always took refuge in it when pressed upon the subject, and would laughingly advise his political friends to do the same:— “Whenever any one,” he would say, “proposes to you a specific plan of Reform, always answer that you are for nothing short of Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage — there you are safe.” He also had evident delight, when talking on this question, in referring to a jest of Burke, who said that there had arisen a new party of Reformers, still more orthodox than the rest, who thought Annual Parliaments far from being sufficiently frequent, and who, founding themselves upon the latter words of the statute of Edward III., that “a parliament shall be holden every year once and more often if need be” were known by the denomination of the Oftener-if-need-bes. “For my part,” he would add, in relating this, “I am an Oftener-if-need-be.” Even when most serious on the subject (for, to the last he professed himself a warm friend to Reform) his arguments had the air of being ironical and insidious. To Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage, he would say, the principles of representation naturally and necessarily led, — any less extensive proposition was a base compromise and a dereliction of right; and the first encroachment on the people was the Act of Henry VI., which limited the power of election to forty-shilling freeholders within the county, whereas the real right was in the “outrageous and excessive” number of people by whom the preamble recites [Footnote: “Elections of knights of shires have now of late been made by very great outrageous and excessive number of people, dwelling within the same counties, of the which most part was people of small substance and of no value.” 8 H. 6. c. 7.] that the choice had been made of late. — Such were the arguments by which he affected to support his cause, and it is not difficult to detect the eyes of the snake glistening from under them.
The dissolution of parliament that took place in the autumn of this year (1780) afforded at length the opportunity to which his ambition had so eagerly looked forward. It has been said, I know not with what accuracy, that he first tried his chance of election at Honiton — but Stafford was the place destined to have the honor of first choosing him for its representative; and it must have been no small gratification to his independent spirit, that, unfurnished as he was with claims from past political services, he appeared in parliament, not as the nominee of any aristocratic patron, but as member for a borough, which, whatever might be its purity in other respects, at least enjoyed the freedom of choice. Elected conjointly with Mr. Monckton, to whose interest and exertions he chiefly owed his success, he took his seat in the new parliament which met in the month of October; — and, from that moment giving himself up to the pursuit of politics, bid adieu to the worship of the Dramatic Muse for ever.
“Comoedia luget;
Scena est deserta: hinc ludus risusque jocusgue
Et numeri innumeri simul omnes collacrumarunt.”
Comedy mourns — the Stage neglected sleeps —
E’en Mirth in tears his languid laughter steeps —
And Song, through all her various empire, weeps.