Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Volume II Part 27

In the mean time, the clamors and incursions of creditors increased. A sheriff's officer at length arrested the dying man in his bed, and was about to carry him off, in his blankets, to a spunging-house, when Doctor Bain interfered--and, by threatening the officer with the responsibility he must incur, if, as was but too probable, his prisoner should expire on the way, averted this outrage.

About the middle of June, the attention and sympathy of the Public were, for the first time, awakened to the desolate situation of Sheridan, by an article that appeared in the Morning Post,--written, as I understand, by a gentleman, who, though on no very cordial terms with him, forgot every other feeling in a generous pity for his fate, and in honest indignation against those who now deserted him. "Oh delay not," said the writer, without naming the person to whom he alluded--"delay not to draw aside the curtain within which that proud spirit hides its sufferings." He then adds, with a striking antic.i.p.ation of what afterwards happened:--"Prefer ministering in the chamber of sickness to mustering at

'The splendid sorrows that adorn the hea.r.s.e;'

I say, _Life_ and _Succor_ against Westminster-Abbey and a Funeral!"

This article produced a strong and general sensation, and was reprinted in the same paper the following day. Its effect, too, was soon visible in the calls made at Sheridan's door, and in the appearance of such names as the Duke of York, the Duke of Argyle, &c. among the visitors. But it was now too late;--the spirit, that these unavailing tributes might once have comforted, was now fast losing the consciousness of every thing earthly, but pain. After a succession of s.h.i.+vering fits, he fell into a state of exhaustion, in which he continued, with but few more signs of suffering, till his death. A day or two before that event, the Bishop of London read prayers by his bed-side; and on Sunday, the seventh of July, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, he died.

On the following Sat.u.r.day the Funeral took place;--his remains having been previously removed from Saville-Row to the house of his friend, Mr.

Peter Moore, in Great George-Street, Westminster. From thence, at one o'clock, the procession moved on foot to the Abbey, where, in the only spot in Poet's Corner that remained unoccupied, the body was interred; and the following simple inscription marks its resting-place:--

"RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN,

BORN, 1751,

DIED, 7th JULY, 1816.

THIS MARBLE IS THE TRIBUTE OF AN ATTACHED

FRIEND,

PETER MOORE."

Seldom has there been seen such an array of rank as graced this Funeral.

[Footnote: It was well remarked by a French Journal, in contrasting the penury of Sheridan's latter years with the splendor of his Funeral, that "France is the place for a man of letters to live in, and England the place for him to die in."] The Pall-bearers were the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, Earl Mulgrave, the Lord Bishop of London, Lord Holland, and Lord Spencer. Among the mourners were His Royal Highness the Duke of York, His Royal Highness the Duke of Suss.e.x, the Duke of Argyle, the Marquisses of Anglesea and Tavistock; the Earls of Thanet, Jersey, Harrington, Besborough, Mexborough, Rosslyn, and Yarmouth; Lords George Cavendish and Robert Spencer; Viscounts Sidmouth, Granville, and Duncannon; Lords Rivers, Erskine, and Lynedoch; the Lord Mayor; Right Hon. G. Canning and W. W. Pole, &c., &c. [Footnote: In the train of all this phalanx of Dukes, Marquisses, Earls, Viscounts, Barons, Honorables, and Right Honorables, Princes of the Blood Royal, and First Officers of the State, it was not a little interesting to see, walking humbly, side by side, the only two men whose friends.h.i.+p had not waited for the call of vanity to display itself--Dr. Bain and Mr. Rogers.]

Where were they all, these Royal and n.o.ble persons, who now crowded to "partake the gale" of Sheridan's glory--where were they all while any life remained in him? Where were they all, but a few weeks before, when their interposition might have saved his heart from breaking,--or when the zeal, now wasted on the grave, might have soothed and comforted the death-bed? This is a subject on which it is difficult to speak with patience. If the man was unworthy of the commonest offices of humanity while he lived, why all this parade of regret and homage over his tomb?

There appeared some verses at the time, which, however intemperate in their satire and careless in their style, came, evidently, warm from the heart of the writer, and contained sentiments to which, even in his cooler moments, he needs not hesitate to subscribe:--

"Oh it sickens the heart to see bosoms so hollow, And friends.h.i.+ps so false in the great and high-born;-- To think what a long line of t.i.tles may follow The relics of him who died, friendless and lorn!

"How proud they can press to the funeral array Of him whom they shunn'd, in his sickness and sorrow-- How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day, Whose pall shall be held up by n.o.bles to-morrow!"

The anonymous writer thus characterizes the talents of Sheridan:--

"Was this, then, the fate of that high-gifted man, The pride of the palace, the bower, and the hall-- The orator, dramatist, minstrel,--who ran Through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all.

"Whose mind was an essence, compounded, with art, From the finest and best of all other men's powers;-- Who rul'd, like a wizard, the world of the heart, And could call up its suns.h.i.+ne, or draw down its showers;--

"Whose humor, as gay as the fire-fly's light, Play'd round every subject, and shone, as it play'd;-- Whose wit, in the combat as gentle as bright, Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade;--

"Whose eloquence brightened whatever it tried, Whether reason or fancy, the gay or the grave, Was as rapid, as deep, and as brilliant a tide, As ever bore Freedom aloft on its wave!"

Though a perusal of the foregoing pages has, I trust, sufficiently furnished the reader with materials out of which to form his own estimate of the character of Sheridan, a few general remarks may, at parting, be allowed me--rather with a view to convey the impressions left upon myself, than with any presumptuous hope of influencing the deductions of others.

In considering the intellectual powers of this extraordinary man, the circ.u.mstance that first strikes us is the very scanty foundation of instruction, upon which he contrived to raise himself to such eminence both as a writer and a politician. It is true, in the line of authors.h.i.+p he pursued, erudition was not so much wanting; and his wit, like the laurel of Caesar, was leafy enough to hide any bareness in this respect.

In politics, too, he had the advantage of entering upon his career, at a time when habits of business and a knowledge of details were less looked for in public men than they are at present, and when the House of Commons was, for various reasons, a more open play-ground for eloquence and wit.

The great increase of public business, since then, has necessarily made a considerable change in this respect. Not only has the time of the Legislature become too precious to be wasted upon the mere gymnastics of rhetoric, but even those graces, with which true Oratory surrounds her statements, are but impatiently borne, where the statement itself is the primary and pressing object of the hearer. [Footnote: The new light that as been thrown on Political Science may also, perhaps, be a.s.signed as a reason for this evident revolution in Parliamentary taste. "Truth." says Lord Bacon, "is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the present world half so stately and daintily as candle-lights;"--and there can be little doubt that the clearer and important truths are made, the less controversy they will excite among fair and rational men, and the less pa.s.sion and fancy accordingly can eloquence infuse into the discussion of them. Mathematics have produced no quarrels among mankind--it is by the mysterious and the vague, that temper as well as imagination is most roused. In proof of this while the acknowledged clearness almost to truism, which the leading principles of Political Science have attained, has tended to simplify and tame down the activities of eloquence on that subject. There is still another arena left, in the science of the Law, where the same illumination of truth has not yet penetrated, and where Oratory will still continue to work her perplexing spells, till Common Sense and the plain principles of Utility shall find their way there also to weaken them.] Burke, we know, was, even for his own time, too much addicted to what falconers would call _raking_, or flying wide of his game; but there was hardly, perhaps, one among his great contemporaries, who, if beginning his career at present, would not find it, in some degree, necessary to conform his style to the taste for business and matter-of-fact that is prevalent. Mr. Pitt would be compelled to curtail the march of his sentences--Mr. Fox would learn to repeat himself less lavishly--nor would Mr. Sheridan venture to enliven a question of evidence by a long and pathetic appeal to Filial Piety.

In addition to this change in the character and taste of the House of Commons, which, while it has lowered the value of some of the qualifications possessed by Sheridan, has created a demand for others of a more useful but less splendid kind, which his education and habits of life would have rendered less easily attainable by him, we must take also into account the prodigious difference produced by the general movement, at present, of the whole civilized world towards knowledge;--a movement, which no public man, however great his natural talents, could now lag behind with impunity, and which requires nothing less than the versatile and _encyclopaedic_ powers of a Brougham to keep pace with it.

Another striking characteristic of Sheridan, as an orator and a writer, was the great degree of labor and preparation which his productions in both lines cost him. Of this the reader has seen some curious proofs in the preceding pages. Though the papers left behind by him have added nothing to the stock of his _chef-d'oeuvres_, they have given us an insight into his manner of producing his great works, which is, perhaps, the next most interesting thing to the works themselves. Though no new star has been discovered, the history of the formation of those we already possess, and of the gradual process by which they were brought "firm to retain their gathered beams," has, as in the instance of The School for Scandal, been most interestingly unfolded to us.

The same marks of labor are discoverable throughout the whole of his Parliamentary career. He never made a speech of any moment, of which the sketch, more or less detailed, has not been found among his papers--with the showier pa.s.sages generally written two or three times over, (often without any material change in their form,) upon small detached pieces of paper, or on cards. To such minutiae of effect did he attend, that I have found, in more than one instance, a memorandum made of the precise place in which the words "Good G.o.d, Mr. Speaker," were to be introduced. These preparatory sketches are continued down to his latest displays; and it is observable that when from the increased derangement of his affairs, he had no longer leisure or collectedness enough to prepare, he ceased to speak.

The only time he could have found for this pre-arrangement of his thoughts, (of which few, from the apparent idleness of his life, suspected him,) must have been during the many hours of the day that he remained in bed,--when, frequently, while the world gave him credit for being asleep, he was employed in laying the frame-work of his wit and eloquence for the evening.

That this habit of premeditation was not altogether owing to a want of quickness, appears from the power and liveliness of his replies in Parliament, and the vivacity of some of his retorts in conversation.

[Footnote: His best _bon mots_ are in the memory of every one. Among those less known, perhaps, is his answer to General T----, relative to some difference of opinion between them on the War in Spain:--"Well, T----, are you still on your high horse?"--"If I was on a horse before, I am upon an elephant now." "No, T----, you were upon an _a.s.s_ before, now you are upon a _mule_."

Some mention having been made in his presence of a Tax upon Milestones.

Sheridan said, "such a tax would be unconst.i.tutional,--as they were a race that could not meet to remonstrate."

As an instance of his humor, I have been told that, in some country-house where he was on a visit, an elderly maiden lady having set her heart on being his companion in a walk, he excused himself at first on account of the badness of the weather. Soon afterwards, however, the lady intercepted him in an attempt to escape without her:--"Well," she said, "it has cleared up, I see." "Why, yes," he answered, "it has cleared up enough for _one_, but not for _two_."] The labor, indeed, which he found necessary for his public displays, was, in a great degree, the combined effect of his ignorance and his taste;--the one rendering him fearful of committing himself on the _matter_ of his task, and the other making him fastidious and hesitating as to the _manner_ of it.

I cannot help thinking, however, that there must have been, also, a degree of natural slowness in the first movements of his mind upon any topic; and, that, like those animals which remain gazing upon their prey before they seize it, he found it necessary to look intently at his subject for some time, before he was able to make the last, quick spring that mastered it.

Among the proofs of this dependence of his fancy upon time and thought for its development, may be mentioned his familiar letters, as far as their fewness enables us to judge. Had his wit been a "fruit, that would fall without shaking," we should, in these communications at least, find some casual windfalls of it. But, from the want of sufficient time to search and cull, he seems to have given up, in despair, all thoughts of being lively in his letters; and accordingly, as the reader must have observed in the specimens that have been given, his compositions in this way are not only unenlivened by any excursions beyond the bounds of mere matter of fact, but, from the habit or necessity of taking a certain portion of time for correction, are singularly confused, disjointed, and inelegant in their style.

It is certain that even his _bon-mots_ in society were not always to be set down to the credit of the occasion; but that frequently, like skilful priests, he prepared the miracle of the moment before-hand.

Nothing, indeed, could be more remarkable than the patience and tact, with which he would wait through a whole evening for the exact moment, when the shaft which he had ready feathered, might be let fly with effect. There was no effort, either obvious or disguised, to lead to the subject--no "question detached, (as he himself expresses it,) to draw you into the ambuscade of his ready-made joke"--and, when the lucky moment did arrive, the natural and accidental manner in which he would let this treasured sentence fall from his lips, considerably added to the astonishment and the charm. So bright a thing, produced so easily, seemed like the delivery of Wieland's [Footnote: See Sotheby's admirable Translation of Oberon, Canto 9.] Amanda in a dream;--and his own apparent unconsciousness of the value of what he said might have deceived dull people into the idea that there was really nothing in it.

The consequence of this practice of waiting for the moment of effect was, (as all, who have been much in his society, must have observed,) that he would remain inert in conversation, and even taciturn, for hours, and then suddenly come out with some brilliant sally, which threw a light over the whole evening, and was carried away in the memories of all present. Nor must it be supposed that in the intervals, either before or after these flashes, he ceased to be agreeable; on the contrary, he had a grace and good nature in his manner, which gave a charm to even his most ordinary sayings,--and there was, besides, that ever-speaking l.u.s.tre in his eye, which made it impossible, even when he was silent, to forget who he was.

A curious instance of the care with which he treasured up the felicities of his wit, appears in the use he made of one of those epigrammatic pa.s.sages, which the reader may remember among the memorandums for his Comedy of Affectation, and which, in its first form, ran thus:--"He certainly has a great deal of fancy, and a very good memory; but, with a perverse ingenuity, he employs these qualities as no other person does--for he employs his fancy in his narratives, and keeps his recollection for his wit:--when he makes his jokes, you applaud the accuracy of his memory, and 'tis only when he states his facts that you admire the flights of his imagination." After many efforts to express this thought more concisely, and to reduce the language of it to that condensed and elastic state, in which alone it gives force to the projectiles of wit, he kept the pa.s.sage by him patiently some years,--till at length he found an opportunity of turning it to account, in a reply, I believe, to Mr. Dundas, in the House of Commons, when, with the most extemporaneous air, he brought it forth, in the following compact and pointed form:--"The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts."

His Political Character stands out so fully in these pages, that it is needless, by any comments, to attempt to raise it into stronger relief.

If to watch over the Rights of the Subject, and guard them against the encroachments of Power, be, even in safe and ordinary times, a task full of usefulness and honor, how much more glorious to have stood sentinel over the same sacred trust, through a period so trying as that with which Sheridan had to struggle--when Liberty itself had become suspected and unpopular--when Authority had succeeded in identifying patriotism with treason, and when the few remaining and deserted friends of Freedom were reduced to take their stand on a narrowing isthmus, between Anarchy on one side, and the angry incursions of Power on the other. How manfully he maintained his ground in a position so critical, the annals of England and of the Champions of her Const.i.tution will long testify. The truly national spirit, too, with which, when that struggle was past, and the dangers to liberty from without seemed greater than any from within, he forgot all past differences, in the one common cause of Englishmen, and, while others "gave but the _left_ hand to the Country," [Footnote: His own words] proffered her _both_ of his, stamped a seal of sincerity on his public conduct, which, in the eyes of all England, authenticated it as genuine patriotism.

To his own party, it is true, his conduct presented a very different phasis; and if implicit partisans.h.i.+p were the sole merit of a public man, his movements, at this and other junctures, were far too independent and unharnessed to lay claim to it. But, however useful may be the bond of Party, there are occasions that supersede it; and, in all such deviations from the fidelity which it enjoins, the two questions to be asked are--were they, as regarded the Public, right? were they, as regarded the individual himself, unpurchased? To the former question, in the instance of Sheridan, the whole country responded in the affirmative; and to the latter, his account with the Treasury, from first to last, is a sufficient answer.

Even, however, on the score of fidelity to Party, when we recollect that he more than once submitted to some of the worst martyrdoms which it imposes--that of sharing in the responsibility of opinions from which he dissented, and suffering by the ill consequences of measures against which he had protested;--when we call to mind, too, that during the Administration of Mr. Addington, though agreeing wholly with the Ministry and differing with the Whigs, he even then refused to profit by a position so favorable to his interests, and submitted, like certain religionists, from a point of honor, to suffer for a faith in which he did not believe--it seems impossible not to concede that even to the obligations of Party he was as faithful as could be expected from a spirit that so far outgrew its limits, and, in paying the tax of fidelity while he a.s.serted the freedom of dissent, showed that he could sacrifice every thing to it, except his opinion. Through all these occasional variations, too, he remained a genuine Whig to the last; and, as I have heard one of his own party happily express it, was "like pure gold, that changes color in the fire, but comes out unaltered."

The transaction in 1812, relative to the Household, was, as I have already said, the least defensible part of his public life. But it should be recollected hove broken he was, both in mind and body, at that period;--his resources from the Theatre at an end,--the shelter of Parliament about to be taken from over his head also,--and old age and sickness coming on, as every hope and comfort vanished. In that wreck of all around him, the friends.h.i.+p of Carlton-House was the last asylum left to his pride and his hope; and that even character itself should, in a too zealous moment, have been one of the sacrifices offered up at the shrine that protected him, is a subject more of deep regret than of wonder. The poet Cowley, in speaking of the unproductiveness of those pursuits connected with Wit and Fancy, says beautifully--

"Where such fairies once have danc'd, no gra.s.s will ever grow;"

but, unfortunately, thorns _will_ grow there;--and he who walks unsteadily among such thorns as now beset the once enchanted path of Sheridan, ought not, after all, to be very severely criticised.

His social qualities were, unluckily for himself but too attractive. In addition to his powers of conversation, there was a well-bred good-nature in his manner, as well as a deference to the remarks and opinions of others, the want of which very often, in distinguished wits, offends the self-love of their hearers, and makes even the dues of admiration that they levy a sort of "_Droit de Seigneur_," paid with unwillingness and distaste.

No one was so ready and cheerful in promoting the amus.e.m.e.nts of a country-house; and on a rural excursion he was always the soul of the party. His talent at dressing a little dish was often put in requisition on such occasions, and an Irish stew was that on which he particularly plumed himself. Some friends of his recall with delight a day of this kind which they pa.s.sed with him, when he made the whole party act over the Battle of the Pyramids on Marsden Moor, and ordered "Captain" Creevey and others upon various services, against the cows and donkeys entrenched in the ditches. Being of so playful a disposition himself, it was not wonderful that he should take such pleasure in the society of children. I have been told, as doubly characteristic of him, that he has often, at Mr. Monckton's, kept a chaise and four waiting half the day for him at the door, while he romped with the children.