Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/sheridan00olip_0 73.^0 vp tiPnglfgfj Mm of lUtterg EDITED BY JOHN MOKLEY SHERIDAN SHERIDAN BY MRS. OLIPHANT . Alar — ) ILontion MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1889 The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved. r o & First Edition 1883 Reprinted 1889 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY CHESTNUT HILL. MASS. APR - F '974 520162 NOTE. The most important and, on the whole, trustworthy life of Sheridan is that of Moore, published in 1825, nine years after Sheridan’s death, and founded upon the fullest information, with the help of all that Sheridan had left behind in the way of papers, and all that the family could furnish — along with Moore’s own personal recollections. It is not a very characteristic piece of work, and greatly dissatisfied the friends and lovers of Sheridan; but its authorities are unimpeachable. A previous Memoir by Dr. Watkins, the work of a political opponent and detractor, was without either this kind of authorisa- tion or any grace of personal knowledge, and has fallen into oblivion. Very different is the brief sketch by the well-known Professor Smyth, a most valuable and inter- esting contribution to the history of Sheridan. It con- cerns, indeed, only the later part of his life, but it is the most lifelike and, under many aspects, the most touch- ing contemporary portrait that has been made of him. With the professed intention of making up for the absence of character in Moore’s Life , a small volume of Sheridaniana was published the year after, which is full of amusing anecdotes, but little, if any, additional information. Other essays on the subject have been many. vi NOTE. Scarcely an edition of Sheridan’s plays has been published (and they are numberless) without a biographical notice, good or bad. The most noted of these is perhaps the Bio- graphical and Critical Sketch of Leigh Hunt, which does not, however, pretend to any new light, and is entirely unsympathetic. Much more recently a book of personal Recollections by an Octogenarian promised to afford new information ; but, except for the froth of certain dubious and not very savoury stories of the Prince Eegent period, failed to do so. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE His Youth 1 CHAPTER II. His First Dramatic Works 45 CHAPTER III. The “School for Scandal” 77 CHAPTER IY. Public Life 118 CHAPTER Y. Middle Age 152 CHAPTER YI. Decadence . .177 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. CHAPTER I. HIS YOUTH. Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was born in Dublin, in the month of September 1751, of a family which had already acquired some little distinction of a kind quite harmonious with the after fame of him who made its name so familiar to the world. The Sheridans were of that Anglo-Irish type which has given so much instruction and amusement to the world, and which has indeed in its wit and eccentricity so associated itself with the fame of its adopted country, that we might almost say it is from this peculiar variety of the race that we have all taken our idea of the national character. It will be a strange thing to discover, after so many years’ identification of the idiosyncrasy as Irish, that in reality it is a hybrid, and not native to the soil. The race of brilliant, witty, improvident, and reckless Irishmen whom we have all been taught to admire, excuse, love, and con- demn — the Goldsmiths, the Sheridans, and many more that will occur to the reader — all belong to this mingled blood. Many are more Irish, according to our present ■ J ' & B 2 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. understanding of the word, than their compatriots of a purer race ; but perhaps it is something of English energy which has brought them to the front, to the surface, with an indomitable life which misfortune and the most reckless defiance of all the laws of living never seem able to quench. Among these names, and not among the O’Con- nors and O’Briens, do we find all that is most characteristic, to modern ideas, in Irish manners and modes of thought. Nothing more distinct from the Anglo-Saxon type could be ; and yet it is separated from England in most cases only by an occasional mixture of Celtic blood — often by the simple fact of establishment for a few generations on another soil. How it is that the bog and the mountain, the softer climate, the salt breath of the Atlantic, should have wrought this change, is a mystery of Ethnology which we are quite incompetent to solve ; or whether it is mere external contact with an influence which the native gives forth without being himself strongly affected by it, we cannot tell. But the fact remains that the most characteristic Irishmen — those through whom we recog- nise the race — are as a matter of fact,, so far as race is concerned, not Irishmen at all. The same fact tells in America, where a new type of character seems to have been ingrafted upon the old by the changed conditions of so vast a continent and circumstances so peculiar. Even this, however, is not so remarkable in an altogether new society, as the absorption, by what was in reality an alien and a conquering race, of all that is most remarkable in the national character which they dominated and subdued — unless indeed we take refuge in the supposition, which does not seem untenable, that this character, which we have been so hasty in identifying with it, is not really I.] HIS YOUTH. 3 Irish at all ; and that we have not yet fathomed the natural spirit, overlaid by such a couche of superficial foreign brilliancy, of that more mystic race, full of tragic elements, of visionary faith and purity, of wild revenge and subtle cunning, which is in reality native to the old island of the saints. Certainly the race of Columba seems to have little in common with the race of Sheridan. The two immediate predecessors of the great dramatist are both highly characteristic figures, and thoroughly authentic, which is as much perhaps as any man of letters need care for. The first of these, Dr. Thomas Sheridan, Brinsley Sheridan’s grandfather, was a clergyman and schoolmaster in Dublin in the early part of the eighteenth century — by all reports an excellent scholar and able instructor, but extravagant and hot-headed after his kind. He was the intimate friend aud associate of Swift in his later years, and lent a little brightness to the great Dean’s society when he returned disappointed to his Irish preferment. Lord Orrery describes this genial but reckless parson in terms which are entirely harmonious with the after development of the family character : — “ He had that kind of good nature which absence of mind, indolence of body, and carelessness of fortune produce ; and although not over-strict in his own conduct, yet he took care of the morality of his scholars, whom he sent to the univer- sity remarkably well-grounded in all kinds of learning, and not ill-instructed in the social duties of life. He was slovenly, indigent, and cheerful. He knew books better than men, and he knew the value of money least of all,” The chief point in Dr. Sheridan’s career is of a tragi- comic character which still further increases the appro- 4 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. priateness of his appearance at the head of his descendants. By Swift’s influence he was appointed to a living in Cork, in addition to which he was made one of the Lord- Lieutenant’s chaplains, and thus put in the way of promotion generally. But on one unlucky Sunday the following incident occurred. It must be remembered that these were the early days of the Hanoverian succes- sion, and that Ireland had been the scene of the last struggle for the Stuarts. He was preaching in Cork, in the principal church of the town on the 1st of August, which was kept as the King’s birthday. “ Dr. Sheridan, after a very solemn preparation, and when he had drawn to himself the mute attention of his congrega- tion, slowly and emphatically delivered his text, Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. The congregation being divided in political opinions, gave to the text a decided political construction, and on the reverend preacher again reading the text with more marked emphasis became excited, and listened to the sermon with considerable restlessness and anxiety.” Another account describes this sermon as having been preached before the Lord-Lieutenant himself, an honour for which the preacher was not prepared, and which confused him so much that he snatched up the first ser- mon that came to hand, innocent of all political intention, as well as of the date which gave such piquancy to his text. But whatever the cause, the effect was disastrous. He “ shot his fortune dead by chance-medley ” with this single text. He lost his chaplaincy, and is even said to have been forbidden the viceregal court, and all the ways of promotion were closed to him for ever. But his spirit was not broken by his evil luck. “ Still he remained a punster, a quibbler, a fiddler, and a wit. Not a day I.] HIS YOUTH. 5 passed without a rebus, an anagram, or a madrigal. His pen and his fiddle were constantly in motion.” He had “such a ready wit and flow of humour that it was impos- sible for any, even the most splenetic man not to be cheerful in his company.” “ In the invitations sent to the Dean, Sheridan was always included ; nor was Swift to be seen in perfect good humour unless when he made part of the company.” Nothing could be more con- genial to the name of Sheridan than the description of this lighthearted and easy-minded clerical humorist, whose wit no doubt flashed like lightning about all the follies of the mimic court which had cast him out, and whose jovial hand-to-mouth existence had all that acci- dentalness and mixture of extravagance and penury which is the natural atmosphere of such reckless souls. It is even said that Swift made use of his abilities and appropriated his wit : the reader must judge for him- self whether the Dean had any need of thieving in that particular. Dr. Sheridan’s son, Thomas Sheridan, was a very different man. He was very young when he was left to make his way in the world for himself ; he had been designed, it would appear, to be a schoolmaster like his father ; but the stage has always had an attraction for those whose associations are connected with that more serious stage, the pulpit, and Thomas Sheridan became an actor. He is the author of a life of Swift, said to be “pompous and dull,” — qualities which seem to have mingled oddly in his own character with the lighthearted recklessness of his race. His success on the stage was not so great as was his popularity as a teacher of elocu- tion, an art for which he seems to have conceived an 6 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [CHAP. almost fanatical enthusiasm. Considering oratory, not without reason, as the master of all arts, he spent a great part of his life in eager efforts to form a school for its study, after a method of his own. This was not a suc- cessful project, nor, according to the little gleam of light thrown upon his system by Dr. Parr, does it seem to have been a very elevated one. “One of Bichard’s sisters now and then visited Harrow,” he says, “ and well do I remember that in the house where I lodged she triumphantly repeated Dryden’s ode upon St. Cecilia’s Day, according to the instruction given her by her father. Take a sample : — ‘ None but the brave, None but the brave , None but the brave deserve the fair.’ ” Thomas Sheridan, however, was not without apprecia- tion as an actor, and, like every ambitious player of the time, had his hopes of rivalling Garrick, and was fondly considered by his friends to be worthy comparison with that king of actors. He married a lady who held no inconsiderable place in the light literature of the time, which was little, as yet, invaded by feminine adventure — the author of a novel called Sidney Biddulpli and of various plays. And there is a certain reflection of the same kind of friendship which existed between Swift and the elder Sheridan in Boswell’s description, in his Life of Johnson , of the loss his great friend had sustained through a quarrel with Thomas Sheridan “ of one of his most agree- able resources for amusement in his lonely evenings.” It would appear that at this time (1763) Sheridan and his wife were settled in London. I.] HIS YOUTH. 7 “ Sheridan’s well-informed, animated, and bustling mind never suffered conversation to stagnate,” Boswell adds, “ and Mrs. Sheridan was a most agreeable companion to an intel- lectual man. She was sensible, ingenious, unassuming, yet communicative. I recollect with satisfaction many pleasing hours which I passed with her under the hospitable roof of her husband, who was to me a very kind friend. Her novel entitled Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidduljph contains an excellent moral, while it inculcates a future state of retribution ; and what it teaches is impressed upon the mind by a series of as deep distresses as can afflict humanity in the amiable and pious heroine. . . . Johnson paid her this high compliment upon it : ‘ I know not, madam, that you have a right upon high principles to make your readers suffer so much.’ ” The cause of Johnson’s quarrel with Sheridan is said to have been some slighting words reported to the latter, which Johnson had let fall when he heard that Sheridan had received a pension of £200 a year from Government. 4 ‘What ! have they given him a pension 1 ? then it is time for me to give up mine ” — a not unnatural cause of offence, and all the more so that Sheridan flattered him- self he had, by his interest with certain members of the ministry, who had been his pupils, helped to procure his pension for Johnson himself. These were the palmy days of the Sheridan family. Their children, of whom Richard was the third, had been born in Dublin, where the two little boys, Richard and his elder brother Charles, began their education under the charge of a schoolmaster named Whyte, to whom they were committed with a despairing letter from their mother, who evidently had found the task of their educa- tion too much for her. Perhaps Mrs. Sheridan, in an age of epigrams, was not above the pleasure, so seductive to all who possess the gift, of writing a clever letter. She 8 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. tells the schoolmaster that the little pupils she is sending him will be his tutors in the excellent quality of patience. “ I have hitherto been their only instructor,” she says, “ and they have sufficiently exercised mine, for two such impenetrable dunces I never met with.” This is the first certificate with which the future wit and dramatist appeared before the world. When the parents went to London in 1762, the boys naturally accompanied them. And this being a time of prosperity, when Thomas Sheridan had Cabinet Ministers for his pupils, and inte- rest enough to help the great man of letters of the age to a pension, it is not to be wondered if that hope which never springs eternal in any human breast so warmly as in that of a man who lives by his wits, and never knows what the morrow may bring forth, should have so encouraged the vivacious Irishman as to induce him to send his boys to Harrow, proud to give them the best of education, and opportunity of making friends for them- selves. His pension, his pupils, his acting, his wife’s literary gains, all conjoined to give a promise of pros- perity. When his friends discussed him behind his back, it is true they were not very favourable to him. “ There is to be seen in Sheridan something to reprehend, and everything to laugh at,” says Johnson, in his “big bow-wow style;” “but, sir, he is not a bad man. No, sir : were mankind to be divided into good and bad, he would stand considerably within the ranks of the good.” The same authority said of him that though he could “ exhibit no character,” yet he excelled in “ plain decla- mation”; and he was evidently received in very good society, and was hospitable and entertained his friends, as it was his nature to do. Evidently, too, he had no I.] HIS YOUTH. 9 small opinion of himself. It is from Johnson's own mouth that the following anecdote at once of his liber- ality and presumption is derived. It does not show his critic, perhaps, in a more favourable light. “Sheridan is a wonderful admirer of the tragedy of Douglas , and presented its author with a gold medal. Some years ago, at a coffee-house in Oxford, I called to him — ‘ Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Sheridan ! how came you to give a gold medal to Home for writing that horrid play ? 9 This you see was wanton and insolent : but I meant to be wanton and insolent. A medal has no value but as a stamp of merit, and was Sheridan to assume to himself the right of giving that stamp ? If Sheridan was magnificent enough to bestow a gold medal as an honorary mark of dramatic merit, he should have re- quested one of the Universities to choose the person on whom it should be conferred. Sheridan had no right to give a stamp of merit ; it was counterfeiting Apollo's coin.” The Irishman's vanity, prodigality, and hasty assump- tion of an importance to which he had no right could scarcely be better exemplified — nor, perhaps, the reader will say, the privileged arrogance of the great critic. It is more easy to condone the careless extravagance of the one than the deliberate insolence of the other. The comment, however, is just enough ; and so, perhaps, was his description of the Irishman’s attempt to improve the elocution of his contemporaries. “ What influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this great country by his narrow exertions 1” asks the great lexico- grapher. “ Sir, it is burning a candle at Dover to show light at Calais." But when Johnson says, “ Sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull : but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in nature," — we acknow- 10 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. ledge the wit, but doubt the fact. Thomas Sheridan very likely wanted humour, and was unable to perceive when he made himself ridiculous, as in the case of the medal ; but we want a great deal more evidence to induce us to believe that the son of the jovial Dublin priest, and the father of Sheridan the great, could have been dull. He was very busy — “bustling,” as Boswell calls him, his schemes going to his head, his vanity and enthusiasm combined making him feel himself an unappreciated reformer — a prophet thrown away upon an ungrateful age. But stupidity had nothing to do with his follies. He was “a wrong-headed whimsical man,” Dr. Parr tells us, but adds, “ I respected him, and he really liked me and did me some important services.” “ I once or twice met his (Richard Sheridan’s) mother : she was quite celes- tial.” Such are the testimonies of their contemporaries. It was not long, however, that the pair were able to remain in London. There is a whimsical indication of the state of distress into which Thomas Sheridan soon fell in the mention by Boswell of “the extraordinary attention in his own country ” with which he had been “honoured,” by having had “an exception made in his favour in an Irish Act of Parliament concerning insolvent debtors.” “Thus to be singled out,” says Johnson, “by Legislature as an object of public consideration and kindness is a proof of no common merit.” It was a melancholy kind of proof, however, and one which few would choose to be gratified by. The family went to France, leaving their boys at Harrow, scraping together apparently as much as would pay their expenses there — no small burden upon a struggling man. And at Blois, in 176G, Mrs. Sheridan died. “ She appears,” says Moore, I-] HIS YOUTH. 11 “to have been one of those rare women who, united to men of more pretensions but less real intellect than themselves, meekly conceal this superiority even from their own hearts, and pass their lives without a remon- strance or murmur in gently endeavouring to repair those evils which the indiscretion or vanity of their partners have brought upon them.” Except that she found him at seven an impenetrable dunce, there is no record of any tie of sympathy existing between Mrs. Sheridan and her brilliant boy. He had not perhaps, indeed, ever appeared in this character during his mother’s lifetime. At Harrow he made but an unsatisfactory appearance. “ There was little in his boyhood worth communication,” says Dr. Parr, whose long letter on the subject all Sheridan’s biographers quote; “he was inferior to many of his schoolfellows in the ordinary business of a school, and I do not remember any one instance in which he dis- tinguished himself by Latin or English composition either in prose or verse.” This is curious enough; but it is not impossible that the wayward boy, if he did adventure himself in verse, would think it best to keep his youthful compositions sacred from a master’s eye. Verse writers, both in the dead languages and in the living, flourished at Harrow in those days of whom no one has heard since, “ but Eichard Sheridan aspired to no rivalry with either of them.” Notwithstanding this absence of all the outward show of talent, Parr was not a man to remain unconscious of the glimmer of genius in the Irish boy’s bright eyes. When he found that Dick would not construe as he ought, he laid plans to take him with craft, and “ did not fail to probe and tease him.” 12 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. “ I stated his case with great good humour to the upper master, who was one of the best tempered men in the world : and it was agreed between us that Richard should be called oftener and worked* more severely. The varlet was not suf- fered to stand up in his place, but was summoned to take his station near the master’s table, where the voice of no prompter could reach him : and in this defenceless condition he was so harassed that he at last gathered up some grammatical rules and prepared himself for his lessons. While this tor- menting process was inflicted upon him, I now and then upbraided him. But you will take notice that he did not incur any corporal punishment for his idleness : his industry was just sufficient to keep him from disgrace. All the while Sumner and I saw in him vestiges of a superior intellect. His eye, his countenance, his general manner, were striking ; his answers to any common question were prompt and acute. We knew the esteem and even admiration which somehow or other all his schoolfellows felt for him. He was mischievous enough, but his pranks were accompanied by a sort of vivacity and cheerfulness which delighted Sumner and my- self. I had much talk with him about his apple loft, for the supply of which all the gardens in the neighbourhood were taxed, and some of the lower boys were employed to furnish it. I threatened, but without asperity, to trace the depredators through his associates up to the leader. He with perfect good humour set me at defiance, and I never could bring home the charge to him. All boys and all masters were pleased with him.” The amount of “ good humour ” in this sketch is enough to make the Harrow of last century look like a scholastic paradise ; and the humorous torture to which young Sheridan was subjected shows a high sense of the appropriate either in “the best tempered man in the world,’’ or in the learned doctor who loved to set forth his own doings and judgment in the best light, and had the advantage of telling his story after events had shown what the pupil was. Parr, however, modestly I.] HIS YOUTH. 13 disowns the credit of having developed the intellec- tual powers of Sheridan, and neither were they stimu- lated into literary effort by Sumner, the head-master of Harrow, who was a friend of his father, and had there- fore additional opportunities of knowing the boy’s capa- bilities. “We both of us discovered great talents which neither of us were capable of calling into action while Sheridan was a schoolboy,” Parr says. In short, it is evident that the boy, always popular and pleasant, amusing and attracting his schoolfellows, and on per- fectly amicable terms with the masters, even when he was doubtful about his lesson, took no trouble what- ever with his work, and cared nothing for the honours of school. He kept himself afloat, and that was all. His sins were not grievous in any way. He had it not in his power to be extravagant, for Thomas Sheridan in his bankrupt condition must have had hard enough ado to keep his boys at Harrow at all. But it is very clear that neither scholarship nor laborious mental exertion of any kind tempted him. He took the world lightly and gaily, and enjoyed his schoolboy years all the more that there was nothing of the struggle of young ambition in them. When his family came back from France shortly after the mother’s death, it is with a little gush of enthusiasm that his sister describes her first meet- ing after long separation with the delightful brother whom she had half forgotten, and who appears like a young hero in all the early bloom of seventeen, with his Irish charm and his Harrow breeding, to the eyes of the little girl, accustomed no doubt to shabby enough gentlemen in the cheap retreats of English poverty in France. 14 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. “ He was handsome, not merely in the eyes of a partial sister, hut generally allowed to be so. His cheeks had the glow of health, his eyes — the finest in the world — the bril- liancy of genius, and were soft as a tender and affectionate heart could render them. The same playful fancy, the same sterling and innoxious wit that was shown afterwards in his writings, cheered and delighted the family circle. I admired — I almost adored him ! ” No doubt the handsome merry boy was a delightful novelty in the struggling family, where even the girls were taught to mouth verses, and the elder brother had begun to accompany his father on his half-vagabond career as a lecturer, to give examples of the system of elocution upon which he had concentrated all his faculties. After a short stay in London the family went to Bath, where for a time they settled, the place in its high days of fashion being propitious to all the arts. The father, seldom at home, lived a hard enough life, lecturing, teaching, sometimes playing, pursuing his favourite object as hotly as was practicable through all the struggles necessary to get a living, such as it was, now abundant, now meagre, for his family ; while the girls and boys lived a sort of hap-hazard existence in the gay city, getting what amusement they could — motherless, and left to their own resources, yet finding society of a suf- ficiently exciting kind among the visitors with whom the town overflowed, and the artist-folk who entertained them. Here, while Charles worked with his father, Richard would seem to have done nothing at all, but doubtless strolled about the fashionable promenade among the bucks and beaux, and heard all that was going on, and saw the scandal-makers nod their heads together, and the officers now and then arrange a duel, and Lydia HIS YOUTH. 15 r.] Languish ransack the circulating libraries. They were all about in those lively streets, Mrs. Malaprop deranging her epitaphs, and Sir Lucius with his pistols always ready, and the little waiting-maid tripping about the scene with Delia’s letters and Broken Vows under her arm. The young gentleman swaggering among them saw everything without knowing it, and remembered those familiar figures when the time came : but in the mean- while did nothing, living pleasantly with his young sisters, no doubt very kind to them, and spending all the money the girls could spare out of their little housekeeping, and falling in love, the most natural amusement of all. It is wrong, however, to say that he was entirely idle. At Harrow he had formed an intimate friend- ship with a youth more ambitious than himself, the Nathaniel Halhed whom Dr. Parr chronicles as having “ written well in Latin and Greek.” With this young man Sheridan entered into a sort of literary partnership both in classical translation and dramatic composition. Their first attempt was a farce called Jupiter; the subject being the story of Ixion, in which, curiously enough, the after-treatment of the Critic is shadowed forth in various points, the little drama being in the form of a rehearsal before a tribunal not unlike that to which Mr. Puff submits his immortal tragedy. Simile, the supposed author, indeed says one or two things which are scarcely unworthy of Puff. The following passage occurs in a scene in which he is explaining to his critics the new fashion of composition, how the music is made first, and “the sense” afterwards (a process no ways astonishing to the present generation), and how “ a com- plete set of scenes from Italy ” is the first framework of 16 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. the play which “some ingenious hand” writes up to. “ By this method,” says one of the wondering commen- tators, “ you must often commit blunders ? ” “ Simile. Blunders ! to be sure I must, but I always could get myself out of them again. Why, I’ll tell you an instance of it. You must know I was once a journeyman sonnet- writer to Signor Squaltini. Now, his method, when seized with the furor harmonious , was constantly to make me sit by his side, while he was thrumming on his harpsichord, in order to make extempore verses to whatever air he should beat out to his liking. I remember one morning as he was in this situation — thrum , thrum , thrum (moving his fingers as if beating on the harpsichord), striking out something prodigiously great as he thought — ‘ Hah ! ’ said he ; * hah ! Mr. Simile — thrum, thrum, thrum — by gar, him is vary fine — write me some words directly.’ I durst not interrupt him to ask on what subject, so instantly began to describe a fine morning. Calm was the land and calm the skies, And calm the heaven’s dome serene, Hush’d was the gale and husb’d the breeze, And not a vapour to be seen. I sang it to his notes. ‘ Hah ! upon my word, vary pritt — thrum, thrum, thrum. Stay, stay ! Now, upon my word, here it must be an adagio. Thrum, thrum, thrum. Oh ! let it be an Ode to Melancholy.’ Monop. The devil ! then you were puzzled sure Sim. Not in the least ! I brought in a cloud in the next stanza, and matters, you see, came about at once. Monop. An excellent transition. O'Cd. Vastly ingenious, indeed. Sim. Was it not, very ? it required a little command — a little presence of mind.” When the rehearsal begins, the resemblance is still more perfect, though there is no reproduction either of the plot or characters introduced. We are not told how much share Halhed had in the composition : it was he I.] HIS YOUTH. 17 who furnished the skeleton of the play, but it is scarcely possible that such a scene as the above could be from any hand but Sheridan’s. This youthful effort was never finished. It was to have brought in a sum of money, which they both wanted much, to the young authors : “The thoughts,” Halhed says, “of <£200 shared between us are enough to bring the water into one’s eyes.” Hal- hed, then at Oxford, wanted the money above all things to enable him to pay a visit to Bath, where lived the young lady whom all these young men adored ; and young Sheridan, who can doubt, required it for a thousand uses. But they were both at an age when a great part of plea- sure lies in the planning, and when the mind is easily diverted to another and another new beginning. A pub- lication of the Tatter type was the next project, to be called (one does not know why) Reman' s Miscellany ; but this never went further than a part composition of the first number, which is somewhat feeble and flippant, as the monologue of an essayist of that old-fashioned type, if not under any special inspiration, is apt to be. Finally the young men succeeded in producing a volume of so- called translations from a dubious Latin author called Aristaenetus, of whom no one knows much, and on whom at least it was very easy for them to father the light and frothy verses, which no one was likely to seek for in the original — if an original existed. Their preface favours the idea that the whole business was a literary hoax by which they did not even expect their readers to be taken in. Aristcenetus got itself published, the age being fond of classics rubbed down into modern verse, but does not seem to have done any more. The two young men were in hopes that Sumner, their old master, “ and the wise few of their C 18 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. acquaintance/’ would talk about the book, and perhaps discover the joint authorship, and help them to fame and profit. But these hopes were not realised, as indeed they did not in the least deserve to be. They were flattered by being told that Johnson was supposed to be the author, which must have been a friendly invention ; and Halhed tried to believe that “ everybody had read the book,” and that the second part, vaguely promised in the preface on condition of the success of the first, “ should be published immediately, being of opinion that the readers of the first volume would be sure to purchase the second, and that the publication of the second would put it into the heads of others to buy the first,” — a truly business-like argument, which, however, did not convince the book- sellers. It seems a pity to burden the collection of Sheri- dan’s works now with these unprofitable verses, which were never acknowledged, and did not even procure for young Halhed, who wanted it so much, the happiness of a visit to Bath, or a sight of the object of his boyish adoration. It is the presence of this lady which gives interest and romance to the early chapter of Sheridan’s life, and the record cannot go further without bringing her in. There flourished at Bath in those days a family called by Dr. Burney, in his History of Music , a nest of nightingales, — the family of Linley, the composer, who had been for years at the head of musical enterprise in the district, the favourite singing master, the conductor of all the concerts, a man whom Bath delighted to honour, and whose fame spread over England by means of the lean monde which took the waters in that city of pleasure. The position that such a man takes in a provincial town has become once more so much like what it was in the latter half of I’l HIS YOUTH. 19 last century, when Handel was at Windsor and Eng- land in one of its musical periods, that it will be easily realised by the reader. The brevet rank, revocable at the pleasure of society, which the musical family obtains, its admission among all the fine people, the price it has to pay for its elevation, and the vain hope that it is prized for its own personal qualities, which flatters it while in its prime of attraction, — the apparent equality, nay, almost superiority, of the triumphant musicians among their pat- rons, who yet never forget the real difference between them, and whose homage is often little more than a form of insult, — give a dramatic interest to the group such as few possess. This was the position held by the Linleys among the fine people of Bath. There were beautiful girls in the musician’s house, which was always open, hospitable, and bright, and where a perpetual flutter of admiration and compliments, half affectionate, half humorous, the enthusiasm of a coterie, was in the ears of the young crea- tures in all their early essays in art. Men of wealth and sometimes of rank, the gentlemen of the neighbourhood, the officers and the wits, — all friends of Linley, and glad to invite him to club and coffee-house and mess-room, — were always about to furnish escorts and a flattering train wherever the young singers went. The eldest daughter, Elizabeth — or Eliza, as it was the fashion of the time to shorten and vulgarise that beautiful name — was a lovely girl of sixteen when the young Sheridans became known about Bath. Her voice was as lovely as her face, and she was the prima donna of her father’s concerts, going with him to sing at festivals in other cathedral towns, and often to Oxford, where she had turned the head of young Halhed and of many an undergraduate 20 KICIIARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. beside. In Bath the young men were all at her feet, and not only the young men, as was natural, but the elder and less innocent members of society. That the musician and his wife might have entertained hopes or even allowed themselves to be betrayed into not entirely unjustifiable schemings to marry their beautiful child to somebody who would raise her into a higher sphere, may well be believed. One such plan indeed it is evident did exist, which the poor girl herself foiled by making an artless confession to the man whom her parents had determined she should marry — “ Mr. Long, an old gentleman of considerable fortune/’ who had the magnanimity to take upon himself the burden of breaking the engagement, and closed the indignant father’s mouth by settling a little fortune of £3000 upon the young lady. A danger escaped in this way, however, points to many other pitfalls among which her young feet had to tread, and one at least of a far more alarming kind has secured for itself a lasting place in her future husband’s history. There is a curious letter 1 extant, which is printed in all Sheridan’s biographies, and in which Eliza gives an ac- count to a dear friend and confidant of the toils woven around her by one of her father’s visitors, a certain Captain Matthews, who, though a married man and much older than herself, had beguiled the simple girl into a prolonged and clandestine sentimental correspondence. The sophisticated reader, glancing at this quaint pro- duction, without thought of the circumstances or the 1 Mrs. Norton in a preliminary sketch to an intended history of the Sheridans, never written, denies the authenticity of this letter with a somewhat ill-directed family pride : but no doubt has been thrown upon it by any of Sheridan’s biographers. r.] HIS YOUTH. 21 person, would probably conclude that there was harm in it, which it is very certain from all that is said and done besides did not exist ; but the girl in her innocence evi- dently felt that the stolen intercourse, the whisperings aside, the man’s protestations of fondness, and despair if she withdrew from him, and her own half-flattered half- frightened attraction towards him, were positive guilt. The letter, indeed, is Lydia Languish from beginning to end, — the Lydia Languish of real life without any genius to trim her utterance into just as much as is needful and characteristic, — and in consequence is somewhat tedious, long-winded, and confused; but her style, something between Clarissa Harlowe and Julia Mannering, is quite appropriate at once to the revelation and the period. The affair to which her letter refers has occupied far too much space, we think, in the story of Sheridan’s life, yet it is a curious exposition of the time, the class, and the locality. The Maid of Bath, as she was called, had many adorers. Young Halhed, young Charles Sheridan — neither of them with much to offer — followed her steps wherever she moved, and applauded to the echo every note she sang, as did many another adorer ; while within the busy and full house the middle-aged visitor, her father’s so-called friend, had a hundred opportunities for a whispered word, a stolen caress, half permissible for the sake of old friendship, and because no doubt he had known her from a child. But even at sixteen the eyes of a girl accustomed to so many tributes would soon be opened, and the poor Lydia became alarmed by the warmth of her half-paternal lover and by the secrecy of his communications. This was her position at the time the Sheridans appear upon the scene. 22 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. The new influence immediately began to tell. Miss Linley and Miss Sheridan became devoted friends — and the two brothers “ on our first acquaintance both pro- fessed to love me.” She gave them no hope “that I should ever look upon them in any other light than as brothers of my friend but yet “ preferred the youngest” as “by far the most agreeable in person, beloved by every one, and greatly respected by all the better sort of people.” Richard Sheridan, it would seem, immediately assumed the position of the young lady’s secret guardian. He made friends with Matthews, became even intimate with him, and thus discovered the villainous designs which he entertained ; while, on the other hand, he obtained the confidence of the lady, and became her chief adviser. It was a curious position for a young man — but he was very young, very poor, without any prospects that could justify him in entering the lists on his own account; and while he probably succeeded in convincing Miss Linley that his love for her was subdued into friendship, he seems to have been able to keep his secret from all his competitors, and not to have been suspected by any of them. In the heat of the persecution by Matthews, who resisted all her attempts to shake off his society, frighten- ing her by such old-fashioned expedients as threatening his own life, and declaring that he could not live without seeing her — incessant consultations were necessary with the young champion who knew the secret, and whose advice and countenance were continually appealed to. No doubt they met daily in the ordinary course at each other’s houses ; but romance made it desirable that they should find a secret spot where Eliza could confide her troubles to Richard, and he warn her and encourage her in her I.] HIS YOUTH. 23 resistance. “ A grotto in Sydney Gardens ” is reported to have been the scene of these meetings. On one occa- sion the anxious adviser must have urged his warnings too far, or insisted too warmly upon the danger of her position, for she left him angrily, resenting his interfer- ence : and this was the occasion of the verses addressed to Delia which he left upon the seat of the grotto for her, with an apparently well-justified but somewhat rash con- fidence that they would fall into no other hands. In this, after celebrating the “ moss-covered grotto of stone ” and the dew-dripping willow that overshadows it, he unfolds the situation as follows : — “ — this is the grotto where Delia reclined, As late I in secret her confidence sought ; And this is the tree kept her safe from the wind, As blushing she heard the grave lesson I taught. “ Then tell me thou grotto of moss-covered stone, And tell me thou willow with leaves dripping dew, Did Delia seem vexed when Horatio was gone, And did she confess her resentment to you ? “ Methinks now each bough as you’re waving it tries To whisper a cause for the sorrow I feel, To hint how she frowned when I dared to advise, And sigh’d when she saw that I did it with zeal. “ True, true, silly leaves, so she did I allow ; She frowned, but no rage in her looks did I see ; She frowned, but reflection had clouded her brow, She sigh’d, but perhaps ’twas in pity for me. “For well did she know that my heart meant no wrong, It sank at the thought but of giving her pain ; But trusted its task to a faltering tongue, Which err’d from the feelings it would not explain. 24 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. “Yet oh, if indeed I’ve offended the maid, If Delia my humble monition refuse, — Sweet willow, the next time she visits thy shade, Fan gently her bosom and plead its excuse. “ And thou, stony grot, in thy arch may’st preserve Two lingering drops of the night-fallen, dew ; And just let them fall at her feet, and they’ll serve As tears of my sorrow entrusted to you.” This is not very fine poetry ; but it is very instructive as to the curious complication of affairs. It would not have suited Captain Absolute to play such a part ; but Lydia Languish, amid all the real seriousness of the dilemma, no doubt would have derived a certain comfort from the romantic circumstances altogether — the villain, on one hand, threatening to lay his death at her door ; the modest self-suppressed adorer, on the other, devoting himself to her service; the long confidential conferences in the dark and damp little shelter behind the willow; the verses left on the seat; — nothing could have been more delightful t$ a romantic imagination. But the excitement heightened as time went on ; and the poor girl was so harassed and persecuted by the man whose suit was a scandal, that she tried at last, she tells us, to take poison as the only way of escape for her, searching for and finding in Miss Sheridan’s room a small phial of laudanum, which had been used for an aching tooth, and which was too small apparently to do any harm. After this tremendous evidence of her miserable state, Sheridan, who would seem to have confined himself hitherto to warnings and hints, now disclosed the full turpitude of Matthews’ intentions, and showed her a letter in which the villain announced that he had determined to proceed i.] HIS YOUTH. 25 to strong measures, and if he could not overcome her by pleadings meant to carry her off by force. “ The moment I read this horrid letter I fainted, and it was some time before I could recover my senses sufficiently to thank Mr. Sheridan for opening my eyes.” But the question now was, What was to be done For the poor girl seems to have had no confidence in her father’s power of protect- ing her, and probably knew the inexpediency of embroil- ing him with his patrons. The two young creatures laid their foolish heads together in this crisis of fate — the girl thoroughly frightened, the youth full of chivalrous determination to protect her, and doubtless not without a hotheaded young lover’s hope to turn it to his own advantage. He proposed that she should fly to France, and there take refuge in a convent till the danger should be over. His own family had left France only a few years before, and the sister who was Eliza’s friend would recommend her to the kind nuns at St. Quentin, where she had herself been brought up. “He would go with me to protect me, and after he had seen me settled he would return to England and place my conduct in such a light that the world would applaud and not condemn me.” Such was the wonderful expedient by which the dif- ficulties of this terrible crisis were surmounted. Her mother was ill and the house in great disorder, and under cover of the accidental commotion young Sheridan handed the agitated girl into a chair, — his sister, who was in the secret, and, no doubt, in high excitement too, coming secretly to help her to pack up her clothes ; and that night they posted off to London. “ Sheridan had engaged the wife of one of his servants to go with me as 26 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. a maid without my knowledge. You may imagine how pleased I was with his delicate behaviour.” This last particular reaches the very heights of chivalry, for, no doubt, it must have been quite a different matter to the impassioned boy to conduct the flight, with a common- place matron seated in his post-chaise between him and his beautiful Delia, instead of the tete-brtete which he might so easily have secured. Next day they crossed the Channel to the little sandy port of Dunkirk and were safe. And it would seem that the rash young lover was very honest and really meant to carry out this mad project; for she did eventually reach her convent, whither he attended her with punctilious respect. But when they were fairly launched upon their adventurous career, either common sense or discreet acquaintances soon made it apparent to the young man that a youth and a maiden, however virtuous, cannot rove about the world in this way without comment, and that there was but one thing to be done in the circumstances. Perhaps Miss Linley had begun to feel something more than the mere “ preference for the youngest,” which she had so calmly announced, or perhaps it was only the desperate nature of the cir- cumstances that made her yield. But however that may be, the two fugitives went through the ceremony of mar- riage at Calais, though they seem to have separated immediately afterwards, carrying out the high sentimental and Platonic romance to the end. It is a curious commentary, however, upon the prodi- gality of the penniless class to which Sheridan belonged, that he could manage to start off suddenly upon this journey out of Thomas Sheridan’s shifty household, where money was never abundant, a boy of twenty with nothing I.] HIS YOUTH. 27 of his own — hurrying up to London with post-horses, and hiring magnificently “ the wife of one of his servants ” to attend upon his love. The words suggest a retinue of retainers, and the journey itself would have taxed the resources of a youth much better endowed than Sheridan. Did he borrow, or run chivalrously into debt 1 ? or how did he manage it 'I His sister “ assisted them with money out of her little fund for house expenses,” but that would not go far. Perhaps the friend in London (a “ respectable brandy-merchant”) to whom he introduced Miss Linley as an heiress who had eloped with him, may have helped on such a warrant to furnish the funds. But there is no- thing more remarkable than the ease with which these impecunious gallants procure post-chaises, servants, and luxuries in those dashing days. The young men think nothing of a headlong journey from Bath to London and back again, which, notwithstanding all our increased facilities of locomotion, penniless youths of to-day would hesitate about. To be sure it is possible that credit was to be had at the livery -stables, whereas, fortunately, none is possible at the railway station. Post-horses seem to have been an affair of every day to the heroes of the Crescent and the Parade. Meanwhile everything was left in commotion at home. Charles Sheridan, the elder brother, had left Bath and gone to the country in such dejection, after Miss Linley ’s final refusal of his addresses, as became a sentimental lover. When Richard went off triumphant with the lady, his sisters were left alone in great excitement and agitation, and their landlord, thinking the girls required “ protection,” according to the language of the time, set out at break of day to bring back the rejected from his 28 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. retirement. The feelings of Charles on finding that his younger brother, whom even the girls did not know to be a lover of Miss Linley, had carried off the prize, may be imagined. But the occasion of the elopement, the design- ing villain of the piece, — the profligate whose pursuit had driven the lady to despair, — was furious. Miss Linley had no doubt left some explanation of the extraordinary step she was taking with her parents, and Sheridan appears to have taken the same precaution and disclosed the reasons which prompted her flight. When Matthews heard of this he published the following advertisement in a Bath newspaper. “ Mr. Richard S ****** * having attempted, in a letter left behind him for that purpose, to account for his scandalous method of running away from this place by insinua- tions derogatory to my character and that of a young lady innocent so far as relates to me or my knowledge ; since which he has neither taken any notice of letters, or even informed his own family of the place where he has hid him- self: I can no longer think he deserves the treatment of a gentleman, and therefore shall trouble myself no further about him than, in this public method, to post him as a L * * * and a treacherous S******** “ And as I am convinced there have been many malevolent incendiaries concerned in the propagation of this infamous lie, if any of them, unprotected by age, infirmities, or pro- fession, will dare to acknowledge the part they have acted, and affirm to what they have said of me, they may depend on receiving the proper reward of their villainy in the most public manner.” This fire-eating paragraph was signed with the writer’s name, and it may be imagined what a delightful commo- tion it made in such a metropolis of scandal and leisure, and with what excitement all the frequenters of the I.] HIS YOUTH. 29 pump-room and the assemblies looked for the next inci- dent. Some weeks elapsed before they were satisfied, but the following event was striking enough to content the most sensational imagination. It would seem to have been April before a clue was found to the fugitives, and Linley started at once from Bath to recover his daughter. He found her, to his great relief doubtless, in the house of an English doctor in Lisle, who had brought her there from her convent, and placed her under his wife’s care to be nursed when she was ill. Everything, it was evident, had been done in honour, and the musician seems to have been so thankful to find things no worse that he took the young people’s explanations in good part. He would even seem to have made some sort of condi- tional promise that she should no longer be compelled to perform in public after she had fulfilled existing en- gagements, and so brought her back peacefully to Bath. Richard, who in the meantime, in his letters home, had spoken of his bride as Miss L., announcing her settlement in her convent, without the slightest intimation of any claim on his part upon her, seems to have returned with them; but no one, not even Miss Linley’s father, was informed of the Calais marriage, which seems, in all good faith, to have been a form gone through in case any scandal should be raised, but at present meaning nothing more. And Bath, with all its scandal-mongers, at a period when the general imagination was far from delicate, seems to have accepted the escapade with a con- fidence in both the young people, and entire belief in their honour, which makes us think better both of the age and the town. We doubt whether such faith would be shown in the hero and heroine of a similar freak in our own day. 30 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. Young Sheridan, however, came home to no peaceable reception. He had to meet his indignant brother in the first place, and to settle the question raised by the in- sulting advertisement of Matthews, which naturally set his youthful blood boiling. Before his return to Bath he had seen this villain in London, who had the audacity to disclaim the advertisement and attribute it to Charles Sheridan — a suggestion which naturally brought the young man home furious. The trembling sisters, delighted to welcome Richard, and, eager to know all about his adven- ture, had their natural sentiments checked by the gloomy looks with which the brothers met; and went to bed reluctantly that first evening, hearing the young men’s voices high and angry, and anticipating with horror a quarrel between them. Next morning neither of them appeared. They had gone off again with those so-easily- obtained post-horses to London. A terrible time of waiting ensued ; the distracted girls ran to the Linleys, but found no information there. They expected nothing better than to hear of a duel between their brothers for the too-charming Eliza’s sake. Hitherto, all has been the genteelest of comedy in fine eighteenth-century style : the villain intriguing, the ardent young lover stealing the lady out of his clutches, and Lydia Languish herself not without a certain delight in the romance, notwithstanding all her flutterings : the post-chaise dashing through the night, the alarms of the voyage, the curious innocent delusion of the marriage, complaisant priest and homely confidant, and guardian- bridegroom with a soul above every ungenerous advan- tage. But the following act is wildly sensational. The account of the brawl that follows is given at length by I.] HIS YOUTH. 31 all Sheridan’s biographers. It is scarcely necessary to say that when the brothers, angry as both were, had mutually explained themselves, it was not to lift unnatural hands against each other that they sallied forth, while the girls lay listening and trembling upstairs, but to jump once more into a post-chaise, and rattle over the long levels of the Bath road to town through the dewy chill of a May night, which did nothing, however, towards cooling their hot blood. Before leaving Bath, Bichard had flashed forth a letter to the Master of the Ceremonies, informing him that Matthews’ conduct had been such that no verbal apology could now be accepted from him. The first step the hero took on arriving in London was to challenge the villain, who indeed would seem to have behaved as infamously as the most boldly-drawn villain on the stage could be represented as doing. And then comes a most curious scene. The gentlemen with their rapiers go out to the Park, walking out together about six in the evening, apparently a time when the Park was almost empty ; but on various pretences the offender de- clines to fight there, with an air of endeavouring to slip out of the risk altogether. After several attempts to persuade him to stand and draw, the party, growing more and more excited, at length go to a coffee-house, “The Castle Tavern, Henrietta Street” — having first called at two or three other places, where their heated looks would seem to have roused suspicion. Their march through the streets in the summer evening on this strange errand, each with his second, the very sword quivering at young Bichard’s side and the blood boiling in his veins, among all the peaceful groups streaming away from the Park, is wonderful to think of. When they got admittance at last to a RICHARD BRINSLEY SIIERIDAN. 32 [chap. private room in the tavern, the following scene occurs : — “ Mr. Ewart (the second of Sheridan) took lights up in his hand, and almost immediately on our entering the room we engaged. I struck Mr. Matthews’ point so much out of the line that I stepped up and caught hold of his wrist, or the hilt of his sword, while the point of mine was at his breast. You (the letter is addressed to the second on the other side) ran in and caught hold of my arm, exclaiming — ‘Don’t kill him !’ I struggled to disengage my arm, and said his sword was in my power. Mr. Matthews called out twice or thrice, ‘ I beg my life.’ You immediately said ‘ There ! he has begged his life, and now there is an end of it ; ’ and on Mr. Ewart’s saying that when his sword was in my power, as I attempted no more you should not have inter- fered, you replied that you were wrong, but that you had done it hastily and to prevent mischief — or words to that effect. Mr. Matthews then hinted that I was rather obliged to your interposition for the advantage : you declared that before you did so both the swords were in Mr. Sheridan’s power. Mr. Matthews still seemed resolved to give it another turn, and observed that he had never quitted his sword. Provoked at this I then swore (with too much heat, perhaps) that he should either give up his sword and I would break it, or go to his guard again. He refused — but on my persist- ing either gave it into my hand, or flung it on the table or the ground (which, I will not absolutely affirm). I broke it and flung the hilt to the other end of the room. He exclaimed at this. I took a mourning sword from Mr. Ewart, and, presenting him with mine, gave my honour that what had passed should never be mentioned by me, and he might now right himself again. He replied that he ‘ would never draw a sword against the man that had given him his life’ ; but on his still exclaiming against the indignity of breaking his sword (which he had brought upon himself), Mr. Ewart offered him the pistols, and some altercation passed between them. Mr. Matthews said that he could never show his face if it were known that his sword was broke — that such a thing had never been done — that it cancelled all obligations, etc. You seemed I.] HIS YOUTH. 33 to think it was wrong, and we both proposed that if he never misrepresented the affair it should not he mentioned by us. This was settled. I then asked Mr. Matthews, as he had expressed himself sensible of and shocked at the injustice and indignity he had done me by his advertisement, whether it did not occur to him that he owed me another satisfaction : and that as it was now in his power to do it without discredit, I supposed he would not hesitate. This he absolutely refused, unless conditionally. I insisted on it, and said I would not leave the room till it was settled. After much altercation, and with much ill grace, he gave the apology.” There could not be a more curious scene. The out- door duel is familiar enough both to fact and fiction; but the flash of the crossing swords, the sudden rush, the altercations of the angry group, the sullen submission of the disarmed bully, going on by the light of the flaring candles, in an inn-parlour, while the ordinary bustle of the tavern proceeded peacefully below, is as strange a picture as we can remember. Sheridan’s account of the circumstances was made in answer to another, which stated them, as he asserts, falsely. The brothers re- turned home on Tuesday morning (they had left Bath on Saturday night), “much fatigued, not having been in bed since they left home,” with Matthews’ apology, and triumph in their hearts, to the great consolation and relief of the anxious girls. But their triumph was not to be so easy. The circumstances of the duel oozed out, as most things do, and Matthews, stung by shame, challenged Sheridan again, choosing pistols as the weapons, prior to swords , “from a conviction that Mr. Sheridan would run in on him and an ungentlemanly scuffle probably be the consequence.” This presentiment very evidently was justified; for the pistols were not used, and the duel ended in a violent scuffle — not like D 34 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. |CHAP. the usual dignified calm which characterises such deadly meetings. Matthews broke his sword upon Sheridan’s ribs. The two antagonists fell together, Sheridan wounded and bleeding underneath, while the elder and heavier man punched at him with his broken sword. They were separated at length by the seconds, Sheridan refusing to “beg his life.” He was carried home very seriously wounded, and, as was believed, in great danger. Miss Linley was singing at Oxford at the time, and while there Sheridan’s wounded condition and the inci- dent altogether was concealed from her, though every- body else knew of it and of her connection with it. When it was at last communicated to her, she almost betrayed their secret, which even now nobody suspected, by a cry of “ My husband ! my husband !” which startled all who were present, but was set down to her excite- ment and distress, and presently forgotten. This tremendous encounter closed the episode. Mat- thews had vindicated his courage and obliterated the stigma of the broken sword, and though there was at one moment a chance of a third duel, thenceforward we hear little more of him. Sheridan recovered slowly under the care of his sisters, his father and brother being again absent and not very friendly. “We neither of us could approve of the cause in which you suffer,” Charles writes. “All your friends here (in London) condemn you. ” The brother, however, has the grace to add that he is “ unhappy at the situation I leave you in with respect to money matters,” and that “ Ewart was greatly vexed at the manner of your drawing for the last twenty pounds,” so that it seems the respectable brandy-merchant had been the family stand-by. The poor young fellow’s position was miser- I.] HIS YOUTH. 35 able enough — badly wounded, without a shilling, his love sedulously kept away from him, and the bond between them so strenuously ignored, that he promised his father, with somewhat guilty disingenuousness, that hp never would marry Miss Linley. Life was altogether at a low ebb with him. When he got better he was sent into the country to Waltham Abbey, no doubt by way of weaning him from all the seductions of Bath, and the vicinity of the lovely young singer who had resumed her profession though she hated it, and was to be seen of all men except the faithful lover who was her husband, though nobody knew. Before we conclude this chapter of young life, which reads so like an argument to the Rivals or some similar play, we may indicate some of Sheridan’s early produc- tions which, common as the pretty art of verse-making was, showed something more than the facile knack of composition, which is one of what were entitled in that day “the elegant qualifications” of golden youth. Sacred to Eliza Linley, as well as the verses about “the moss-covered grotto,” was the following graceful snatch of song, which is pretty enough to be got by heart and sung by love-sick youths in many generations to some pretty rococo air as fantastic as itself : — “ Dry be that tear, my gentlest love, Be hush’d that struggling sigh ; Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove More fix’d, more true than I. Hush’d be that sigh, be dry that tear, Cease boding doubt, cease anxious fear, Dry be that tear. Ask’st thou how long my love will stay, When all that’s new is past? 30 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. How long, all Delia, can I say, How long my life will last ? Dry be that tear, be hush’d that sigh, At least I’ll love thee till I die. Hush’d be that sigh. And does that thought affect thee too, The thought of Sylvio’s death, That he who only breath’d for you Must yield his faithful breath? Hush’d be that sigh, be dry that tear, Nor let us lose our heaven here. Dry be that tear.” Moore, with a pedantry which is sufficiently absurd, having just traced an expression in the “ moss-covered grotto” to a classical authority, though with a doubt very favourable to his own scholarship, “whether Sheridan was likely to have been a reader of Augurianus,” finds a close resemblance in the above to “ one of the madrigals of Montreuil,” or perhaps to “ an Italian song of Manage.” Very likely it resembled all those pretty things, the rococo age being not yet over and such elegant trifles still in fashion — as indeed they will always be as long as youth and its sweet follies last. Other pretty bits of verse might be quoted, especially one which brings in another delightful literary association into the story. Lady Margaret Fordyce — the beloved sister at whose departure from the old home in Fife Lady Anne Lindsay was so dejected, that to console herself she sang the woes, more plaintive still than her own, of that immortal peasant lass who married Auld Robin Gray — was then in Bath, and had been dismissed by a local versifier in his description of the beauties of the place by a couplet about a dimple, which roused young HIS YOUTH. 37 i.] Sheridan’s wrath. “ Could you,” he cries, addressing the poetaster — “ Could you really discover, In gazing those sweet beauties over, No other charm, no winning grace, Adorning either mind or face, But one poor dimple to express The quintessence of loveliness ? Mark’d you her cheek of rosy hue ? Mark’d you her eye of sparkling blue ? That eye in liquid circles moving, That cheek, abash’d at man’s approving : The one Love’s arrows darting round, The other blushing at the wound ; Did she not speak, did she not move, Now Pallas — now the Queen of Love ?” The latter lines are often quoted, but it is pretty to know that it was of Lady Anne’s Margaret that they were said. It is probably also to his period of seclusion and leisure at Waltham that the early dramatic attempts found by Moore among the papers confided to him belong. One of these runs to the length of three acts, and is a work of the most fantastic description, embodying, so far as it goes, the life of a band of outlaws calling themselves Devils, who have their headquarters in a forest and keep the neighbourhood in alarm. The heroine, a mysterious and beautiful maiden, is secluded in a cave from which she has never been allowed to go out, nor has she ever seen the face of man except that of the old hermit, who is her guardian. She has been permitted, however, one glimpse of a certain young huntsman, whom she considers a phantom, until a second sight of him when he is taken 38 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. prisoner by the robbers, and unaccountably introduced into the cave where she lies asleep, convinces her of his reality, and naturally has the same effect upon her which the sudden apparition of Prince Ferdinand had upon Miranda. The scene is pretty enough as the work of a sentimental youth in an age addicted to the highflown everywhere, and especially on the stage. The hero, when unbound and left to himself, begins his soliloquy, as a matter of course, with a “ Ha ! where am I V ’ but changes his tone from despair to rapture when he sees the fair Keginilla whose acquaintance he had so mysteriously made. “ Oh, would she but wake and bless this gloom with her bright eyes,” he says, after half a page. “ Soft, here’s a lute : perhaps her soul will know the call of harmony.” Mrs. Radcliffe’s lovely heroines, at a still later period, carried their lutes about with them everywhere, and tuned them to the utterance of a favourite copy of verses in the most terrible circumstances ; so that the discovery of so handy an instrument in a robber’s cave occasioned no surprise to the young hero. The song he immediately sung has been, Moore confesses, manipulated by himself. “ I have taken the liberty of supplying a few rhymes and words that are wanting,” he says, so that we need not quote it as an example of Sheridan. But the performance has its desired effect and the lady wakes. “ Beg. {waking). The phantom, father ! {seizes his hand) Oh, do not — do not wake me thus. Huntsman {kneeling). Thou beauteous sun of this dark world, that mak’st a place so like the cave of death a heaven to me, instruct me how I may approach thee— how address thee and not offend. Beg. Oh, how my soul could hang upon those lips. Speak I.] HIS YOUTH. 39 on ! and yet methinks lie should not kneel. Why are you afraid, sir ? indeed I cannot hurt you. Hunts. Sweet Innocence, I am sure thou would’st not. Reg. Art thou not he to whom I told my name, and did’st thou not say thine was Hunts. Oh blessed was the name that then thou told’st — it has been ever since my charm and kept me from distraction. But may I ask how such sweet excellence as thine could be hid in such a place ? Reg. Alas ! I know not — for such as thou I never saw before, nor any like myself. Hunts. Nor like thee ever shall ; but would’st leave this place and live with such as I am ? Reg. Why may not you live here with such as I ? Hunts. Yes, but I would carry thee where all above an azure canopy extends, at night bedropt with gems, and one more glorious lamp that yields such beautiful light as love enjoys ; while underneath a carpet shall be spread of flowers to court the presence of thy step, with such sweet-whispered invitations from the leaves of shady groves or murmuring of silver streams, that thou shalt think thou art in paradise. Reg. Indeed ! Hunts. Ay, and I’ll watch and wait on thee all day, and cull the choicest flowers, which while thou bind’st in the mysterious knot of love, I’ll tune for thee no vulgar lays, or tell thee tales shall make thee weep, yet please thee, while thus I press thy hand, and warm it thus with kisses. Reg. I doubt thee not — but then my Governor has told me many a tale of faithless men, who court a lady but to steal her peace. . . . Then, wherefore could’st thou not live here ? For I do feel, though tenfold darkness did surround this spot, I would be blest would you but stay here ; and if it make you sad to be imprisoned thus, I’d sing and play for thee, and dress thee sweetest fruits, and though you chide me would kiss thy tears away, and hide my blushing face upon thy bosom : indeed I would. Then what avails the gaudy days, and all the evil things I’m told inhabit them, to those who have within themselves all that delight and love and heaven can give ? Hunts. My angel, thou hast indeed the soul of love. Reg . It is no ill thing, is it ? 40 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [ciiap. Hunts . Oil most divine — it is the immediate gift of heaven ” And then the lute is brought into requisition once more. Other scenes of a much less superfine description, in one of which the hero takes the semblance of a dancing bear, go on outside this sentimental retirement, and some humour is expended on the trial of various prisoners secured by the robbers, who are made to believe that they have left this world and are being brought up be- fore a kind of Pluto for judgment. This inflexible judge orders “baths of flaming sulphur and the caldron of boiling lead ” for one who confesses himself to have been a courtier ; the culprit’s part, however, is taken by a compassionate devil who begs that he may be soaked a little first in scalding brimstone to prepare him for his final sentence. Another unfinished sketch called the Foresters deals with effects not quite so violent. To the end of his life Sheridan would threaten smilingly to produce this play and outdo everything else with it, but the existing framework seems to have been of the very slightest. Probably to a much later period belongs the projected play upon the subject of Affectation, for which were in- tended many memorandums found written upon the paper books in which his thoughts were noted. The subject is one which, in the opinion of various critics, would have been specially adapted to Sheridan’s powers, and Moore, and many others following him, express regret that it should have been abandoned. But no doubt Sheridan’s instinct warned him that on no such set plan could his faculties work, and that the stage, however adapted to the display of individual eccen- I.] HIS YOUTH. 41 tricities, wants something more than a bundle of em- bodied fads to make its performances tell. Sir Bubble Bon, Sir Peregrine Paradox, the representative “man who delights in hurry and interruption/’ the “man intriguing only for the reputation of it,” the “lady who affects poetry,” and all the rest, do well enough for the table- talk of the imagination, or even to jot down and play with in a note-book ; but Sheridan was better inspired than to attempt to make them into a play. He had already among these memorandums of his the first ideas of almost all his future productions, the primitive notes afterwards to be developed into the brilliant malice of the scandal- mongers, the first conception of old Teazle, the earliest adumbration of the immortal Puff. But the little verses which we have already quoted were the best of his actual achievements at this early period, dictated as they were by the early passion which made the careless boy into a man. At least one other poetical address of a similar de- scription — stilted, yet not without a tender breath of pastoral sweetness — was addressed to Eliza after she became Sheridan’s wife, and told how Silvio reclined upon “Avon’s ridgy bank” — “ Did mock the meadow’s flowing pride, Bail’d at the dawn and sportive ring ; The tabonr’s call he did deride And said, It was not Spring. He scorned the sky of azure blue, He scorned whate’er could mirth bespeak, He chid the beam that drank the dew, And chid the gale that fanned his glowing cheek. Unpaid the season’s wonted lay, For still he sighed and said, It was not May.” 42 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [oiiap. Which is of course explained by the circumstance that Delia (for the nonce called Laura) was not there. Laura responded in verses not much worse. It was a pretty commerce, breathing full of the time when shep- herds and shepherdesses were still the favourites of dainty poetry — a fashion which seems in some danger of returning with the other quaintnesses of the time. But this was after the young pair were united; and in 1772, when he had recovered of his wounds, and was making what shift he could to occupy himself in the solitude of Waltham, studying a little for a variety, reading up the History of England and the works of Sir William Temple, by way of improving his mind, that blessed event seemed distant and unlikely enough. In the Lent of 1773, Miss Linley came to London to sing in the oratorios, and it is said that young Sheridan resorted to the most romantic expedients to see her. He was near enough to “ tread on the heels of perilous probabilities,” — a phrase which Moore quotes from one of his letters, — and is said to have come from Wal- tham to London, and to have disguised himself as a hackney coachman, and driven her home from her per- formances on several occasions. The anonymous author of Sheridan and his Times asserts that on one of these occasions, by some accident, the lady was alone, and that this opportunity of communication led to a series of meetings, which at length convinced the parents that further resistance was hopeless. During all this time it would appear the marriage at Calais was never referred to, and was thought nothing of, even by the parties most concerned. It was intended apparently as a safeguard to Delia’s reputation should need occur, but as nothing HIS YOUTH. 43 I.] more ; which says a great deal for the romantic gener- osity of so ardent a lover and so penniless a man. For Delia had her little fortune, besides all the other charms which spoke so much more eloquently to her Silvio’s heart, and was indeed a liberal income in herself, to any one who would take advantage of it, with that lovely voice of hers. But the young man was romantically magnanimous and highflying in his sense of honour. He was indeed a very poor match, — a youth without a penny, even without a profession, and no visible means of living, — for the adored siren, about whom wealthy suitors were dangling by the dozen, no doubt exciting many anxious hopes in the breasts of her parents, if not in her own faithful bosom. But love conquered in the long run, as an honest and honourable sentiment, if it lasts and can wait, is pretty sure to do. In April 1773, about a year from the time of their clandestine marriage at Calais, they were married in the eye of day, with all that was needful to make the union dignified and respectable ; and thus the bustling little romance so full of incident, so entirely ready for the use of the drama, so like all the favourite stage-combinations of the time, came to an end. We do not hear very much of Mrs. Sheridan afterwards : indeed, except the letter to which we have referred, she does little to disclose her personality at any time, but there is something engaging and attractive — a sort of faint but sweet reflection raying out from her through all her life. The Lydia Languish of early days — the sentimental and romantic heroine of so many persecutions and pursuits, of the midnight flight and secret marriage — developed into one of those favour- ites of society, half-artist, half-fine-lady, whose exertions 44 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. r. for the amusement of the world bring nothing to them but a half-fictitious position and dangerous flatteries, without even the public singer’s substantial reward — a class embracing many charming and attractive women, victims of their own gifts and graces. Mrs. Sheridan was, however, at the same time — at least in all the early part of her career — a devoted wife, and seems to have done her best for her brilliant husband, and formed no small item in his success as well as in his happiness as long as her existence lasted. It is said that she disliked the life of a singer, and it is certain that she acquiesced in his resolution to withdraw her from all public appearances ; but even in that point it is very likely that there was some unconsidered sacrifice in her submission. “Hers was truly a voice as of the church choir,” says a contemporary quoted by Moore, “ and she was always ready to sing without any pressing. She sang here a great deal and to my infinite delight : but what had a peculiar charm was that she used to take my daughter, then a child, on her lap, and sing a number of childish songs with such a playfulness of manner and such a sweetness of look and voice as was quite enchanting.” CHAPTER II. HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. Married at last and happy, after so much experience of disappointment and hope deferred, Sheridan and his young wife took a cottage in the country, and retired there to enjoy their long-wished-for life together, and to consider an important, but it would seem not absolutely essential point — what they were to do for their living, Up to this point they have been so entirely the person- ages of a drama, that it is quite in order that they should retire to a rose-covered cottage, with nothing par- ticular to live upon ; and that the young husband, though without any trade of his own by which he could earn a dinner, should magnificently waive off all offers of employ- ment for his wife, who had a trade — and a profitable one. He was still but twenty-two and she nineteen, and he had hitherto managed to get all that was necessary, be- sides post-chaises and a considerable share of the luxuries of the time, as the lilies get their bravery, without toil- ing or spinning, so that it is evident the young man con- fronted fate with very little alarm, and his proud attitude of family head and master of his own wife is in the high- est degree edifying as well as amusing. We can scarcely 46 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. help doubting greatly whether a prima donna even of nineteen would let herself be disposed of now by such an absolute authority. The tone of the letter in which he communicates to his father-in-law his lofty determina- tion in this respect will show the young men of to-day the value of the privileges which they have, it is to be feared, partially resigned. “Yours of the 3d instant did not reach me till yesterday, by reason of its missing us at Morden. As to the principal point it treats of, I had given my answer some days ago to Mr. Isaac of Worcester. He had enclosed a letter from Storace to my wife, in which he dwells much on the nature of the agreement you had made for her eight months ago, and adds that ‘ as this is no new application, but a request that you (Mrs. S.) will fulfil a positive engagement, the breach of which would prove of fatal consequence to our meeting, I hope Mr. Sheridan will think his honour in some degree con- cerned in fulfilling it.’ Mr. Storace, in order to enforce Mr. Isaac’s argument, showed me his letter on the same subject to him, which begins with saying, ‘ We must have Mrs. Sheridan somehow or other if possible, the plain English of which is that if her husband is not willing to let her perform, we will persuade him that he acts dishonourably in preventing her from fulfilling a positive engagement.’ This I conceive to be the very worst mode of application that could have been taken ; as there really is not common sense in the idea that my honour can be concerned in my wife’s fulfilling an engage- ment which it is impossible she should ever have made. Nor (as I wrote to Mr. Isaac) can you who gave the promise, whatever it was, be in the least charged with the breach of it, as your daughter’s marriage was an event which must always have been looked to by them as quite as natural a period to your rights over her as her death. And in my opinion it would have been just as reasonable to have applied to you to fulfil your engagement in the latter case than in the former. As to the imprudence of declining this engagement, I do not think, even were we to suppose that my wife should ever on II.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 47 any occasion appear again in public, there would be the least at present. For instance, I have had a gentleman with me from Oxford (where they do not claim the least right as from an engagement) who has endeavoured to place the idea of my complimenting the university with Betsey’s performance in the strongest light of advantage to me. This he said on my declining to let her perform on any agreement. He likewise informed me that he had just left Lord North (the Chancellor), who, he assured me, would look upon it as the highest compli- ment, and had expressed himself so to him. Now, should it be a point of inclination or convenience to me to break my resolution with regard to Betsey’s performing, there surely would be more sense in obliging Lord North (and probably from his own application) than Lord Coventry and Mr. Isaac ; for were she to sing at Worcester, there would not be the least compliment in her performing at Oxford.” The poor pretty wife, smiling passive in the back- ground while my young lord considers whether he will “ compliment the university ” with her performance, is a spectacle which ought to be impressive to the brides of the present day, who take another view of their position ; but there is a delightful humour in this turning of the tables upon the stern father who had so often snubbed young Sheridan, and who must have regarded, one would suppose, his present impotence and the sublime superi- ority of the new proprietor of Betsey with anything but pleasant feelings. Altogether the attitude of the group is very instructive in view of the changes of public opinion on this point. The most arbitrary husband now- a-days would think it expedient at least to associate his wife’s name with his own in an}^ such refusal ; but the proprietorship was undoubting in Sheridan’s day. It will be remembered that Dr. Johnson highly applauded the young gentleman’s spirit and resolution in this point. 48 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. However, though she had so soon become Betsey and his property, so far as business was concerned, the cottage at East Burnham among the beech trees and roses, still contained a tender pair of lovers; and Silvio still ad- dressed to Delia the sweetest compliments in verse. When he is absent he appeals to Hymen to find some thing for him to do to make the hours pass when away from her. “ Alas ! thou hast no wings, oh Time, It was some thoughtless lover’s rhyme, Who, writing in his Chloe’s view, Paid her the compliment through you. For had he, if he truly lov’d, But once the pangs of absence prov’d, He’d cropt thy wings, and in their stead Have painted thee with heels of lead.” Thus Betsey’s chains were gilded : and in all likelihood she was totally unconscious of them, never having been awakened to any right of womankind beyond that of being loved and flattered. The verse is not of very high quality, but the sentiment is charming, and entirely ap- propriate to the position. “ For me who, when I’m happy, owe No thanks to fortune that I’m so, Who long have learn’d to look at one Dear object, and at one alone, For all the joy and all the sorrow, That gilds the day or threats the morrow. I never felt thy footsteps light But when sweet love did aid thy flight, And banished from his blest dominion, I card not for thy borrowed pinion. True, she is mine ; and since she’s mine At trifles I should not repine ; But oh ! the miser’s real pleasure Is not in knowing he has treasure ; II.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 49 lie must behold his golden store, And feel and count his riches o’er. Thus I of one dear gem possest, And in that treasure only blest, There every day would seek delight, And clasp the casket every night.” The condition of the young pair in any reasonable point of view at this beginning of their life was as little hopeful as can be conceived. The three thousand pounds left to Miss Linley by Mr. Long was their sole fortune, if it still remained intact. The wife was rendered help- less by the husband’s grand prohibition of her exertions, and he himself had nothing to do, nor knew how to do anything : for even to literature, that invariable refuge, he scarcely seems as yet to have turned his eyes with any serious intent. The manner in which they plunged into life, however, is characteristic. When winter made their Burnham cottage undesirable, and the time of honey- mooning was well over, they went to town to live with the composer Storace, where no doubt Betsey’s talent was largely exercised, though not in public, and probably helped to make friends for the young pair : for we hear of them next year as paying visits among other places at the house of Canning; and in the winter of 1774 they established themselves in Orchard Street, Portman Square, in a house of their own, furnished, an anony- mous biographer says, “in the most costly style,” at the expense of Linley, with perhaps some contribution from that inexhaustible three thousand pounds. “ His house was open,” says this historian, “ for the re- ception of guests of quality attracted by his wit, the superior accomplishments of his wife, and the elegance of his enter- E 50 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. tainments. His dinners were upon the most expensive scale, liis wines of the finest quality : while Mrs. Sheridan’s soirees were remarkable not more for their brilliance than the gay groups of the most beautiful, accomplished, and titled lady visitants of the Court of St. James. Mrs. Sheridan’s routs were the great attraction of the season. A friend — a warm and sincere friend — remonstrating with Sheridan on the in- stability of his means of supporting such a costly establish- ment, he tersely replied, ‘My dear friend, it is my means.’” Such a description will be taken for what it is worth, but there seems internal evidence that the anecdote with which it concludes might have been true. And certainly for a young man beginning the arduous occupation of living on his wits, a pretty house and prettier wife and good music would form an excellent stock-in-trade, and the new home itself being entirely beyond any visible means they had, every other prodigality would be compre- hensible. By this time he had begun the composition of a play, and considered himself on the eve of publish- ing a book, which, he “ thinks, will do me some credit,” as he informs his father-in-law, but which has never been heard of from that time to this, so far as appears. Another piece of information contained in the letter in which this apocryphal work is announced, shows for the first time a better prospect for the young adventurer. He adds, “There will be a comedy of mine in rehearsal at Co vent Garden within a few days.” “ I have done it at Mr. Harris’s (the manager’s) own request : it is now complete in his hands, and preparing for the stage. He and some of his friends also who have heard it assure me in the most flattering terms that there is not a doubt of its suc- cess. It will be very well played, and Harris tells me that the least shilling I shall get (if it succeeds) will be six hundred pounds. I shall make no secret of it towards the time of ii.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 51 representation, that it may not lose any support my friends can give it. I had not written a line of it two months ago, except a scene or two, which I believe you have seen in an odd act of a little farce.” This was the Rivals , which was performed at Covent Garden on the 17th January 1775 — nearly three years after his marriage. How he existed in the meantime, and made friends and kept up his London house, is left to the imagination. Probably it was done upon that famous three thousand pounds, which appears, like the widow’s cruse, to answer all demands. The Rivals was not successful the first night, and the hopes of the young dramatist must have met with a terrible check; but the substitution of one actor for another in the part of Sir Lucius O’Trigger, and such emendations as practical sense suggested as soon as it had been put on the stage, secured for it one continued triumph ever after. It is now more than a century since critical London watched the new comedy, and the hearts of the Linleys thrilled from London to Bath, and old Thomas Sheridan, still unreconciled to his son, came silent and sarcastic to the theatre to see what the young good-for-nothing had made of it ; but the world has never changed its opinion. What a moment for Betsey in the house where she had everything that heart of woman could desire except the knowledge that all was honest and paid for — a luxury which outdoes all the rest ! and for her husband, standing in the wings watching his father’s face, whom he dared not go and speak to, and knowing that his whole future hung in the balance, and that in case of success all his follies would be justified ! “But now there can be no doubt of its success,” cries 62 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [CHAl*. little Miss Linley from Bath, in a flutter of excitement, “ as it has certainly got through more difficulties than any comedy which has not met its doom the first night.” The Linleys were convinced in their own minds that it was Mrs. Sheridan who had written “ the much admired epilogue.” “How I long to read it!” cries the little sister. “ What makes it more certain is that m j father guessed it was yours the first time he saw it praised in the paper.” There is no reason to suppose that the guess was true, but it is a pretty exhibition of family feeling. The Rivals , to the ordinary spectator who, looking on with uncritical pleasure at the progress of that episode of mimic life, in which everybody’s remarks are full of such a quintessence of wit as only a very few remarkable per- sons are able to emulate in actual existence, accepts the piece for the sake of these and other qualities — is so little like a transcript from any actual conditions of humanity that to consider it as studied from the life would be absurd, and we receive these creations of fancy as belong- ing to a world entirely apart from the real. But the reader who has accompanied Sheridan through the previous chapter of his history will be inclined, on the contrary, to feel that the young dramatist has but selected a few incidents from the still more curious comedy of life in which he himself had so recently been one of the actors, and in which elopements, duels, secret correspondences, and all the rest of the simple -artificial round, were the order of the day. Whether he drew his characters from the life it is need- less to inquire, or if there was an actual prototype for Mrs. Malaprop. Nothing, however, in imagination is so highly fantastical as reality ; and it is very likely that some two II.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 53 or three ladies of much pretension and gentility flourished upon the parade and frequented the pump-room, from whose conversation her immortal parts of speech were appropriated : but this is of very little importance in com- parison with the delightful success of the result. The Rivals is no such picture of life in Bath as that which, half a century later, in altered times, which yet were full of humours of their own, Miss Austen made for us in all the modest flutter of youthful life and hopes. Sheridan’s brilliant dramatic sketch is slight in comparison, though far more instantly effective, and with a concentration in its sharp effects which the stage requires. But yet, no doubt, in the bustle and hurry of the successive arrivals, in the eager brushing up of the countryman new-launched on such a scene, and the aspect of the idle yet bustling society, all agog for excitement and pleasure, the brisk little holiday city was delightfully recognisable in the eyes of those to whom “the Bath” represented all those vacation rambles and excursions over the world which amuse our leisure now. Scarcely ever was play so full of liveliness and interest constructed upon a slighter machinery. The Rivals of the title, by means of the most simple yet amusing of mystifications, are one person. The gallant young lover, who is little more than the conven- tional type of that well-worn character, but a manly and lively one, has introduced himself to the romantic heroine in the character of Ensign Beverley, a poor young subal- tern, instead of his own much more eligible personality as the heir of Sir Anthony Absolute, a baronet with four thousand a year : and has gained the heart of the senti- mental Lydia, who prefers love in a cottage to the finest settlements, and looks forward to an elopement and the 54 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chat. loss of a great part of her fortune with delight : when his plans are suddenly confounded by the arrival of his father on the scene, bent on marrying him forthwith in his own character to the same lady. Thus he is at the same time the romantic and adored Beverley, and the detested Captain Absolute in her eyes ; and how to reconcile her to marrying peaceably and with the approval of all her belongings, instead of clandestinely and with all the dclat of a secret running away, is the problem. This, however, is solved precipitately by the expedient of a duel with the third rival, Bob Acres, which shows the fair Lydia that the safety of her Beverley, even if accom- panied by the congratulations of friends and a humdrum marriage, is the one thing to be desired. Thus the whole action of the piece turns upon a mystification, which affords some delightfully comic scenes, but few of those occasions of suspense and uncertainty which give interest to the drama. This we find in the brisk and delightful movement of the piece, in the broad but most amusing sketches of character, and the unfailing wit and sparkle of the dialogue. In fact we believe that many an audi- ence has enjoyed the play, and, what is more wonderful, many a reader laughed over it in private, without any clear realisation of the story at all, so completely do Sir Anthony’s fits of temper, and Mrs. Malaprop’s fine language and stately presence, and the swagger of Bob Acres, occupy and amuse us. Even Faulkland, the jealous and doubting, who invents a new misery for him- self at every word, and finds an occasion for wretched- ness even in the smiles of his mistress, which are always either too cold or too warm for him, is so laughable in his starts aside at every new suggestion of jealous fancy, II.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 55 that we forgive him not only a great deal of fine lan- guage, but the still greater drawback of having nothing to do with the action of the piece at all. Mrs. Malaprop’s ingenious “derangement of epitaphs” is her chief distinction to the popular critic ; and even though such a great-competitor as Dogberry has occu- pied the ground before her, these delightful absurd- ities have never been surpassed. But justice has hardly been done to the individual character of this admirable if broad sketch of a personage quite familiar in such scenes as that which Bath presented a cen- tury ago, the plausible well-bred woman, with a great deal of vanity, and no small share of good-nature, whose inversion of phrases is quite representative of the blurred realisation she has of surrounding circumstances, and who is quite sincerely puzzled by the discovery that she is not so well qualified to enact the character of Delia as her niece would be. Mrs. Malaprop has none of the harshness of Mrs. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer , and we take it unkind of Captain Absolute to call her “ a weatherbeaten she-dragon.” The complacent nod of her head, the smirk on her face, her delightful self-satisfaction and confidence in her “parts of speech,” have nothing repulsive in them. No doubt she imposed upon Bob Acres ; and could Catherine Morland and Mrs. Allen have seen her face and heard her talk, these ladies would, we feel sure, have been awed by her presence. And she is not unkind to Lydia, though the minx deserves it, and has no desire to appropriate her fortune. She smiles upon us still in many a watering-place — large, gracious, proud of her con- versational powers, always a delightful figure to meet with, and filling the shopkeeping ladies with admiration. 56 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. Sir Anthony, though so amusing on the stage, is more conventional, since we know he must get angry presently whenever we meet with him, although his coming round again is equally certain : but Mrs. Malaprop is never quite to be calculated upon, and is always capable of a new simile as captivating as that of the immortal “allegory on the banks of the Nile.” The other characters, though full of brilliant talk, cleverness, and folly, have less originality. The country hobbledehoy, matured into a dandy and braggart by his entrance into the intoxicating excitement of Bath society, is comical in the highest degree ; but he is not characteristically human. While Mrs. Malaprop can hold her ground with Dogberry, Bob Acres is not fit to be mentioned in the same breath with the “ exquisite reasons ” of that delightful knight, Sir Andrew Ague- cheek. And thus it becomes at once apparent that Sheridan’s eye for a situation, and the details that make up a striking combination on the stage, was far more remarkable than his insight into human motives and action. There is no scene on the stage which re- tains its power of amusing an ordinary audience more brilliantly than that of the proposed duel, where the wittiest of boobies confesses to feeling his valour ooze out at his finger ends, and the fire-eating Sir Lucius promises, to console him, that he shall be pickled and sent home to rest with his fathers, if not content with the snug lying in the abbey. The two men are little more than symbols of the slightest description, but their dialogue is instinct with wit, and that fun, the most English of qualities, which does not reach the height of humour, yet overwhelms even gravity itself with a IT.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 57 laughter in which there is no sting or bitterness. Mo- li^re sometimes attains this effect, but rarely, having too much meaning in him ; but with Shakespeare it is fre- quent among higher things. And in Sheridan this gift of innocent ridicule and quick embodiment of the ludicrous without malice or arrikre-jpensee reaches to such heights of excellence as have given his nonsense a sort of im- mortality. It is, however, difficult to go far in discussion or analysis of a literary production which attempts no deeper investigation into human nature than this. Sheridan’s art, from its very beginning, was theatrical, if we may use the word, rather than dramatic. It aimed at strong situations and highly effective scenes rather than at a finely constructed story, or the working out of either plot or passion. There is nothing to be dis- covered in it by the student, as in those loftier dramas which deal with the higher qualities and developments of the human spirit. It is possible to excite a very warm controversy in almost any company of ordinarily educated people at any moment upon the character of Hamlet. And criticism will always find another word to say even upon the less profound but delightful myste- ries of such a poetical creation as Kosalind, all glowing with ever-varied life and love and fancy. But the lighter drama with which we have now to deal hides no depths under its brilliant surface. The pretty fantastical Lydia, with her romances, her impatience of ordinary life, her hot little spark of temper, was new to the stage, and when she finds a fitting representative can be made delightful upon it : but there is nothing further to find out about her. The art is charming, the figures full of vivacity, 58 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [CHAP. the touch that sets them before us exquisite : except indeed in the Faulkland scenes, probably intended as a foil for the brilliancy of the others, in which J ulia’s mag- nificent phrases are too much for us, and make us deeply grateful to Sheridan for the discrimination which kept him — save in one appalling instance — from the serious drama. But there are no depths to be sounded, and no suggestions to be carried out. While, however, its merits as literature are thus lessened, its attractions as a play are increased. There never was a comedy more dear to actors, as there never was one more popular on the stage. The even balance of its characters, the equality of the parts, scarcely one of them being quite insignificant, and each affording scope enough for a good player to show what is in him, must make it always popular in the profession. It is, from the same reason, the delight of amateurs. Moore quotes from an old copy of the play, a humor- ous dedication written by Tickell, Sheridan’s brother-in- law, to Indolence. “ There is a propriety in prefixing your name to a work begun entirely at your suggestion and finished under your auspices,” Tickell says; and notwithstanding his biographer’s attempt to prove that Sheridan polished all he wrote with extreme care, and cast and recast his literary efforts, there is an air of ease and lightness in his earlier work which makes the dedi- cation sufficiently appropriate. It must have amused his own fancy while he wrote, as it has amused his audience ever since. It is the one blossom of production which had yet appeared in so many easy years. A wide margin of leisure, of pleasure, of facile life, extends around it. It was done quickly it appears when once undertaken — a pleasing variety upon the featureless course of months II.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 59 and years. The preface which Sheridan himself pre- fixed to the play when printed, justifies itself on the score that “ the success of the piece has probably been founded on a circumstance which the author is informed has not before attended a theatrical trial.” “I need scarcely add that the circumstance alluded to was the withdrawing of the piece to remove these imperfections in the first representation which were too obvious to escape reprehension, and too numerous to admit of a hasty correction. ... It were unnecessary to enter into any further extenua- tion of what was thought exceptionable in this play, but that it has been said that the managers should have prevented some of the defects before its appearance to the public — and, in particular, the uncommon length of the piece as represented the first night. It were an ill return for the most liberal and gentlemanly conduct on their side to suffer any censure to rest where none was deserved. Hurry in writing has long been exploded as an excuse for an author ; however, in the dra- matic line, it may happen that both an author and a manager may wish to fill a chasm in the entertainment of the public with a hastiness not altogether culpable. The season was advanced when I first put the play into Mr. Harris’s hands ; it was at that time at least double the length of any acting comedy. I profited by his judgment and experience in the curtailing of it, till I believe his feeling for the vanity of a young author got the better of his desire for correctness, and he left so many excrescences remaining because he had assisted in pruning so many more. Hence, though I was not unin- formed that the acts were still too long, I flattered myself that after the first trial I might with safer judgment proceed to remove what should appear to have been most dissatisfactory.” These were, it is true, days of leisure, when nothing was pushed and hurried on as now. But it would require, one would think, no little firmness and courage on the part of a young author to risk the emendation of errors so serious after an unfavourable first-night, and a great 60 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. confidence on the part of the manager to permit such an experiment. But there are some men who impress all around them with such a certainty of power and success, that even managers dare, and publishers volun- teer, in their favour. Sheridan was evidently one of these men. There was an atmosphere of triumph about him. He had carried off his siren from all competi- tors ; he had defied all inducements to give her up to public hearing after ; he had flown in the face of pru- dence and every frugal tradition. And so far as an easy and happy life went, he was apparently succeeding in that attempt. So he was allowed to take his unsuc- cessful comedy off the stage, and trim it into his own guise of triumph. We are not told how long the interval was, which would have been instructive (the anonymous biographer says “a few days”). It was produced in January, however, and a month later we hear of it in pre- paration at Bath, where its success was extraordinary. The same witness, whom we have just quoted, adds, “that Sheridan’s prospective six hundred pounds was more than doubled by its success and the liberality of the manager.” He had thus entered fully upon his career as a drama- tist. In the same year he wrote — in gratitude, it is said, to the Irish actor who had saved the Rivals by his felicitous representation of Sir Lucius — the farce called St. Patrick's Day ; or, the Scheming Lieutenant , a very slight production, founded on the tricks so familiar to comedy, of a lover’s ingenuity to get entrance into the house of his mistress. The few opening sentences, which are entirely characteristic of Sheridan, are almost the best part of the production : they are spoken by a party of soldiers coming with a complaint to their officer. II.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 61 “ ls£ Sol. I say, you are wrong ; we should all speak to- gether, each for himself, and all at once, that we may he heard the better. 2 d Sol. Right, Jack ; we’ll argue in platoons. 3 d Sol. Ay, ay, let him have our grievances in a volley.” The lieutenant, whose suit is scorned by the parents of his Lauretta, contrives by the aid of a certain Dr. Rosy, a comic, but not very comic, somewhat long-winded personage, to get into the house of Justice Credulous, her father, as a servant : but is discovered and turned out. He then writes a letter asserting that, in his first disguise, he has given the Justice poison, an asser- tion which is met with perfect faith; upon which he comes in again as the famous quack doctor, so familiar to us in the pages of Moliere. In this case the quack is a German, speaking only a barbarous jargon, but he speedily cures the Justice on condition of receiving the hand of his daughter. “ Did he say all that in so few words,” cried Justice Credulous, when one of the stranger’s utterances is explained to him. “ What a fine language it is !” — just as M. Jourdain delightedly acknowledged the eloquence of la langue Turque , which could express tant de choses dans un seul mot. The Scheming Lieutenant still keeps its ground among Sheridan’s works, bound up between the Rivals and the School for Scandal , a position in which one cannot help feeling it must be much astonished to find itself. In the end of the year the opera of the Duenna was also produced at Covent Garden. The praise and imme- diate appreciation with which it was received were still greater than those that hailed the Rivals. “The run of this opera has, I believe, no parallel in the annals of the 62 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [CIIAP. drama,” says Moore, speaking in days when the theatre had other rules than those known among ourselves. “ Sixty-three nights was the career of the Beggar's Opera ; but the Duenna was acted no less than seventy-five times during the season,” and the enthusiasm which it called forth was general. It was pronounced better than the Beggar's Opera, up to that time acknowledged to be the first and finest production of the never very successful school of English opera. Opera at all was as yet an exotic in Eng- land, and the public still resented the importation of Italian music and Italian singers to give it utterance, and fondly clung to the idea of being able to produce as good or better at home. The Duenna was a joint work in which Sheridan was glad to associate with himself his father-in-law, Lin- ley, whose airs to the songs, which were plentifully intro- duced- — and which gave its name to what is in reality a short comedy on the lines of Moli^re, interspersed with songs, and not an opera in the usual sense of the word at all — were much commended at the time. The little lyrics which are put indiscriminately into the mouths of the different personages are often extremely pretty ; but few people in these days have heard them sung, though lines from the verses are still familiar enough to our ears in the way of quotation. The story of the piece belongs to the same easy artificial inspiration which dictated the trivial plot of St. Patrick's Day , and of so many others. It is “ mainly founded,” says Moore, “ upon an incident bor- rowed from the Country JVife of Wycherley,” but it seems hardly necessary to seek a parent for so banal a contriv- ance. The father, with whom we are all so familiar, has to be tricked out of his daughter by one of the mono- tonous lovers with whom we are more familiar still ; but II.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 63 instead of waiting till her gallant shall invent a plan for this purpose, the lady cuts the knot herself by the help of her duenna, who has no objection to marry the rich Jew whom Louisa abhors, and who remains in the garb of her young mistress, while the latter escapes in the duenna’s hood and veil. The Portuguese Isaac from whom the lady flies is a crafty simpleton, and when he finds the old duenna waiting for him under the name of Louisa (whom her father, for the convenience of the plot, has vowed never to see till she is married), he accepts her, though much startled by her venerable and unlovely ap- pearance, as the beautiful creature who has been promised to him, with only the rueful reflection to himself, “ How blind some parents are ! ” and as she explains that she also has made a vow never to accept a husband from her father’s hands, carries her off, as she suggests, with much simplicity and the astute reflection, “ If I take her at her word I secure her fortune and avoid making any settle- ment in return.” In the meantime two pairs of interest- ing lovers, Louisa and her Antonio, her brother Ferdi- nand and his Clara, are wandering about in various disguises, with a few quarrels and reconciliations, and a great many songs, which they pause to sing at the most inappropriate moments, after the fashion of opera. In order to be married — which all are anxious to be — Isaac and one of the young gallants go to a “ neighbouring monastery,” such establishments being delightfully handy in Seville, where the scene is laid ; and the hot Protest- antism of the audience is delighted by an ecclesiastical interior, in which “Father Paul, Father Francis, and other friars are discovered at a table drinking,” singing convivial songs, and promising to remember their peni- 64 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. tents in their cups, which will do quite as much good as masses. Father Paul is the supposed ascetic of the party, and comes forward when called with a glass of wine in his hand, chiding them for having disturbed his devotions. The three couples are then married by this worthy functionary, and the whole ends with a scene at the house of the father, when the trick is revealed to him, and amid general blessings and for- giveness the Jew discovers that he has married the penniless duenna instead of the lady with a fortune, whom he has helped to deceive himself as well as her father. The duenna, who has been, like all the old ladies in these plays, the subject of a great many un- mannerly remarks, — when an old woman is concerned, Sheridan’s fine gentlemen always forget their manners, — is revealed in all her poverty and ugliness beside the pretty young ladies ; and Isaac’s conceit and admiration of himself, “a sly little villain, a cunning dog,” etc., are unmercifully laughed at; while the rest of the party make up matters with the easily mollified papa. Such is the story : there is very little character attempted, save in Isaac, who is a sort of rudimentary sketch of a too cunning knave or artful simpleton caught in his own toils ; and the dialogue, if sometimes clever enough, never for a moment reaches the sparkle of the Rivals . “ The wit of the dialogue,” Moore says — using that clever mist of words with which an experienced writer hides the fact that he can find nothing to say on a certain subject — “ except in one or two instances, is of that amusing kind which lies near the surface — which is produced without effort, and may be enjoyed without wonder.” If this means that there is nothing at all II.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 65 wonderful about it, it is no doubt true enough — though there are one or two phrases which are worth preserving, such as that in which the Jew is described as being “like the blank leaves between the Old and New Testa- men t,” since he is a convert of recent date and no very certain faith. It was, however, the music which made the piece popu- lar, and the songs which Sheridan wrote for Linley’s set- ting were many of them pretty, and all neat and clever. Everybody knows “ Had I a heart for falsehood framed,” which is sung by the walking gentleman of the piece, a certain Don Carlos, who has nothing to do but to take care of Louisa during her wanderings, and to sing some of the prettiest songs. Perhaps on the whole this is the best : — “ Had I a heart for falsehood framed, I ne’er could injure you ; For though your tongue no promise claim’d Your charms would make me true. To you no soul shall bear deceit, No stranger offer wrong ; But friends in all the aged you’ll meet, And lovers in the young. “ But when they learn that you have blest Another with your heart, They’ll bid aspiring passion cease And act a brother’s part. Then, lady, dread not here deceit, Nor fear to suffer wrong ; For friends in all the aged you’ll meet* And lovers in the young.” The part of Carlos is put in with Sheridan’s usual indifference to construction for the sake of the music, and in order to employ a certain tenor who was a favourite F 66 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. with the public, there being no possible occasion for him so far as the dramatic action is concerned. This is what Byron, nearly half a century after, called “ the best opera ” in English, and which was lauded to the skies in its day. The Beggar’s Opera , with which it is constantly compared, has, however, much outlived it in the general knowledge, if the galvanic and forced resurrection given by an occasional performance can be called life. The songs are sung no longer, and many who quote lines like the well-known “ Sure such a pair were never seen,” are in most cases totally unaware where they come from. Posterity, which has so thoroughly carried out the judgment of contemporaries in respect to the Rivals , has not extended its favour to the Duenna. Perhaps the attempt to conjoin spoken dialogue to any great extent with music is never a very successful attempt : for English opera does not seem to last. Its success is momentary. Musical enthusiasts care little for the “ words,” and not even so much for melody as might be desired ; and the genuine playgoer is impatient of those interruptions to the action of a piece which has any pretence at dramatic interest, while neither of the conjoint Arts do their best in such a formal copartnery. Sheridan, however, spared no pains to make the partner- ship successful. He was very anxious that the composer should be on the spot, and secure that his compositions were done full justice to. “ Harris is extravagantly sanguine of its success as to plot and dialogue,” he writes; “they will exert themselves to the utmost in the scenery, etc., but I never saw any one so discon- certed as he was at the idea of there being no one to put them in the right way as to music.” “Dearest father,” it.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 67 adds Mrs. Sheridan, “ I shall have no spirits or hopes of the opera unless we see you.” The young dramatist, however, had his ideas as to the music as well as the literary portion of the piece, and did not submit himself blindly to his father-in-law’s experience. “The first,” he says, “ I should wish to be a pert sprightly air, for though some of the words mayn’t seem suited to it, I should mention that they are neither of them in earnest in what they say : Leoni (Carlos) takes it up seriously, and I want him to show advantageously in the six lines beginning, 4 Gentle Maid.’ I should tell you that he sings nothing well but in a plaintive or pastoral style, and his voice is such as appears to me always to be hurt by much accompaniment. I have observed, too, that he never gets so much applause as when he makes a cadence. Therefore my idea is that he should make a flourish at ‘Shall I grieve you.’” These instructions show how warmly Sheridan at this period of his life interested himself in every detail of his theatrical work. Linley, it is said, had the good sense to follow these directions implicitly. The success of the Duenna at Covent Garden put Garrick and his company at the rival theatre on their mettle ; and it was wittily said that “ the old woman would be the death of the old man.” Garrick chose the moment when her son was proving so dangerous a rival to him to resuscitate Mrs. Sheridan’s play called the Discovery , in which he himself played the chief part — a proceeding which does not look very friendly : and as Thomas Sheridan had been put forth by his enemies as the great actor’s rival, it might well be that there was no very kind feeling between them. But the next chapter 68 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. in young Sheridan’s life shows Garrick in so benevolent a light that it is evident his animosity to the father, if it existed, had no influence on his conduct to the son. Garrick was now very near the close of his career : and when it was understood that he meant not only to retire from the stage, but to resign his connection with the theatre altogether, a great commotion arose in the theatrical world. These were the days of patents, when the two great theatres held a sort of monopoly, and were safe from all rivalship except that of each other. It was at the end of the year 1775 that Garrick’s intention of “selling his moiety of the patent of Drury Lane Theatre” became known : and Bichard Sheridan was then in the early flush of his success, crowding the rival theatre, and promising a great succession of brilliant work to come. But it could scarcely be supposed that a young man just emerging out of obscurity — rich, indeed, in his first gains, and no doubt seeing before him a great future, but yet absolutely destitute of capital — could have been audacious enough, without some special encourage- ment, to think of acquiring this great but precarious property, and launching himself upon such a venture. How he came to think of it we are left uninformed, but the first whisper of the chance seems to have inflamed his mind; and Garrick, whether or not he actually helped him with money, as some say, was at all events favourable to him from the beginning of the negotiations. He had promised that the refusal should first be offered to Colman ; but when Colman, as he expected, declined, it was the penniless young drama- tist whom of all competitors the old actor preferred. Sheridan had a certain amount of backing, though not II.] HIS FIRST DRAMATIC WORKS. 69 enough, as far as would appear, to lessen the extraordi- nary daring of the venture — his father-in-law, Linley, who it is to be supposed had in his long career laid up some money, taking part in the speculation along with a certain Dr. Ford : but both in subordination to the young man who had no money at all. Here are Sheridan’s ex- planations of the matter addressed to his father-in-law : — “ According to his (Garrick’s) demand, the whole is valued at <£70,000. He appears very shy of letting his books be looked into as the test of the profits on this sum, but says it must he on its nature a purchase on speculation. However, he has promised me a rough estimate of his own of the entire receipts for the last seven years. But after all it must cer- tainly be a purchase on speculation without money’s worth having been made out. One point he solemnly avers, which is that he will never part with it under the price above- mentioned. This is all I can say on the subject until Wednesday, though I can’t help adding that I think we might safely give £5000 more on this purchase than richer people. The whole valued at £70,000, the annual interest is £3500 ; while this is cleared the proprietors are safe. But I think it must be infernal management indeed that does not double it.” A few days later the matter assumes a definite shape. “ Garrick was extremely explicit, and in short we came to a final resolution ; so that if the necessary matters are made out to all our satisfactions, we may sign and seal a previous engagement within a fortnight. “ I meet him again to-morrow evening, when we are to name a day for a conveyancer on our side to meet his solicitor, Wallace. I have pitched on a Mr. Phipps, at the recom- mendation and by the advice of Dr. Ford. The three first steps to he taken are these, — our lawyer is to look into the titles, tenures, etc., of the house and adjoining estate, the extent and limitations of the patent, etc. ; we shall then employ a builder (I think Mr. Collins) to survey the state and repair in which the whole premises are, to which Mr. G. 70 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. [chap. entirely consents ; Mr. G. will tlien give us a fair and attested estimate from Iris books of what the profits have been, at an average, for these last seven years. This he has shown me in rough, and, valuing the property at £70,000, the interest has exceeded ten per cent.