“I saw much of Sheridan’s father after the death of Sumner, and after my own removal from Harrow to Stanmer. I respected him, — he really liked me, and did me some important services, — but I never met him and Richard together. I often inquired about Richard, and, from the father’s answers, found they were not upon good terms, — but neither he nor I ever spoke of his son’s talents but in terms of the highest praise.” In a subsequent letter Dr. Parr says: “I referred you to a passage in the Gentleman’s Magazine, where I am represented as discovering and encouraging in Richard Sheridan those intellectual powers which had not been discovered and encouraged by Sumner. But the statement is incorrect. We both of us discovered talents, which neither of us could bring into action while Sheridan was a school-boy. He gave us few opportunities of praise in the course of his school business, and yet he was well aware that we thought highly of him, and anxiously wished more to be done by him than he was disposed to do.
“I once or twice met his mother, — she was quite celestial. Both her virtues and her genius were highly esteemed by Robert Sumner. I know not whether Tom Sheridan found Richard tractable in the art of speaking, — and, upon such a subject, indolence or indifference would have been resented by the father as crimes quite inexpiable. One of Richard’s sisters now and then visited Harrow, 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 to her by her father. Take a sample:
None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserve the fair.
Whatever may have been the zeal or the proficiency of the sister, naughty Richard, like Gallio, seemed to care naught for these things.
“In the later periods of his life Richard did not cast behind him classical reading. He spoke copiously and powerfully about Cicero. He had read, and he had understood, the four orations of Demosthenes, read and taught in our public schools. He was at home in Virgil and in Horace. I cannot speak positively about Homer, — but I am very sure that he read the Iliad now and then; not as a professed scholar would do, critically, but with all the strong sympathies of a poet reading a poet. [Footnote: It was not one of the least of the triumphs of Sheridan’s talent to have been able to persuade so acute a scholar as Dr. Parr, that the extent of his classical acquirements was so great as is here represented, and to have thus impressed with the idea of his remembering so much, the person who best knew how little he had learned.] Richard did not, and could not forget what he once knew, but his path to knowledge was his own, — his steps were noiseless, — his progress was scarcely felt by himself, — his movements were rapid but irregular.
“Let me assure you that Richard, when a boy, was by no means vicious. The sources of his infirmities were a scanty and precarious allowance from the father, the want of a regular plan for some profession, and, above all, the act of throwing him upon the town, when he ought to have been pursuing his studies at the University. He would have done little among mathematicians at Cambridge; — he would have been a rake, or an idler, or a trifler, at Dublin; — but I am inclined to think that at Oxford he would have become an excellent scholar.
“I have now told you all that I know, and it amounts to very little. I am very solicitous for justice to be done to Robert Sumner. He is one of the six or seven persons among my own acquaintance whose taste I am accustomed to consider perfect, and, were he living, his admiration….” [Footnote: The remainder of the letter relates to other subjects.]
During the greater part of Richard’s stay at Harrow his father had been compelled, by the embarrassment of his affairs, to reside with the remainder of the family in France, and it was at Blois, in the September of 1766, that Mrs. Sheridan died — leaving behind her that best kind of fame, which results from a life of usefulness and purity, and which it requires not the aid of art or eloquence to blazon. She appears 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 remonstrance or murmur, in gently endeavoring to repair those evils which the indiscretion or vanity of their partners has brought upon them.
As a supplement to the interesting communication of Dr. Parr, I shall here subjoin an extract from a letter which the eldest sister of Sheridan, Mrs. E. Lefanu, wrote a few months after his death to Mrs. Sheridan, in consequence of a wish expressed by the latter that Mrs. Lefanu would communicate such particulars as she remembered of his early days. It will show, too, the feeling which his natural good qualities, in spite of the errors by which they were obscured and weakened, kept alive to the last, in the hearts of those connected with him, that sort of retrospective affection, which, when those whom we have loved become altered, whether in mind or person, brings the recollection of what they once were, to mingle with and soften our impression of what they are.
After giving an account of the residence of the family in France, she continues: “We returned to England, when I may say I first became acquainted with my brother — for faint and imperfect were my recollections of him, as might be expected from my age. I saw him; and my childish attachment revived with double force. He was handsome, not merely in the eyes of a partial sister, but generally allowed to be so. His cheeks had the glow of health; his eyes, — the finest in the world, — the brilliancy 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. I would most willingly have sacrificed my life for him, as I, in some measure, proved to him at Bath, where we resided for some time, and where events that you must have heard of engaged him in a duel. My father’s displeasure threatened to involve me in the denunciations against him, for committing what he considered as a crime. Yet I risked everything, and in the event was made happy by obtaining forgiveness for my brother…. You may perceive, dear sister, that very little indeed have I to say on a subject so near your heart, and near mine also. That for years I lost sight of a brother whom I loved with unabated affection — a love that neither absence nor neglect could chill — I always consider as a great misfortune.”
On his leaving Harrow, where he continued till near his eighteenth year, he was brought home by his father, who, with the elder son, Charles, had lately returned from France, and taken a house in London. Here the two brothers for some time received private tuition from Mr. Lewis Kerr, an Irish gentleman, who had formerly practised as a physician, but having, by loss of health, been obliged to give up his profession, supported himself by giving lessons in Latin and Mathematics. They attended also the fencing and riding schools of Mr. Angelo, and received instructions from their father in English grammar and oratory. Of this advantage, however, it is probable, only the elder son availed himself, as Richard, who seems to have been determined to owe all his excellence to nature alone, was found as impracticable a pupil at home as at school. But, however inattentive to his studies he may have been at Harrow, it appears, from one of the letters of his school-fellow, Mr. Halhed, that in poetry, which is usually the first exercise in which these young athletae of intellect try their strength, he had already distinguished himself; and, in conjunction with his friend Halhed, had translated the seventh Idyl, and many of the lesser poems of Theocritus. This literary partnership was resumed soon after their departure from Harrow. In the year 1770, when Halhed was at Oxford, and Sheridan residing with his father at Bath, they entered into a correspondence, (of which, unluckily, only Halhed’s share remains,) and, with all the hope and spirit of young adventurers, began and prosecuted a variety of works together, of which none but their translation of Aristaenetus ever saw the light.
There is something in the alliance between these boys peculiarly interesting. Their united ages, as Halhed boasts in one of his letters, did not amount to thirty-eight. They were both abounding in wit and spirits, a
nd as sanguine as the consciousness of talent and youth could make them; both inspired with a taste for pleasure, and thrown upon their own resources for the means of gratifying it; both carelessly embarking, without rivalry or reserve, their venture of fame in the same bottom, and both, as Halhed discovered at last, passionately in love with the same woman.
It would have given me great pleasure to have been enabled to enliven my pages with even a few extracts from that portion of their correspondence, which, as I have just mentioned, has fallen into my hands. There is in the letters of Mr. Halhed a fresh youthfulness of style, and an unaffected vivacity of thought, which I question whether even his witty correspondent could have surpassed. As I do not, however, feel authorized to lay these letters before the world, I must only avail myself of the aid which their contents supply towards tracing the progress of his literary partnership with Sheridan, and throwing light on a period so full of interest in the life of the latter.
Their first joint production was a farce, or rather play, in three acts, called “Jupiter,” written in imitation of the burletta of Midas, whose popularity seems to have tempted into its wake a number of these musical parodies upon heathen fable. The amour of Jupiter with Major Amphitryon’s wife, and Sir Richard Ixion’s courtship of Juno, who substitutes Miss Peggy Nubilis in her place, form the subject of this ludicrous little drama, of which Halhed furnished the burlesque scenes, — while the form of a rehearsal, into which the whole is thrown, and which, as an anticipation of “The Critic” is highly curious, was suggested and managed entirely by Sheridan. The following extracts will give some idea of the humor of this trifle; and in the character of Simile the reader will at once discover a sort of dim and shadowy pre- existence of Puff: —
“Simile. Sir, you are very ignorant on the subject, — it is the method most in vogue.
“O’Cul. What! to make the music first, and then make the sense to it afterwards!
“Sim. Just so.
“Monop. What Mr. Simile says is very true, gentlemen; and there is nothing surprising in it, if we consider now the general method of writing plays to scenes.
“O’Cul. Writing plays to scenes! — Oh, you are joking.
“Monop. Not I, upon my word. Mr. Simile knows that I have frequently a complete set of scenes from Italy, and then I have nothing to do but to get some ingenious hand to write a play to them.
“Sim. I am your witness, Sir. Gentlemen, you perceive you know nothing about these matters.
“O’Cul. Why, Mr. Simile, I don’t pretend to know much relating to these affairs, but what I think is this, that in this method, according to your principles, you must often commit blunders.
“Sim. 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 Squallini. Now, his method, when seized with the furor harmonicus, 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 here is vary fine, — thrum, thrum, thrum, 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 seas,
And calm the heaven’s dome serene,
Hush’d was the gale and hush’d the breeze,
And not a vapor to be seen.’
I sang it to his notes,— ‘Hah! upon my vord vary pritt, — thrum, thrum, thrum, — stay, stay, — thrum, thrum, — Hoa? upon my vord, here it must be an adagio, — thrum, thrum, — oh! let it be an Ode to Melancholy.’
“Monop. The Devil! — there 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’Cul. Vastly ingenious indeed.
“Sim. Was it not? hey! it required a little command, — a little presence of mind, — but I believe we had better proceed.
“Monop. The sooner the better, — come, gentlemen, resume your seats.
“Sim. Now for it. Draw up the curtain, and (looking at his book) enter Sir Richard Ixion, — but stay, — zounds, Sir Richard ought to overhear Jupiter and his wife quarrelling, — but, never mind, — these accidents have spoilt the division of my piece. — So enter Sir Richard, and look as cunning as if you had overheard them. Now for it, gentlemen, — you can’t be too attentive.
“Enter Sir RICHARD IXION completely dressed, with bag, sword, &c.
“Ix.
‘Fore George, at logger-heads, — a lucky minute,
‘Pon honor, I may make my market in it.
Dem it, my air, address, and mien must touch her,
Now out of sorts with him, — less God than butcher.
O rat the fellow, — where can all his sense lie,
To gallify the lady so immensely?
Ah! le grand bete qu’il est! — how rude the bear is!
The world to two-pence he was ne’er at Paris.
Perdition stop my vitals, — now or never
I’ll niggle snugly into Juno’s favor.
Let’s see, — (looking in a glass) my face, — toll loll —
‘twill work upon her.
My person — oh, immense, upon my honor.
My eyes, — oh fie. — the naughty glass it flatters, —
Courage, — Ixion flogs the world to tatters. [Exit Ixion.]
“Sim. There is a fine gentleman for you, — In the very pink of the mode, with not a single article about him his own, — his words pilfered from Magazines, his address from French valets, and his clothes not paid for.
Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan Page 95
