Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Page 97
Though Sheridan had informed his friend that the translation was put to press some time in March, 1771, it does not appear to have been given into the hands of Wilkie, the publisher, till the beginning of May, when Mr. Ker writes thus to Bath: “Your Aristaenetus is in the hands of Mr. Wilkie, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, and to put you out of suspense at once, will certainly make his appearance about the first of June next, in the form of a neat volume, price 3s or 3s 6d, as may best suit his size, &c., which cannot be more nearly determined at present, I have undertaken the task of correcting for the press…. Some of the Epistles that I have perused seem to me elegant and poetical; in others I could not observe equal beauty, and here and there I could wish there was some little amendment. You will pardon this liberty I take, and set it down to the account of old-fashioned friendship.” Mr. Ker, to judge from his letters, (which, in addition to their other laudable points, are dated with a precision truly exemplary,) was a very kind, useful, and sensible person, and in the sober hue of his intellect exhibited a striking contrast to the sparkling vivacity of the two sanguine and impatient young wits, whose affairs he so good naturedly undertook to negotiate.
At length in August, 1771, Aristaenetus made its appearance — contrary to the advice of the bookseller, and of Mr. Ker, who represented to Sheridan the unpropitiousness of the season, particularly for a first experiment in authorship, and advised the postponement of the publication till October. But the translators were too eager for the rich harvest of emolument they had promised themselves, and too full of that pleasing but often fatal delusion — that calenture, under the influence of which young voyagers to the shores of Fame imagine they already see her green fields and groves in the treacherous waves around them — to listen to the suggestions of mere calculating men of business. The first account they heard of the reception of the work was flattering enough to prolong awhile this dream of vanity. “It begins (writes Mr. Ker, in about a fortnight after the publication,) to make some noise, and is fathered on Mr. Johnson, author of the English Dictionary, &c. See to-day’s Gazetteer. The critics are admirable in discovering a concealed author by his style, manner, &c.”
Their disappointment at the ultimate failure of the book was proportioned, we may suppose, to the sanguineness of their first expectations. But the reluctance with which an author yields to the sad certainty of being unread, is apparent in the eagerness with which Halhed avails himself of every encouragement for a rally of his hopes. The Critical Reviewers, it seems, had given the work a tolerable character, and quoted the first Epistle. [Footnote: In one of the Reviews I have seen it thus spoken of:— “No such writer as Aristaenetus ever existed in the classic era; nor did even the unhappy schools, after the destruction of the Eastern empire, produce such a writer. It was left to the latter times of monkish imposition to give such trash as this, on which the translator has ill spent his time. We have been as idly employed in reading it, and our readers will in proportion lose their time in perusing this article.”] The Weekly Review in the Public Ledger had also spoken well of it, and cited a specimen. The Oxford Magazine had transcribed two whole Epistles, without mentioning from whence they were taken. Every body, he says, seemed to have read the book, and one of those hawking booksellers who attend the coffeehouses assured him it was written by Dr. Armstrong, author of the Oeconomy of Love. On the strength of all this he recommends that another volume of the Epistles 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 in the heads of others to buy the first. Under a sentence containing one of these sanguine anticipations, there is written, in Sheridan’s hand, the word “Quixote!”
They were never, of course, called upon for the second part, and, whether we consider the merits of the original or of the translation, the world has but little to regret in the loss. Aristaenetus is one of those weak, florid sophists, who flourished in the decline and degradation of ancient literature, and strewed their gaudy flowers of rhetoric over the dead muse of Greece. He is evidently of a much later period than Alciphron, to whom he is also very inferior in purity of diction, variety of subject, and playfulness of irony. But neither of them ever deserved to be wakened from that sleep, in which the commentaries of Bergler, De Pauw, and a few more such industrious scholars have shrouded them.
The translators of Aristaenetus, in rendering his flowery prose into verse, might have found a precedent and model for their task in Ben Jonson, whose popular song, “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” is, as Mr. Cumberland first remarked, but a piece of fanciful mosaic, collected out of the love-letters of the sophist Philostratus. But many of the narrations in Aristaenetus are incapable of being elevated into poetry; and, unluckily, these familiar parts seem chiefly to have fallen to the department of Halhed, who was far less gifted than his coadjutor with that artist-like touch, which polishes away the mark of vulgarity, and gives an air of elegance even to poverty. As the volume is not in many hands, the following extract from one of the Epistles may be acceptable — as well from the singularity of the scene described, as from the specimen it affords of the merits of the translation:
“Listen — another pleasure I display,
That help’d delightfully the time away.
From distant vales, where bubbles from its source
A crystal rill, they dug a winding course:
See! thro’ the grove a narrow lake extends,
Crosses each plot, to each plantation bends;
And while the fount in new meanders glides,
The forest brightens with refreshing tides.
Tow’rds us they taught the new-born stream to flow,
Tow’rds us it crept, irresolute and slow;
Scarce had the infant current crickled by,
When lo! a wondrous fleet attracts our eye;
Laden with draughts might greet a monarch’s tongue,
The mimic navigation swam along.
Hasten, ye ship-like goblets, down the vale,
[Footnote: “In the original, this luxurious image is pursued so far
that the very leaf which is represented as the sail of the vessel, is
particularized as of a medicinal nature, capable of preventing any
ill effects the wine might produce.” — Note by the Translator.]
Your freight a flagon, and a leaf your sail;
O may no envious rush thy course impede,
Or floating apple stop thy tide-born speed.
His mildest breath a gentle zephyr gave;
The little vessels trimly stem’d the wave:
Their precious merchandise to land they bore,
And one by one resigned the balmy store.
Stretch but a hand, we boarded them, and quaft
With native luxury the tempered draught.
For where they loaded the nectareous fleet,
The goblet glow’d with too intense a heat;
Cool’d by degrees in these convivial ships,
With nicest taste it met our thirsty lips.”
As a scholar, such as Halhed, could hardly have been led into the mistake, of supposing [Greek: pa Medika phuxa phullon] to mean “a leaf of a medicinal nature,” we may, perhaps, from this circumstance not less than from the superior workmanship of the verses, attribute the whole of this Epistle and notes to Sheridan.
There is another Epistle, the 12th, as evidently from the pen of his friend, the greater part of which is original, and shows, by its raciness and vigor, what difference there is between “the first sprightly runnings” of an author’s own mind, and his cold, vapid transfusion of the thoughts of another. From stanza 10th to the end is all added by the translator, and all spirited — though full of a bold defying libertinism, as unlike as possible to the effeminate lubricity of the poor sophist, upon whom, in a grave, treacherous note, the responsibility of the whole is laid. But by far the most interesting part of the volume is the last Epistle of the book, “F
rom a Lover resigning his Mistress to his Friend,” — in which Halhed has contrived to extract from the unmeaningness of the original a direct allusion to his own fate; and, forgetting Aristaenetus and his dull personages, thinks only of himself, and Sheridan, and Miss Linley.
“Thee, then, my friend, — if yet a wretch may claim
A last attention by that once dear name, —
Thee I address: — the cause you must approve;
I yield you — what I cannot cease to love.
Be thine the blissful lot, the nymph be thine:
I yield my love, — sure, friendship may be mine.
Yet must no thought of me torment thy breast;
Forget me, if my griefs disturb thy rest,
Whilst still I’ll pray that thou may’st never know
The pangs of baffled love, or feel my woe.
But sure to thee, dear, charming — fatal maid!
(For me thou’st charmed, and me thou hast betray’d,)
This last request I need not recommend —
Forget the lover thou, as he the friend.
Bootless such charge! for ne’er did pity move
A heart that mock’d the suit of humble love.
Yet, in some thoughtful hour — if such can be,
Where love, Timocrates, is join’d with thee —
In some lone pause of joy, when pleasures pall,
And fancy broods o’er joys it can’t recall,
Haply a thought of me, (for thou, my friend,
May’st then have taught that stubborn heart to bend,)
A thought of him whose passion was not weak,
May dash one transient blush upon her cheek;
Haply a tear — (for I shall surely then
Be past all power to raise her scorn again — )
Haply, I say, one self-dried tear may fall: —
One tear she’ll give, for whom I yielded all!
* * * * *
* * * * *
My life has lost its aim! — that fatal fair
Was all its object, all its hope or care:
She was the goal, to which my course was bent,
Where every wish, where every thought was sent;
A secret influence darted from her eyes, —
Each look, attraction, and herself the prize.
Concentred there, I liv’d for her alone;
To make her glad and to be blest was one.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Adieu, my friend, — nor blame this sad adieu,
Though sorrow guides my pen, it blames not you.
Forget me— ’tis my pray’r; nor seek to know
The fate of him whose portion must be woe,
Till the cold earth outstretch her friendly arms,
And Death convince me that he can have charms.”
But Halhed’s was not the only heart that sighed deeply and hopelessly for the young Maid of Bath, who appears, indeed, to have spread her gentle conquests to an extent almost unparalleled in the annals of beauty. Her personal charms, the exquisiteness of her musical talents, and the full light of publicity which her profession threw upon both, naturally attracted round her a crowd of admirers, in whom the sympathy of a common pursuit soon kindled into rivalry, till she became at length an object of vanity as well as of love. Her extreme youth, too, — for she was little more than sixteen when Sheridan first met her, — must have removed, even from minds the most fastidious and delicate, that repugnance they might justly have felt to her profession, if she had lived much longer under its tarnishing influence, or lost, by frequent exhibitions before the public, that fine gloss of feminine modesty, for whose absence not all the talents and accomplishments of the whole sex can atone.
She had been, even at this early age, on the point of marriage with Mr. Long, an old gentleman of considerable fortune in Wiltshire, who proved the reality of his attachment to her in a way which few young lovers would be romantic enough to imitate. On her secretly representing to him that she never could be happy as his wife, he generously took upon himself the whole blame of breaking off the alliance, and even indemnified the father, who was proceeding to bring the transaction into court, by settling L3000 upon his daughter. Mr. Sheridan, who owed to this liberal conduct not only the possession of the woman he loved, but the means of supporting her during the first years of their marriage, spoke invariably of Mr. Long, who lived to a very advanced age, with all the kindness and respect which such a disinterested character merited.
It was about the middle of the year 1770 that the Sheridans took up their residence in King’s Mead [Footnote: They also lived, during a part of their stay at Bath, in New King Street.] Street, Bath, where an acquaintance commenced between them and Mr. Linley’s family, which the kindred tastes of the young people soon ripened into intimacy. It was not to be expected, — though parents, in general, are as blind to the first approach of these dangers as they are rigid and unreasonable after they have happened, — that such youthful poets and musicians [Footnote: Dr. Burney, in his Biographical Sketch of Mr. Linley, written for Rees’ Cyclopaedia, calls the Linley family “a nest of nightingales.” The only surviving member of this accomplished family is Mr. William Linley, whose taste and talent, both in poetry and music, most worthily sustain the reputation of the name that he bears.] — should come together without Love very soon making one of the party. Accordingly the two brothers became deeply enamored of Miss Linley. Her heart, however, was not so wholly un-preoccupied as to yield at once to the passion which her destiny had in store for her. One of those transient preferences, which in early youth are mistaken for love, had already taken lively possession of her imagination; and to this the following lines, written at that time by Mr. Sheridan, allude:
TO THE RECORDING ANGEL.
Cherub of Heaven, that from my secret stand
Dost note the follies of each mortal here,
Oh, if Eliza’s steps employ thy hand,
Blot the sad legend with a mortal tear.
Nor when she errs, through passion’s wild extreme,
Mark then her course, nor heed each trifling wrong;
Nor, when her sad attachment is her theme,
Note down the transports of her erring tongue.
But, when she sighs for sorrows not her own,
Let that dear sigh to Mercy’s cause be given;
And bear that tear to her Creator’s throne,
Which glistens in the eye upraised to Heaven!
But in love, as in everything else, the power of a mind like Sheridan’s must have made itself felt through all obstacles and difficulties. He was not long in winning the entire affections of the young “Syren,” though the number and wealth of his rivals, the ambitious views of her father, and the temptations to which she herself was hourly exposed, kept his jealousies and fears perpetually on the watch. He is supposed, indeed, to have been indebted to self-observation for that portrait of a wayward and morbidly sensitive lover, which he has drawn so strikingly in the character of Falkland.
With a mind in this state of feverish wakefulness, it is remarkable that he should so long have succeeded in concealing his attachment from the eyes of those most interested in discovering it. Even his brother Charles was for some time wholly unaware of their rivalry, and went on securely indulging in a passion which it was hardly possible, with such opportunities of intercourse, to resist, and which survived long after Miss Linley’s selection of another had extinguished every hope in his heart, but that of seeing her happy. Halhed, too, who at that period corresponded constantly with Sheridan, and confided to him the love with which he also had been inspired by this enchantress, was for a length of time left in the same darkness upon the subject, and without the slightest suspicion that the epidemic had reached his friend, whose only mode of evading the many tender inquiries and messages with which Halhed’s letters abounded, was by referring to answers which had by some strange fatality miscarried, and which, we may conclude, without much uncharitablen
ess, had never been written.
Miss Linley went frequently to Oxford, to perform at the oratorios and concerts; and it may easily be imagined that the ancient allegory of the Muses throwing chains over Cupid was here reversed, and the quiet shades of learning not a little disturbed by the splendor of these “angel visits.” The letters of Halhed give a lively idea, not only of his own intoxication, but of the sort of contagious delirium, like that at Abdera described by Lucian, with which the young men of Oxford were affected by this beautiful girl. In describing her singing he quotes part of a Latin letter which he himself had written to a friend upon first hearing her; and it is a curious proof of the readiness of Sheridan, notwithstanding his own fertility, to avail himself of the thoughts of others, that we find in this extract, word for word, the same extravagant comparison of the effects of music to the process of Egyptian embalmment— “extracting the brain through the ears” — which was afterwards transplanted into the dialogue of the Duenna: “Mortuum quondam ante aegypti medici quam pollincirent cerebella de auribus unco quodam hamo solebant extrahere; sic de meis auribus non cerebrum, sed cor ipsum exhausit lusciniola, &c., &c.” He mentions, as the rivals most dreaded by her admirers, Norris, the singer, whose musical talents, it was thought, recommended him to her, and Mr. Watts, a gentleman commoner, of very large fortune.