Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan

by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  While all hearts and tongues were thus occupied about Miss Linley, it is not wonderful that rumors of matrimony and elopement should, from time to time, circulate among her apprehensive admirers; or that the usual ill-compliment should be paid to her sex of supposing that wealth must be the winner of the prize. It was at one moment currently reported at Oxford that she had gone off to Scotland with a young man of L3,000 a year, and the panic which the intelligence spread is described in one of these letters to Sheridan, (who, no doubt, shared in it) as producing “long faces” everywhere. Not only, indeed, among her numerous lovers, but among all who delighted in her public performances, an alarm would naturally be felt at the prospect of her becoming private property:

  “Te juga Taygeti, posito te Maenala flebunt Venatu, maestoque diu lugebere Cyntho. Delphica quinetiam fratris delubra tacebunt.”

  [Footnote: Claudian. De Rapt. Proserp. Lib. ii. v. 244.]

  Thee, thee, when hurried from our eyes away,

  Laconia’s hills shall mourn for many a day —

  The Arcadian hunter shall forget his chase,

  And turn aside to think upon that face;

  While many an hour Apollo’s songless shrine

  Shall wait in silence for a voice like thine!

  But to the honor of her sex, which is, in general, more disinterested than the other, it was found that neither rank nor wealth had influenced her heart in its election; and Halhed, who, like others, had estimated the strength of his rivals by their rent-rolls, discovered at last that his unpretending friend, Sheridan, (whose advances in courtship and in knowledge seem to have been equally noiseless and triumphant,) was the chosen favorite of her, at whose feet so many fortunes lay. Like that Saint, Cecilia, by whose name she was always called, she had long welcomed to her soul a secret visitant, [Footnote: “The youth, found in her chamber, had in his hand two crowns or wreaths, the one of lilies, the other of roses, which he had brought from Paradise.” — Legend of St. Cecilia.] whose gifts were of a higher and more radiant kind than the mere wealthy and lordly of this world can proffer. A letter, written by Halhed on the prospect of his departure for India, [Footnote: The letter is evidently in answer to one which he had just received from Sheridan, in which Miss Linley had written a few words expressive of her wishes for his health and happiness. Mr. Halhed sailed for India about the latter end of this year.] alludes so delicately to this discovery, and describes the state of his own heart so mournfully, that I must again, in parting with him and his correspondence, express the strong regret that I feel at not being able to indulge the reader with a perusal of these letters. Not only as a record of the first short flights of Sheridan’s genius, but as a picture, from the life, of the various feelings of youth, its desires and fears, its feverish hopes and fanciful melancholy, they could not have failed to be read with the deepest interest.

  To this period of Mr. Sheridan’s life we are indebted for most of those elegant love-verses, which are so well known and so often quoted. The lines “Uncouth is this moss-covered grotto of stone,” were addressed to Miss Linley, after having offended her by one of those lectures upon decorum of conduct, which jealous lovers so frequently inflict upon their mistresses, — and the grotto, immortalized by their quarrel, is supposed to have been in Spring Gardens, then the fashionable place of resort in Bath.

  I have elsewhere remarked that the conceit in the following stanza resembles a thought in some verses of Angerianus: —

  And thou, stony grot, in thy arch may’st preserve

  Two lingering drops of the night-fallen dew,

  Let them fall on her bosom of snow, and they’ll serve

  As tears of my sorrow entrusted to you.

  At quum per niveam cervicem influxerit humor

  Dicite non roris sed pluvia haec lacrimae.

  Whether Sheridan was likely to have been a reader of Angerianus is, I think, doubtful — at all events the coincidence is curious.

  “Dry be that tear, my gentlest love,” is supposed to have been written at a later period; but it was most probably produced at the time of his courtship, for he wrote but few love verses after his marriage — like the nightingale (as a French editor of Bonefonius says, in remarking a similar circumstance of that poet) “qui developpe le charme de sa voix tant qu’il vent plaire a sa compagne — sont-ils unis? il se tait, il n’a plus le besoin de lui plaire.” This song having been hitherto printed incorrectly, I shall give it here, as it is in the copies preserved by his relations.

  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; —

  How long, ah 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 breathed for you,

  Must yield that faithful breath?

  Hush’d be that sigh, be dry that tear,

  Nor let us lose our Heaven here. —

  Dry be that tear.

  [Footnote: An Elegy by Halhed, transcribed in one of his letters to

  Sheridan, begins thus:

  “Dry be that tear, be hush’d that struggling sigh.”]

  There is in the second stanza here a close resemblance to one of the madrigals of Montreuil, a French poet, to whom Sir J. Moore was indebted for the point of his well known verses, “If in that breast, so good, so pure.” [Footnote:

  The grief that on my quiet preys,

  That rends my heart and checks my tongue,

  I fear will last me all my days,

  And feel it will not last me long.

  It is thus in Montreuil:

  C’est un mal que j’aurai tout le terns de ma vie

  Mais je ne l’aurai pas long-tems.]

  Mr. Sheridan, however, knew nothing of French, and neglected every opportunity of learning it, till, by a very natural process, his ignorance of the language grew into hatred of it. Besides, we have the immediate source from which he derived the thought of this stanza, in one of the essays of Hume, who, being a reader of foreign literature, most probably found it in Montreuil. [Footnote: Or in an Italian song of Menage, from which Montreuil, who was accustomed to such thefts, most probably stole it. The point in the Italian is, as far as I can remember it, expressed thus:

  In van, o Filli, tu chiedi

  Se lungamente durera Pardore

  * * * * *

  Chi lo potrebbe dire?

  Incerta, o Filli, e l’ora del morire.]

  The passage in Hume (which Sheridan has done little more than versify) is as follows:— “Why so often ask me, How long my love shall yet endure? Alas, my Caelia, can I resolve the question? Do I know how long my life shall yet endure?” [Footnote: The Epicurean]

  The pretty lines, “Mark’d you her cheek of rosy hue?” were written not upon Miss Linley, as has been generally stated, but upon Lady Margaret Fordyce, and form part of a poem which he published in 1771, descriptive of the principal beauties of Bath, entitled “Clio’s Protest, or the Picture varnished,” — being an answer to some verses by Mr. Miles Peter Andrews, called “The Bath Picture,” in which Lady Margaret was thus introduced:

  “Remark too the dimpling, sweet smile

  Lady Marg’ret’s fine countenance wears.”

  The following is the passage in Mr. Sheridan’s poem, entire; and the beauty of the six favorite lines shines out so conspicuously, that we cannot wonder at their having been so soon detached, like ill-set jems, from the loose and clumsy workmanship
around them.

  “But, hark! — did not our bard repeat

  The love-born name of M-rg-r-t? —

  Attention seizes every ear;

  “We pant for the description here:

  If ever dulness left thy brow,

  ‘Pindar,’ we say, ‘‘twill leave thee now.’

  But O! old Dulness’ son anointed

  His mother never disappointed! —

  And here we all were left to seek

  A dimple in F-rd-ce’s cheek!

  “And 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!”

  There is little else in this poem worth being extracted, though it consists of about four hundred lines; except, perhaps, his picture of a good country housewife, which affords an early specimen of that neat pointedness of phrase, which gave his humor, both poetic and dramatic, such a peculiar edge and polish: —

  “We see the Dame, in rustic pride,

  A bunch of keys to grace her side,

  Stalking across the well-swept entry,

  To hold her council in the pantry;

  Or, with prophetic soul, foretelling

  The peas will boil well by the shelling;

  Or, bustling in her private closet,

  Prepare her lord his morning posset;

  And, while the hallowed mixture thickens,

  Signing death-warrants for the chickens:

  Else, greatly pensive, poring o’er

  Accounts her cook had thumbed before;

  One eye cast up upon that great book,

  Yclep’d The Family Receipt Book;

  By which she’s ruled in all her courses,

  From stewing figs to drenching horses.

  — Then pans and pickling skillets rise,

  In dreadful lustre, to our eyes,

  With store of sweetmeats, rang’d in order,

  And potted nothings on the border;

  While salves and caudle-cups between,

  With squalling children, close the scene.”

  We find here, too, the source of one of those familiar lines, which so many quote without knowing whence they come; — one of those stray fragments, whose parentage is doubtful, but to which (as the law says of illegitimate children) “pater est populus.”

  “You write with ease, to show your breeding, But easy writing’s curst hard reading.”

  In the following passage, with more of the tact of a man of the world than the ardor of a poet, he dismisses the object nearest his heart with the mere passing gallantry of a compliment: —

  “O! should your genius ever rise,

  And make you Laureate in the skies,

  I’d hold my life, in twenty years,

  You’d spoil the music of the spheres.

  — Nay, should the rapture-breathing Nine

  In one celestial concert join,

  Their sovereign’s power to rehearse,

  — Were you to furnish them with verse,

  By Jove, I’d fly the heavenly throng,

  Though Phoebus play’d and Linley sung.”

  On the opening of the New Assembly Rooms at Bath, which commenced with a ridotto, Sept. 30, 1771, he wrote a humorous description of the entertainment, called “An Epistle from Timothy Screw to his Brother Henry, Waiter at Almack’s,” which appeared first in the Bath Chronicle, and was so eagerly sought after, that Crutwell, the editor, was induced to publish it in a separate form. The allusions in this trifle have, of course, lost their zest by time; and a specimen or two of its humor will be all that is necessary here.

  “Two rooms were first opened — the long and the round one,

  (These Hogstyegon names only serve to confound one,)

  Both splendidly lit with the new chandeliers,

  With drops hanging down like the bobs at Peg’s ears:

  While jewels of paste reflected the rays,

  And Bristol-stone diamonds gave strength to the blaze:

  So that it was doubtful, to view the bright clusters,

  Which sent the most light out, the ear-rings or lustres.

  * * * *

  Nor less among you was the medley, ye fair!

  I believe there were some besides quality there:

  Miss Spiggot, Miss Brussels, Miss Tape, and Miss

  Socket,

  Miss Trinket, and aunt, with her leathern pocket,

  With good Mrs. Soaker, who made her old chin go,

  For hours, hobnobbing with Mrs. Syringo:

  Had Tib staid at home, I b’lieve none would have miss’d her,

  Or pretty Peg Runt, with her tight little sister,” &c. &c.

  CHAPTER II.

  DUELS WITH MR. MATHEWS. — MARRIAGE WITH MISS LINLEY.

  Towards the close of the year 1771, the elder Mr. Sheridan went to Dublin, to perform at the theatre of that city, — leaving his young and lively family at Bath, with nothing but their hearts and imaginations to direct them.

  The following letters, which passed between him and his son Richard during his absence, though possessing little other interest than that of having been written at such a period, will not, perhaps, be unwelcome to the reader: —

  “Dublin, Dec. 7th, 1771.

  “MY DEAR RICHARD,

  “How could you be so wrong-headed as to commence cold bathing at such a season of the year, and I suppose without any preparation too? You have paid sufficiently for your folly, but I hope the ill effects of it have been long since over. You and your brother are fond of quacking, a most dangerous disposition with regard to health. Let slight things pass away themselves; in a case that requires assistance do nothing without advice. Mr. Crook is a very able man in his way. Should a physician be at any time wanting, apply to Dr. Nesbitt, and tell him at leaving Bath I recommended you all to his care. This indeed I intended to have mentioned to him, but it slipped my memory. I forgot Mr. Crook’s bill, too, but desire I may have the amount by the next letter. Pray what is the meaning of my hearing so seldom from Bath? Six weeks here, and but two letters! You were very tardy; what are your sisters about? I shall not easily forgive any future omissions. I suppose Charles received my answer to his, and the 20l from Whately. I shall order another to be sent at Christmas for the rent and other necessaries. I have not time at present to enter upon the subject of English authors, &c. but shall write to you upon that head when I get a little leisure. Nothing can be conceived in a more deplorable state than the stage of Dublin. I found two miserable companies opposing and starving each other. I chose the least bad of them; and, wretched as they are, it has had no effect on my nights, numbers having been turned away every time I played, and the receipts have been larger than when I had Barry, his wife, and Mrs. Fitz-Henry to play with me. However, I shall not be able to continue it long, as there is no possibility of getting up a sufficient number of plays with such poor materials. I purpose to have done the week after next, and apply vigorously to the material point which brought me over. I find all ranks and parties very zealous for forwarding my scheme, and have reason to believe it will be carried in parliament after the recess, without opposition. It was in vain to have attempted it before, for never was party violence [Footnote: The money-bill, brought forward this year under Lord Townsend’s administration, encountered violent opposition, and was finally rejected.] carried to such a height as in this sessions; the House seldom breaking up till eleven or twelve at night. From these contests, the desi
re of improving in the article of elocution is become very general. There are no less than five persons of rank and fortune now waiting my leisure to become my pupils. Remember me to all friends, particularly to our good landlord and landlady. I am, with love and blessing to you all,

  “Your affectionate father,

  “THOMAS SHERIDAN.

  “P. S. — Tell your sisters I shall send the poplins as soon as I can get an opportunity.”

  “DEAR FATHER,

  “We have been for some time in hopes of receiving a letter, that we might know that you had acquitted us of neglect in writing. At the same time we imagine that the time is not far when writing will be unnecessary; and we cannot help wishing to know the posture of the affairs, which, as you have not talked of returning, seem probable to detain you longer than you intended. I am perpetually asked when Mr. Sheridan is to have his patent for the theatre, which all the Irish here take for granted, and I often receive a great deal of information from them on the subject. Yet I cannot help being vexed when I see in the Dublin papers such bustling accounts of the proceedings of your House of Commons, as I remember it was your argument against attempting any thing from parliamentary authority in England. However, the folks here regret you, as one that is to be fixed in another kingdom, and will scarcely believe that you will ever visit Bath at all; and we are often asked if we have not received the letter which is to call us over.

  “I could scarcely have conceived that the winter was so near departing, were I not now writing after dinner by daylight. Indeed the first winter-season is not yet over at Bath. They have balls, concerts, &c. at the rooms, from the old subscription still, and the spring ones are immediately to succeed them. They are likewise going to perform oratorios here. Mr. Linley and his whole family, down to the seven year olds, are to support one set at the new rooms, and a band of singers from London another at the old. Our weather here, or the effects of it, have been so uninviting to all kinds of birds, that there has not been the smallest excuse to take a gun into the fields this winter; — a point more to the regret of Charles than myself.