Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Page 118
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“A fat woman trundling into a room on castors — in sitting can only lean against her chair — rings on her fingers, and her fat arms strangled with bracelets, which belt them like corded brawn — rolling and heaving when she laughs with the rattles in her throat, and a most apoplectic ogle — you wish to draw her out, as you would an opera-glass.
* * * * *
“A long lean man with all his limbs rambling — no way to reduce him to compass, unless you could double him like a pocket rule — with his arms spread, he’d lie on the bed of Ware like a cross on a Good Friday bun — standing still, he is a pilaster without a base — he appears rolled out or run up against a wall — so thin that his front face is but the moiety of a profile — if he stands cross-legged, he looks like a caduceus, and put him in a fencing attitude, you will take him for a piece of chevaux- de-frise — to make any use of him, it must be as a spontoon or a fishing- rod — when his wife’s by, he follows like a note of admiration — see them together, one’s a mast, and the other all hulk — she’s a dome and he’s built like a glass-house — when they part, you wonder to see the steeple separate from the chancel, and were they to embrace, he must hang round her neck like a skein of thread on a lace-maker’s bolster — to sing her praise you should choose a rondeau, and to celebrate him you must write all Alexandrines.
“I wouldn’t give a pin to make fine men in love with me — every coquette can do that, and the pain you give these creatures is very trifling. I love out-of-the-way conquests; and as I think my attractions are singular, I would draw singular objects.
“The loadstone of true beauty draws the heaviest substances — not like the fat dowager, who frets herself into warmth to get the notice of a few papier mache fops, as you rub Dutch sealing-wax to draw paper.
* * * * *
“If I were inclined to flatter I would say that, as you are unlike other women, you ought not to be won as they are. Every woman can be gained by time, therefore you ought to be by a sudden impulse. Sighs, devotion, attention weigh with others; but they are so much your due that no one should claim merit from them….
“You should not be swayed by common motives — how heroic to form a marriage for which no human being can guess the inducement — what a glorious unaccountableness! All the world will wonder what the devil you could see in me; and, if you should doubt your singularity, I pledge myself to you that I never yet was endured by woman; so that I should owe every thing to the effect of your bounty, and not by my own superfluous deserts make it a debt, and so lessen both the obligation and my gratitude. In short, every other woman follows her inclination, but you, above all things, should take me, if you do not like me. You will, besides, have the satisfaction of knowing that we are decidedly the worst match in the kingdom — a match, too, that must be all your own work, in which fate could have no hand, and which no foresight could foresee.
* * * * *
“A lady who affects poetry.— ‘I made regular approaches to her by sonnets and rebusses — a rondeau of circumvallation — her pride sapped by an elegy, and her reserve surprised by an impromptu — proceeding to storm with Pindarics, she, at last, saved the further effusion of ink by a capitulation.’
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“Her prudish frowns and resentful looks are as ridiculous as ’twould be to see a board with notice of spring-guns set in a highway, or of Steel- traps in a common — because they imply an insinuation that there is something worth plundering where one would not, in the least, suspect it.
“The expression of her face is at once a denial of all love-suit, and a confession that she never was asked — the sourness of it arises not so much from her aversion to the passion, as from her never having had an opportunity to show it. — Her features are so unfortunately formed that she could never dissemble or put on sweetness enough to induce any one to give her occasion to show her bitterness. — I never saw a woman to whom you would more readily give credit for perfect chastity.
“Lady Clio. ‘What am I reading?’— ‘have I drawn nothing lately? — is the work-bag finished? — how accomplished I am! — has the man been to untune the harpsichord? — does it look as if I had been playing on it?
“‘Shall I be ill to-day? — shall I be nervous?’— ‘Your La’ship was nervous yesterday.’— ‘Was I? — then I’ll have a cold — I haven’t had a cold this fortnight — a cold is becoming — no — I’ll not have a cough; that’s fatiguing — I’ll be quite well.’— ‘You become sickness — your La’ship always looks vastly well when you’re ill.’
“‘Leave the book half read and the rose half finished — you know I love to be caught in the fact.’
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“One who knows that no credit is ever given to his assertions has the more right to contradict his words.
“He goes the western circuit, to pick up small fees and impudence.
* * * * *
“A new wooden leg for Sir Charles Easy.
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“An ornament which proud peers wear all the year round — chimneysweepers only on the first of May.
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“In marriage if you possess any thing very good, it makes you eager to get every thing else good of the same sort.
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“The critic when he gets out of his carriage should always recollect, that his footman behind is gone up to judge as well as himself.
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“She might have escaped in her own clothes, but I suppose she thought it more romantic to put on her brother’s regimentals.”
The rough sketches and fragments of poems, which Mr. Sheridan left behind him, are numerous; but those among them that are sufficiently finished to be cited, bear the marks of having been written when he was very young, and would not much interest the reader — while of the rest it is difficult to find four consecutive lines, that have undergone enough of the toilette of composition to be presentable in print. It was his usual practice, when he undertook any subject in verse, to write down his thoughts first in a sort of poetical prose, — with, here and there, a rhyme or a metrical line, as they might occur — and then, afterwards to reduce with much labor, this anomalous compound to regular poetry. The birth of his prose being, as we have already seen, so difficult, it may be imagined how painful was the travail of his verse. Indeed, the number of tasks which he left unfinished are all so many proofs of that despair of perfection, which those best qualified to attain it are always most likely to feel.
There are some fragments of an Epilogue apparently intended to be spoken in the character of a woman of fashion, which give a lively notion of what the poem would have been, when complete. The high carriages, that had just then come into fashion, are thus adverted to: —
“My carriage stared at! — none so high or fine —
Palmer’s mail-coach shall be a sledge to mine.
* * * * *
No longer now the youths beside us stand,
And talking lean, and leaning press the hand;
But ogling upward, as aloft we sit,
Straining, poor things, their ankles and their wit,
And, much too short the inside to explore,
Hang like supporters, half way up the door.”
The approach of a “veteran husband,” to disturb these flirtations and chase away the lovers, is then hinted at: —
“To persecuted virtue yield assistance,
And for one hour teach younger men their distance,
Make them, in very spite, appear discreet,
And mar the public mysteries of the street.”
The affectation of appearing to make love, while talking on different matters, is illustrated by the following simile:
“So when dramatic statesmen talk apart,
With practis’d gesture and heroic start,
The plot’s their theme, the gaping galleries guess,
While Hull and Fearon think of nothing less.”
The following lines see
m to belong to the same Epilogue: —
“The Campus Martius of St. James’s Street,
Where the beau’s cavalry pace to and fro,
Before they take the field in Rotten Row;
Where Brooks’ Blues and Weltze’s Light Dragoons
Dismount in files and ogle in platoons.”
He had also begun another Epilogue, directed against female gamesters, of which he himself repeated a couplet or two to Mr. Rogers a short time before his death, and of which there remain some few scattered traces among his papers: —
“A night of fretful passion may consume
All that thou hast of beauty’s gentle bloom,
And one distemper’d hour of sordid fear
Print on thy brow the wrinkles of a year.
[Footnote: These four lines, as I have already remarked, are taken — with
little change of the words, but a total alteration of the sentiment — from
the verses which he addressed to Mrs. Sheridan in the year 1773. See page
83.]
* * * * *
Great figure loses, little figure wins.
* * * * *
Ungrateful blushes and disorder’d sighs,
Which love disclaims nor even shame supplies.
* * * * *
Gay smiles, which once belong’d to mirth alone,
And startling tears, which pity dares not own.”
The following stray couplet would seem to have been intended for his description of Corilla: —
“A crayon Cupid, redd’ning into shape,
Betrays her talents to design and scrape.”
The Epilogue, which I am about to give, though apparently finished, has not, as far as I can learn, yet appeared in print, nor am I at all aware for what occasion it was intended.
“In this gay month when, through the sultry hour,
The vernal sun denies the wonted shower,
When youthful Spring usurps maturer sway,
And pallid April steals the blush of May,
How joys the rustic tribe, to view displayed
The liberal blossom and the early shade!
But ah! far other air our soil delights;
Here ‘charming weather’ is the worst of blights.
No genial beams rejoice our rustic train,
Their harvest’s still the better for the rain.
To summer suns our groves no tribute owe,
They thrive in frost, and flourish best in snow.
When other woods resound the feather’d throng,
Our groves, our woods, are destitute of song.
The thrush, the lark, all leave our mimic vale,
No more we boast our Christmas nightingale;
Poor Rossignol — the wonder of his day,
Sung through the winter — but is mute in May.
Then bashful spring, that gilds fair nature’s scene,
O’ercasts our lawns, and deadens every green;
Obscures our sky, embrowns the wooden shade,
And dries the channel of each tin cascade!
Oh hapless we, whom such ill fate betides,
Hurt by the beam which cheers the world besides!
Who love the ling’ring frost, nice, chilling showers,
While Nature’s Benefit — is death to ours;
Who, witch-like, best in noxious mists perform,
Thrive in the tempest, and enjoy the storm.
O hapless we — unless your generous care
Bids us no more lament that Spring is fair,
But plenteous glean from the dramatic soil,
The vernal harvest of our winter’s toil.
For April suns to us no pleasure bring —
Your presence here is all we feel of Spring;
May’s riper beauties here no bloom display,
Your fostering smile alone proclaims it May.”
A poem upon Windsor Castle, half ludicrous and half solemn, appears, from the many experiments which he made upon it, to have cost him considerable trouble. The Castle, he says,
“Its base a mountain, and itself a rock,
In proud defiance of the tempests’ rage,
Like an old gray-hair’d veteran stands each shock —
The sturdy witness of a nobler age.”
He then alludes to the “cockney” improvements that had lately taken place, among which the venerable castle appears, like
“A helmet on a Macaroni’s head —
Or like old Talbot, turn’d into a fop,
With coat embroider’d and scratch wig at top.”
Some verses, of the same mixed character, on the short duration of life and the changes that death produces, thus begin: —
“Of that same tree which gave the box,
Now rattling in the hand of FOX,
Perhaps his coffin shall be made.—”
He then rambles into prose, as was his custom, on a sort of knight- errantry after thoughts and images:— “The lawn thou hast chosen for thy bridal shift — thy shroud may be of the same piece. That flower thou hast bought to feed thy vanity — from the same tree thy corpse may be decked. Reynolds shall, like his colors, fly; and Brown, when mingled with the dust, manure the grounds he once laid out. Death is life’s second childhood; we return to the breast from whence we came, are weaned,….”
There are a few detached lines and couplets of a poem, intended to ridicule some fair invalid, who was much given to falling in love with her physicians: —
“Who felt her pulse, obtained her heart.”
The following couplet, in which he characterizes an amiable friend of his, Dr. Bain, with whom he did not become acquainted till the year 1792, proves these fragments to have been written after that period: —
“Not savage … nor gentle BAIN —
She was in love with Warwick Lane.”
An “Address to the Prince,” on the exposed style of women’s dress, consists of little more than single lines, not yet wedded into couplets; such as— “The more you show, the less we wish to see.”— “And bare their bodies, as they mask their minds,” &c. This poem, however, must have been undertaken many years after his entrance into Parliament, as the following curious political memorandum will prove:— “I like it no better for being from France — whence all ills come — altar of liberty, begrimed at once with blood and mire.”
There are also some Anacreontics — lively, but boyish and extravagant.
For instance, in expressing his love of bumpers: —
“Were mine a goblet that had room
For a whole vintage in its womb,
I still would have the liquor swim
An inch or two above the brim.”
The following specimen is from one of those poems, whose length and completeness prove them to have been written at a time of life when he was more easily pleased, and had not yet arrived at that state of glory and torment for the poet, when
“Toujours mecontent de ce qu’il vient de faire,
Il plait a tout le monde et ne scaurait se plaire:” —
“The Muses call’d, the other morning,
On Phoebus, with a friendly warning
That invocations came so fast,
They must give up their trade at last,
And if he meant t’ assist them all,
The aid of Nine would be too small.
Me then, as clerk, the Council chose,
To tell this truth in humble prose. —
But Phoebus, possibly intending
To show what all their hopes must end in,
To give the scribbling youths a sample,
And frighten them by my example,
Bade me ascend the poet’s throne,
And give them verse — much like their own.
“Who has not heard each poet sing
The powers of Heliconian spring?
Its noble virtues we are told
By all the rhyming crew of old. —
Drink but a little of its well,
While such rhyme-giving pow’rs run through it,
A quart would make an epic poet,” &c. &c.
A poem on the miseries of a literary drudge begins thus promisingly: —
“Think ye how dear the sickly meal is bought,
By him who works at verse and trades in thought?”
The rest is hardly legible; but there can be little doubt that he would have done this subject justice; — for he had himself tasted of the bitterness with which the heart of a man of genius overflows, when forced by indigence to barter away (as it is here expressed) “the reversion of his thoughts,” and
“Forestall the blighted harvest of his brain.”
It will be easily believed that, in looking over the remains, both dramatic and poetical, from which the foregoing specimens are taken, I have been frequently tempted to indulge in much ampler extracts. It appeared to me, however, more prudent to rest satisfied with the selections here given; for, while less would have disappointed the curiosity of the reader, more might have done injustice to the memory of the author.
CHAPTER VIII.
HIS FIRST SPEECHES IN PARLIAMENT. — ROCKINGHAM ADMINISTRATION. — COALITION. — INDIA BILL. — RE-ELECTION FOR STAFFORD.
The period at which Mr. Sheridan entered upon his political career was, in every respect, remarkable. A persevering and vindictive war against America, with the folly and guilt of which the obstinacy of the Court and the acquiescence of the people are equally chargeable, was fast approaching that crisis, which every unbiassed spectator of the contest had long foreseen, — and at which, however humiliating to the haughty pretensions of England, every friend to the liberties of the human race rejoiced. It was, perhaps, as difficult for this country to have been long and virulently opposed to such principles as the Americans asserted in this contest, without being herself corrupted by the cause which she maintained, as it was for the French to have fought, in the same conflict, by the side of the oppressed, without catching a portion of that enthusiasm for liberty, which such an alliance was calculated to inspire. Accordingly, while the voice of philosophy was heard along the neighboring shores, speaking aloud those oracular warnings, which preceded the death of the Great Pan of Despotism, the courtiers and lawyers of England were, with an emulous spirit of servility, advising and sanctioning such strides of power, as would not have been unworthy of the most dark and slavish times.