Thomas Moore- Collected Poetical Works

by Thomas Moore

  “Junius said in a public letter of his, addressed to Your Royal Father, ‘the fate that made you a King forbad your having a friend.’ I deny his proposition as a general maxim — I am confident that Your Royal Highness possesses qualities to win and secure to you the attachment and devotion of private friendship, in spite of your being a Sovereign. At least I feel that I am entitled to make this declaration as far as relates to myself — and I do it under the assured conviction that you will never require from me any proof of that attachment and devotion inconsistent with the clear and honorable independence of mind and conduct, which constitute my sole value as a public man, and which have hitherto been my best recommendation to your gracious favor, confidence, and protection.”

  It is to be regretted that while by this wise advice he helped to save His Royal Master from the invidious appearance of acting upon a principle of exclusion, he should, by his private management afterwards, have but too well contrived to secure to him all the advantage of that principle in reality.

  The political career of Sheridan was now drawing fast to a close. He spoke but upon two or three other occasions during the Session; and among the last sentences uttered by him in the House were the following; — which, as calculated to leave a sweeter flavor on the memory, at parting, than those questionable transactions that have just been related, I have great pleasure in citing: —

  “My objection to the present Ministry, is that they are avowedly arrayed and embodied against a principle, — that of concession to the Catholics of Ireland, — which I think, and must always think, essential to the safety of this empire. I will never give my vote to any Administration that opposes the question of Catholic Emancipation. I will not consent to receive a furlough upon that particular question, even though a Ministry were carrying every other that I wished. In fine, I think the situation of Ireland a paramount consideration. If they were to be the last words I should ever utter in this House, I should say, ‘Be just to Ireland, as you value your own honor, — be just to Ireland, as you value your own peace.’”

  His very last words in Parliament, on his own motion relative to the

  Overtures of Peace from France, were as follow: —

  “Yet after the general subjugation and ruin of Europe, should there ever exist an independent historian to record the awful events that produced this universal calamity, let that historian have to say,— ‘Great Britain fell, and with her fell all the best securities for the charities of human life, for the power and honor, the fame, the glory, and the liberties, not only of herself, but of the whole civilized world.’” In the month of September following, Parliament was dissolved; and, presuming upon the encouragement which he had received from some of his Stafford friends, he again tried his chance of election for that borough, but without success. This failure he, himself, imputed, as will be seen by the following letter, to the refusal of Mr. Whitbread to advance him 2000l. out of the sum due to him by the Committee for his share of the property: —

  “DEAR WHITBREAD,

  “Cook’s Hotel, Nov. 1, 1812.

  “I was misled to expect you in town the beginning of last week, but being positively assured that you will arrive to-morrow, I have declined accompanying Hester into Hampshire as I intended, and she has gone to-day without me; but I must leave town to join her as soon as I can. We must have some serious but yet, I hope, friendly conversation respecting my unsettled claims on the Drury-Lane Theatre Corporation. A concluding paragraph, in one of your last letters to Burgess, which he thought himself justified in showing me, leads me to believe that it is not your object to distress or destroy me. On the subject of your refusing to advance to me the 2000l.. I applied for to take with me to Stafford, out of the large sum confessedly due to me, (unless I signed some paper containing I know not what, and which you presented to my breast like a cocked pistol on the last day I saw you,) I will not dwell. This, and this alone, lost me my election. You deceive yourself if you give credit to any other causes, which the pride of my friends chose to attribute our failure to, rather than confess our poverty. I do not mean now to expostulate with you, much less to reproach you, but sure I am that when you contemplate the positive injustice of refusing me the accommodation I required, and the irreparable injury that refusal has cast on me, overturning, probably, all the honor and independence of what remains of my political life, you will deeply reproach yourself.

  “I shall make an application to the Committee, when I hear you have appointed one, for the assistance which most pressing circumstances now compel me to call for; and all I desire is, through a sincere wish that our friendship may not be interrupted, that the answer to that application may proceed from a bonâ fide Committee, with their signatures, testifying their decision.

  “I am, yet,

  “Yours very sincerely,

  “S. Whitbread, Esq.

  “R. B. SHERIDAN.”

  Notwithstanding the angry feeling which is expressed in this letter, and which the state of poor Sheridan’s mind, goaded as he was now by distress and disappointment, may well excuse, it will be seen by the following letter from Whitbread, written on the very eve of the elections in September, that there was no want of inclination, on the part of this honorable and excellent man, to afford assistance to his friend, — but that the duties of the perplexing trust which he had undertaken rendered such irregular advances as Sheridan required impossible: —

  ‘MY DEAR SHERIDAN,

  “We will not enter into details, although you are quite mistaken in them. You know how happy I shall be to propose to the Committee to agree to anything practicable; and you may make all practicable, if you will have resolution to look at the state of the account between you and the Committee, and agree to the mode of its liquidation.

  “You will recollect the 5000l. pledged to Peter Moore to answer demands; the certificates given to Giblet, Ker, Ironmonger, Cross, and Hirdle, five each at your request; the engagements given to Ellis and myself, and the arrears to the Linley family. All this taken into consideration will leave a large balance still payable to you. Still there are upon that balance the claims upon you by Shaw, Taylor, and Grubb, for all of which you have offered to leave the whole of your compensation in my hands, to abide the issue of arbitration.

  “This may be managed by your agreeing to take a considerable portion of your balance in bonds, leaving those bonds in trust to answer the events.

  “I shall be in town on Monday to the Committee, and will be prepared with a sketch of the state of your account with the Committee, and with the mode in which I think it would be prudent for you and them to adjust it; which if you will agree to, and direct the conveyance to be made forthwith, I will undertake to propose the advance of money you wish. But without a clear arrangement, as a justification, nothing can be done.

  “I shall be in Dover-Street at nine o’clock, and be there and in Drury-Lane all day. The Queen comes, but the day is not fixed. The election will occupy me after Monday. After that is over, I hope we shall see you.

  “Yours very truly,

  “Southill, Sept. 25, 1812.

  “S. WHITBREAD.”

  The feeling entertained by Sheridan towards the Committee had already been strongly manifested this year by the manner in which Mrs. Sheridan received the Resolution passed by them, offering her the use of a box in the new Theatre. The notes of Whitbread to Mrs. Sheridan on this subject, prove how anxious he was to conciliate the wounded feelings of his friend: —

  “MY DEAR ESTHER,

  “I have delayed sending the enclosed Resolution of the Drury-Lane Committee to you, because I had hoped to have found a moment to have called upon you, and to have delivered it into your hands. But I see no chance of that, and therefore literally obey my instructions in writing to you.

  “I had great pleasure in proposing the Resolution, which was cordially and unanimously adopted. I had it always in contemplation, — but to have proposed it earlier would have been improper. I hope you will derive much amu
sement from your visits to the Theatre, and that you and all of your name will ultimately be pleased with what has been done. I have just had a most satisfactory letter from Tom Sheridan.

  “I am,

  “My dear Esther,

  “Affectionately yours,

  “Dover-Street, July 4, 1812.

  “SAMUEL WHITBREAD.”

  “MY DEAR ESTHER,

  “It has been a great mortification and disappointment to me, to have met the Committee twice, since the offer of the use of a box at the new Theatre was made to you, and that I have not had to report the slightest acknowledgment from you in return.

  “The Committee meet again tomorrow, and after that there will be no meeting for some time. If I shall be compelled to return the same blank answer I have hitherto done, the inference drawn will naturally be, that what was designed by himself, who moved it, and by those who voted it, as a gratifying mark of attention to Sheridan through you, (as the most gratifying mode of conveying it,) has, for some unaccountable reason, been mistaken and is declined.

  “But I shall be glad to know before to-morrow, what is your determination on the subject.

  “I am, dear Esther,

  “Affectionately yours,

  “Dover-Street, July 12, 1812.”

  “S. WHITBREAD.

  The failure of Sheridan at Stafford completed his ruin. He was now excluded both from the Theatre and from Parliament: — the two anchors by which he held in life were gone, and he was left a lonely and helpless wreck upon the waters. The Prince Regent offered to bring him into Parliament; but the thought of returning to that scene of his triumphs and his freedom, with the Royal owner’s mark, as it were, upon him, was more than he could bear — and he declined the offer. Indeed, miserable and insecure as his life was now, when we consider the public humiliations to which he would have been exposed, between his ancient pledge to Whiggism and his attachment and gratitude to Royalty, it is not wonderful that he should have preferred even the alternative of arrests and imprisonments to the risk of bringing upon his political name any further tarnish in such a struggle. Neither could his talents have much longer continued to do themselves justice, amid the pressure of such cares, and the increased indulgence of habits, which, as is usual, gained upon him, as all other indulgences vanished. The ancients, we are told, by a significant device, inscribed on the wreaths they wore at banquets the name of Minerva. Unfortunately, from the festal wreath of Sheridan this name was now but too often effaced; and the same charm, that once had served to give a quicker flow to thought, was now employed to muddy the stream, as it became painful to contemplate what was at the bottom of it. By his exclusion, therefore, from Parliament, he was, perhaps, seasonably saved from affording to that “Folly, which loves the martyrdom of Fame,” [Footnote: “And Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.”

  This fine line is in Lord Byron’s Monody to his memory. There is another line, equally true and touching, where, alluding to the irregularities of the latter part of Sheridan’s life, he says —

  “And what to them seem’d vice might be but woe.”] the spectacle of a great mind, not only surviving itself, but, like the champion in Berni, continuing the combat after life is gone: —

  “Andava combattendo, ed era morto.”

  In private society, however, he could, even now, (before the Rubicon of the cup was passed,) fully justify his high reputation for agreeableness and wit; and a day which it was my good fortune to spend with him, at the table of Mr. Rogers, has too many mournful, as well as pleasant, associations connected with it, to be easily forgotten by the survivors of the party. The company consisted but of Mr. Rogers himself, Lord Byron, Mr. Sheridan, and the writer of this Memoir. Sheridan knew the admiration his audience felt for him; the presence of the young poet, in particular, seemed to bring back his own youth and wit; and the details he gave of his early life were not less interesting and animating to himself than delightful to us. It was in the course of this evening that, describing to us the poem which Mr. Whitbread had written and sent in, among the other Addresses, for the opening of Drury-Lane, and which, like the rest, turned chiefly on allusions to the Phenix, he said,— “But Whitbread made more of this bird than any of them: — he entered into particulars, and described its wings, beak, tail, &c.; in short, it was a Poulterer’s description of a Phenix!”

  The following extract from a Diary in my possession, kept by Lord Byron during six months of his residence in London, 1812-13, will show the admiration which this great and generous spirit felt for Sheridan: —

  “Saturday, December 18, 1813.

  “Lord Holland told me a curious piece of sentimentality in Sheridan. The other night we were all delivering our respective and various opinions on him and other ‘hommes marquans,’ and mine was this:— ‘Whatever Sheridan has done or chosen to do has been par excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy, (School for Scandal,) the best opera, (The Duenna — in my mind far before that St. Giles’s lampoon, The Beggar’s Opera,) the best farce, (The Critic — it is only too good for an after-piece,) and the best Address, (Monologue on Garrick,) — and to crown all, delivered the very best oration, (the famous Begum Speech,) ever conceived or heard in this country.’ Somebody told Sheridan this the next day, and on hearing it, he burst into tears! — Poor Brinsley! If they were tears of pleasure, I would rather have said those few, but sincere, words, than have written the Iliad, or made his own celebrated Philippic. Nay, his own comedy never gratified me more than to hear that he had derived a moment’s gratification from any praise of mine — humble as it must appear to ‘my elders and my betters.’”

  The distresses of Sheridan now increased every day, and through the short remainder of his life it is a melancholy task to follow him. The sum arising from the sale of his theatrical property was soon exhausted by the various claims upon it, and he was driven to part with all that he most valued, to satisfy further demands and provide for the subsistence of the day. Those books which, as I have already mentioned, were presented to him by various friends, now stood in their splendid bindings, [Footnote: In most of them, too, were the names of the givers. The delicacy with which Mr. Harrison of Wardour-Street, (the pawnbroker with whom the books and the cup were deposited,) behaved, after the death of Mr. Sheridan, deserves to be mentioned with praise. Instead of availing himself of the public feeling at that moment, by submitting these precious relics to the competition of a sale, he privately communicated to the family and one or two friends of Sheridan the circumstance of his having such articles in his hands, and demanded nothing more than the sum regularly due on them. The Stafford cup is in the possession of Mr. Charles Sheridan.] on the shelves of the pawnbroker. The handsome cup, given him by the electors of Stafford, shared the same fate. Three or four fine pictures by Gainsborough, and one by Morland, were sold for little more than five hundred pounds; [Footnote: In the following extract from a note to his solicitor, he refers to these pictures:

  “DEAR BURGESS,

  “I am perfectly satisfied with your account; — nothing can be more clear or fair, or more disinterested on your part; — but I must grieve to think that five or six hundred pounds for my poor pictures are added to the expenditure. However, we shall come through!”] and even the precious portrait of his first wife, [Footnote: As Saint Cecilia. The portrait of Mrs. Sheridan at Knowle, though less ideal than that of Sir Joshua, is, (for this very reason, perhaps, as bearing a closer resemblance to the original,) still more beautiful.] by Reynolds, though not actually sold during his life, vanished away from his eyes into other hands.

  One of the most humiliating trials of his pride was yet to come. In the spring of this year he was arrested and carried to a spunging-house, where he remained two or three days. This abode, from which the following painful letter to Whitbread was written, formed a sad contrast to those Princely halls, of which he had so lately been the most brilliant and favored guest, and which were possibly, at that very moment, lighted up and crowded
with gay company, unmindful of him within those prison walls: —

  “Tooke’s Court, Cursitor-Street, Thursday, past two.

  “I have done everything in my power with the solicitors, White and Founes, to obtain my release, by substituting a better security for them than their detaining me — but in vain.

  “Whitbread, putting all false professions of friendship and feeling out of the question, you have no right to keep me here! — for it is in truth your act — if you had not forcibly withheld from me the twelve thousand pounds, in consequence of a threatening letter from a miserable swindler, whose claim YOU in particular knew to be a lie, I should at least have been out of the reach of this state of miserable insult — for that, and that only, lost me my seat in Parliament. And I assert that you cannot find a lawyer in the land, that is not either a natural-born fool or a corrupted scoundrel, who will not declare that your conduct in this respect was neither warrantable nor legal — but let that pass for the present.

  “Independently of the 1000l. ignorantly withheld from me on the day of considering my last claim. I require of you to answer the draft I send herewith on the part of the Committee, pledging myself to prove to them on the first day I can personally meet them, that there are still thousands and thousands due to me, both legally, and equitably, from the Theatre. My word ought to be taken on this subject; and you may produce to them this document, if one, among them could think that, under all the circumstances, your conduct required a justification. O God! with what mad confidence have I trusted your word, — I ask justice from you, and no boon. I enclosed you yesterday three different securities, which had you been disposed to have acted even as a private friend, would have made it certain that you might have done so without the smallest risk. These you discreetly offered to put into the fire, when you found the object of your humane visit satisfied by seeing me safe in prison.

  “I shall only add, that, I think, if I know myself, had our lots been reversed, and I had seen you in my situation, and had left Lady E. in that of my wife, I would have risked 600l. rather than have left you so — although I had been in no way accessory in bringing you into that condition.