Chapter I (2)

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, "From 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 uncharitableness, 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.

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.