Chapter V: Part 5

This brilliant play, the earliest idea of which was derived from its author's experience of the gossip of that kettle of scandal and backbiting, Bath, where, if no other commandment were ever broken, the constant breach of the ninth would suffice to put it on a level with certain condemned cities we have somewhere read of, won for Sheridan a reputation of which he at once felt the value, and made his purchase of a share in the property of Old Drury for the time being, a successful speculation. It produced a result which his good heart perhaps valued even more than the guineas which now flowed in; it induced his father, who had long been at war with him, to seek a reconciliation, and the elder Sheridan actually became manager of the theatre of which his son was part proprietor.

Old Tom Sheridan had always been a proud man, and when once he was offended, was hard to bring round again. His quarrel with Johnson was an instance of this. In 1762 the Doctor, hearing they had given Sheridan a pension of two hundred a year, exclaimed, 'What have they given _him_ a pension? then it is time for me to give up mine.' A 'kind friend' took care to repeat the peevish exclamation, without adding what Johnson had said immediately afterwards, 'However, I am glad that they have given Mr. Sheridan a pension, for he is a very good man.' The actor was disgusted; and though Boswell interfered, declined to be reconciled. On one occasion he even rushed from a house at which he was to dine, when he heard that the great Samuel had been invited. The Doctor had little opinion of Sheridan's declamation. 'Besides, sir,' said he, 'what influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this great country by his narrow exertions. Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover to show light at Calais.' Still, when Garrick attacked his rival, Johnson nobly defended him. 'No sir,' he said, 'there is to be sure, in Sheridan, something to reprehend, and everything to laugh at; but, sir, he is not a bad man. No, sir, were mankind to be divided into good and bad, he would stand considerably within the ranks of the good.'

However, the greatest bully of his age (and the kindest-hearted man) thought very differently of the son. Richard Brinsley had written a prologue to Savage's play of 'Sir Thomas Overbury'--

'Ill-fated Savage, at whose birth was giv'n
No parent but the Muse, no friend but Heav'n;'

and in this had paid an elegant compliment to the great lexicographer, winding up with these lines:--

'So pleads the tale that gives to future times
The son's misfortunes and the parent's crimes;
There shall his fame, if own'd to-night, survive,
Fix'd _by the hand that bids our language live_--

referring at once to Johnson's life of his friend Savage and to his great Dictionary. It was Savage, every one remembers, with whom Johnson in his days of starvation was wont to walk the streets all night, neither of them being able to pay for a lodging, and with whom, walking one night round and round St. James's Square, he kept up his own and his companion's spirits by inveighing against the minister and declaring that they would 'stand by their country.'

Doubtless the Doctor felt as much pleasure at the meed awarded to his old companion in misery as at the high compliment to himself. Anyhow he pronounced that Sheridan 'had written the two best comedies of his age,' and therefore proposed him as a member of the Literary Club.

This celebrated gathering of wit and whimsicality, founded by Johnson himself in conjunction with Sir J. Reynolds, was the Helicon of London Letters, and the temple which the greatest talker of his age had built for himself, and in which he took care to be duly worshipped. It met at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, every Friday; and from seven in the evening to almost any hour of night was the scene of such talk, mainly on literature and learning, as has never been heard since in this country. It consisted at this period of twenty-six members, and there is scarcely one among them whose name is not known to-day as well as any in the history of our literature. Besides the high priests, Reynolds and Johnson, there came Edmund Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and many another of less note, to represent the senate: Goldsmith, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Malone, Dr. Burney, Percy, Nugent, Sir William Jones, three Irish bishops, and a host of others, crowded in from the ranks of learning and literature. Garrick and George Colman found here an indulgent audience; and the light portion of the company comprised such men as Topham Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, Vesey, and a dozen of lords and baronets. In short, they were picked men, and if their conversation was not always witty, it was because they had all wit and frightened one another.

Among them the bullying Doctor rolled in majestic grumpiness; scolded, dogmatized, contradicted, pished and pshawed; and made himself generally disagreeable; yet, hail the omen, Intellect! such was the force, such the fame of his mind, that the more he snorted, the more they adored him--the more he bullied, the more humbly they knocked under. He was quite 'His Majesty' at the Turk's Head, and the courtiers waited for his coming with anxiety, and talked of him till he came in the same manner as the lacqueys in the anteroom of a crowned monarch. Boswell, who, by the way, was also a member--of course he was, or how should we have had the great man's conversations handed down to us?--was sure to keep them up to the proper mark of adulation if they ever flagged in it, and was as servile in his admiration in the Doctor's absence as when he was there to call him a fool for his pains.

Thus, on one occasion while 'King Johnson' tarried, the courtiers were discussing his journey to the Hebrides and his coming away 'willing to believe the second sight.' Some of them smiled at this, but Bozzy was down on them with more than usual servility. 'He is only _willing_ to believe,' he exclaimed. '_I do_ believe. The evidence is enough for me, though not for his great mind. What will not fill a quart bottle will fill a pint bottle. I am filled with belief.'--'Are you?' said Colman, slily; 'then cork it up.'

As a specimen of Johnson's pride in his own club, which always remained extremely exclusive, we have what he said of Garrick, who, before he was elected, carelessly told Reynolds he liked the club, and thought 'he would be of them.'

'_He'll be of us!_' roared the Doctor indignantly, on hearing of this. 'How does he know we will _permit_ him? The first duke in England has no right to hold such language!'

It can easily be imagined that when 'His Majesty' expressed his approval of Richard Brinsley, then a young man of eight-and-twenty, there was no one who ventured to blackball him, and so Sheridan was duly elected.

The fame of 'The School for Scandal' was a substantial one for Richard Brinsley, and in the following year he extended his speculation by buying the other moiety of Drury Lane. This theatre, which took its name from the old Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane, where Killigrew acted in the days of Charles II. is famous for the number of times it has been rebuilt. The first house had been destroyed in 1674; and the one in which Garrick acted was built by Sir Christopher Wren and opened with a prologue by Dryden. In 1793 this was rebuilt. In 1809 it was burnt to the ground; and on its re-opening the Committee advertised a prize for a prologue, which was supposed to be tried for by all the poets and poetasters then in England.[7] Sheridan adding afterwards a condition that he wanted an address without a Phoenix in it. Horace Smith and his brother seized the opportunity to parody the style of the most celebrated in their delightful 'Rejected Addresses.' Drury Lane has always been grand in its prologue, for besides Dryden and Byron, it could boast of Sam. Johnson, who wrote the address when Garrick opened the theatre in 1747. No theatre ever had more great names connected with its history.

[7: None of the addresses sent in having given satisfaction, Lord Byron was requested to write one, which he did.]

It was in 1778, after the purchase of the other moiety of this property, that Sheridan set on its boards 'The Critic.' Though this was denounced as itself as complete a plagiarism as any Sir Fretful Plagiary could make, and though undoubtedly the idea of it was borrowed, its wit, so truly Sheridanian, and its complete characters, enhanced its author's fame, in spite of the disappointment of those who expected higher things from the writer of 'The School for Scandal.' Whether Sheridan would have gone on improving, had he remained true to the drama, 'The Critic' leaves us in doubt. But he was a man of higher ambition. Step by step, unexpectedly, and apparently unprepared, he had taken by storm the out-works of the citadel he was determined to capture, and he seems to have cared little to garrison these minor fortresses. He had carried off from among a dozen suitors a wife of such beauty that Walpole thus writes of her in 1773:--

'I was at the ball last night, and have only been at the opera, where I was infinitely struck with the Carrara, who is the prettiest creature upon earth. Mrs. Hartley I find still handsomer, and Miss Linley is to be the superlative degree. The king admires the last, and ogles her as much as he dares in so holy a place as an oratorio, and at so devout a service as Alexander's Feast'

Yet Sheridan did not prize his lovely wife as he should have done, when he had once obtained her. Again he had struck boldly into the drama, and in four years had achieved that fame as a play-writer to which even Johnson could testify so handsomely. He now quitted this, and with the same innate power--the same consciousness of success--the same readiness of genius--took a higher, far more brilliant flight than ever. Yet had he garrisoned the forts he captured, he would have been a better, happier, and more prosperous man. Had he been true to the Maid of Bath, his character would not have degenerated as it did. Had he kept up his connection with the drama, he would not have lost so largely by his speculation in Drury Lane. His genius became his temptation, and he hurried on to triumph and to fall.

Public praise is a syren which the young sailor through life cannot resist. Political life is a fine aim, even when its seeker starts without a shred of real patriotism to conceal his personal ambition. No young man of any character can think, without a thrill of rapture, on the glory of having _his_ name--now obscure--written in capitals on the page of his country's history. A true patriot cares nothing for fame; a really great man is content to die nameless, if his acts may but survive him. Sheridan was not really great, and it may be doubted if he had any sincerity in his political views. But the period favoured the rise of young men of genius. In former reigns a man could have little hope of political influence without being first a courtier; but by this time liberalism had made giant strides. The leaven of revolutionary ideas, which had leavened the whole lump in France, was still working quietly and less passionately in this country, and being less repressed, displayed itself in the last quarter of the eighteenth century in the form of a strong and brilliant opposition. It was to this that the young men of ambition attached themselves, rallying under the standard of Charles James Fox, since it was there only that their talents were sufficient to recommend them.

To this party, Sheridan, laughing in his sleeve at the extravagance of their demands--so that when they clamoured for a 'parliament once a year, or oftener if need be,' he pronounced himself an 'Oftener-if-need-be' man--was introduced, when his fame as a literary man had brought him into contact with some of its hangers on. Fox, after his first interview with him, affirmed that he had always thought Hare and Charles Townsend the wittiest men he had ever met, but that Sheridan surpassed them both; and Sheridan was equally pleased with 'the Man of the People.'

The first step to this political position was to become a member of a certain club, where its leaders gambled away their money, and drank away their minds--to wit, Brookes'. Pretty boys, indeed, were these great Whig patriots when turned loose in these precincts. The tables were for stakes of twenty or fifty guineas, but soon ran up to hundreds. What did it matter to Charles James Fox, to the Man of the People, whether he lost five, seven, or ten thousand of a night, when the one-half came out of his father's, the other out of Hebrew, pockets--the sleek, thick-lipped owners of which thronged his Jerusalem chamber, as he called his back sitting-room, only too glad to 'oblige' him to any amount? The rage for gaming at this pandemonium may be understood from a rule of the club, which it was found necessary to make to interdict it _in the eating-room_, but to which was added the truly British exception, which allowed two members of Parliament in those days, or two 'gentlemen' of any kind, to toss up for what they had ordered.

This charming resort of the dissipated was originally established in Pall Mall in 1764, and the manager was that same Almack who afterwards opened a lady's club in the rooms now called Willis's, in King Street, St. James's; who also owned the famous Thatched House, and whom Gilly Williams described as having a 'Scotch face, in a bag-wig,' waiting on the ladies at supper. In 1778 Brookes--a wine-merchant and money-lender, whom Tickell, in his famous 'Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox, partridge-shooting, to the Hon. John Townsend, cruising,' describes in these lines;--

'And know I've bought the best champagne from Brookes,
From liberal Brookes, whose speculative skill
Is hasty credit, and a distant bill:
Who, nurs'd in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade:
Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid--'

built and opened the present club-house in St. James's Street, and thither the members of Almack's migrated. Brookes' speculative skill, however, did not make him a rich man, and the 'gentlemen' he dealt with were perhaps too gentlemanly to pay him. He died poor in 1782. Almack's at first consisted of twenty-seven members, one of whom was C.J. Fox. Gibbon, the historian, was actually a member of it, and says that in spite of the rage for play, he found the society there rational and entertaining. Sir Joshua Reynolds wanted to be a member of it too. 'You see,' says Topham Beauclerk thereupon, 'what noble ambition will make a man attempt. That den is not yet opened,' &c.

Brookes', however, was far more celebrated, and besides Fox, Reynolds, and Gibbon, there were here to be found Horace Walpole, David Hume, Burke, Selwyn, and Garrick. It would be curious to discover how much religion, how much morality, and how much vanity there were among the set. The first two would require a microscope to examine, the last an ocean to contain it. But let Tickell describe its inmates:--

'Soon as to Brookes's thence thy footsteps bend
What gratulations thy approach attend!
See Gibbon rap his box--auspicious sign,
That classic compliment and wit combine;
See Beauclerk's cheek a tinge of red surprise,
And friendship give what cruel health denies;

* * * * *

Of wit, of taste, of fancy we'll debate,
If Sheridan for once be not too late.
But scarce a thought on politics we'll spare
Unless on Polish politics with Hare.
Good-natured Devon! oft shall there appear
The cool complacence of thy friendly sneer;
Oft shall Fitzpatrick's wit, and Stanhope's ease,
And Burgoyne's manly sense combine to please.

To show how high gaming ran in this assembly of wits, even so early at 1772, there is a memorandum in the books, stating that Mr. Thynne retired from the club in disgust, because he had only won £12,000 in two months. The principal games at this period were quinze and faro.

Into this eligible club Richard Sheridan, who ten years before had been agreeing with Halhed on the bliss of making a couple of hundred pounds by their literary exertions, now essayed to enter as a member; but in vain. One black-ball sufficed to nullify his election, and that one was dropped in by George Selwyn, who, with degrading littleness, would not have the son of an actor among them. Again and again he made the attempt; again and again Selwyn foiled him; and it was not till 1780 that he succeeded. The Prince of Wales was then his devoted friend, and was determined he should be admitted into the club. The elections at that time took place between eleven at night and one o'clock in the morning, and the 'greatest gentleman in Europe' took care to be in the hall when the ballot began. Selwyn came down as usual, bent on triumph. The prince called him to him. There was nothing for it; Selwyn was forced to obey. The prince walked him up and down the hall, engaging him in an apparently most important conversation. George Selwyn answered him question after question, and made desperate attempts to slip away. The other George had always something more to say to him. The long finger of the clock went round, and Selwyn's long white fingers were itching for the black ball. The prince was only more and more interested, the wit only more and more abstracted. Never was the young George more lively, or the other more silent. But it was all in vain. The finger of the clock went round and round, and at last the members came out noisily from the balloting-room, and the smiling faces of the prince's friends showed to the unhappy Selwyn that his enemy had been elected.

So, at least, runs one story. The other, told by Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, is perhaps more probable. It appears that the Earl of Besborough was no less opposed to his election than George Selwyn, and these two individuals agreed at any cost of comfort to be always at the club at the time of the ballot to throw in their black balls. On the night of his success, Lord Besborough was there as usual, and Selwyn was at his rooms in Cleveland Row, preparing to come to the club. Suddenly a chairman rushed into Brookes' with an important note for my lord, who, on tearing it open, found to his horror that it was from his daughter-in-law, Lady Duncannon, announcing that his house in Cavendish Square was on fire, and imploring him to come immediately. Feeling confident that his fellow conspirator would be true to his post, the earl set off at once. But almost the same moment Selwyn received a message informing him that his adopted daughter, of whom he was very fond, was seized with an alarming illness. The ground was cleared; and by the time the earl returned, having, it is needless to say, found his house in a perfect state of security, and was joined by Selwyn, whose daughter had never been better in her life, the actor's son was elected, and the conspirators found they had been duped.

But it is far easier in this country to get into that House, where one has to represent the interests of thousands, and take a share in the government of a nation, than to be admitted to a club where one has but to lounge, to gamble, and to eat dinner; and Sheridan was elected for the town of Stafford with probably little more artifice than the old and stale one of putting five-pound notes under voters' glasses, or paying thirty pounds for a home-cured ham. Whether he bribed or not, a petition was presented against his election, almost as a matter of course in those days, and his maiden speech was made in defence of the good burgesses of that quiet little county-town. After making this speech, which was listened to in silence on account of his reputation as a dramatic author, but which does not appear to have been very wonderful, he rushed up to the gallery, and eagerly asked his friend Woodfall what he thought of it. That candid man shook his head, and told him oratory was not his forte, Sheridan leaned his head on his hand a moment, and then exclaimed with vehement emphasis, 'It is in me, however, and, by Heaven! it shall come out.'

He spoke prophetically, yet not as the great man who determines to conquer difficulties, but rather as one who feels conscious of his own powers, and knows that they must show themselves sooner or later. Sheridan found himself labouring under the same natural obstacles as Demosthenes--though in a less degree--a thick and disagreeable tone of voice; but we do not find in the indolent but gifted Englishman that admirable perseverance, that conquering zeal, which enabled the Athenian to turn these very impediments to his own advantage. He did, indeed, prepare his speeches, and at times had fits of that same diligence which he had displayed in the preparation of 'The School for Scandal;' but his indolent, self-indulgent mode of life left him no time for such steady devotion to oratory as might have made him the finest speaker of his age, for perhaps his natural abilities were greater than those of Pitt, Fox, or even Burke, though his education was inferior to that of those two statesmen.

From this time Sheridan's life had two phases--that of a politician, and that of a man of the world. With the former, we have nothing to do in such a memoir as this, and indeed it is difficult to say whether it was in oratory, the drama, or wit that he gained the greatest celebrity. There is, however, some difference between the three capacities. On the mimic stage, and on the stage of the country, his fame rested on a very few grand outbursts--some matured, prepared, deliberated--others spontaneous. He left only three great comedies, and perhaps we may say only one really grand. In the same way he made only two great speeches, or perhaps we may say only one. His wit on the other hand--though that too is said to have been studied--was the constant accompaniment of his daily life, and Sheridan has not left two or three celebrated bon-mots, but a hundred.

But even in his political career his wit, which must then have been spontaneous, won him almost as much fame as his eloquence, which he seems to have reserved for great occasions. He was the wit of the House. Wit, ridicule, satire, quiet, cool, and easy sneers, always made in good temper, and always therefore the more bitter, were his weapons, and they struck with unerring accuracy. At that time--nor at that time only--the 'Den of Thieves,' as Cobbett called our senate, was a cockpit as vulgar and personal as the present Congress of the United States. Party-spirit meant more than it has ever done since, and scarcely less than it had meant when the throne itself was the stake for which parties played some forty years before. There was, in fact a substantial personal centre for each side. The one party rallied round a respectable but maniac monarch, whose mental afflictions took the most distressing form, the other round his gay, handsome, dissolute--nay disgusting--son, at once his rival and his heir. The spirit of each party was therefore personal, and their attacks on one another were more personal than anything we can imagine in the present day in so respectably ridiculous a conclave as the House of Commons. It was little for one honourable gentleman to give another honourable gentleman the lie direct before the eyes of the country. The honourable gentlemen descended--or, as they thought, ascended--to the most vehement invective, and such was at times the torrent of personal abuse which parties heaped on one another, while good-natured John Bull looked on and smiled at his rulers, that, as in the United States of to-day, a debate was often the prelude to a duel. Pitt and Fox, Tierney, Adam, Fullarton, Lord George Germain, Lord Shelburne, and Governor Johnstone, all 'vindicated their honour,' as the phrase went, by 'coffee and pistols for four.' If Sheridan had not to repeat the Bob Acres scene with Captain Matthews, it was only because his wonderful good humour could put up with a great deal that others thought could only be expiated by a hole in the waistcoat.

In the administration of the Marquis of Rockingham the dramatist enjoyed the pleasures of office for less than a year as one of the Under Secretaries of State in 1782. In the next year we find him making a happy retort on Pitt, who had somewhat vulgarly alluded to his being a dramatic author. It was on the American question, perhaps the bitterest that ever called forth the acrimony of parties in the House. Sheridan, from boyhood, had been taunted with being the son of an actor. One can hardly credit this fact, just after Garrick had raised the profession of an actor to so great an eminence in the social scale. He had been called 'the player boy' at school, and his election at Brookes' had been opposed on the same grounds. It was evidently his bitterest point, and Pitt probably knew this when, in replying to a speech of the ex-dramatist's he said that 'no man admired more than he did the abilities of that right honourable gentleman, the elegant sallies of his thought, the gay effusions of his fancy, his _dramatic_ turns, and his epigrammatic point; and if they were reserved for the _proper stage,_ they would, no doubt, receive what the hon. gentleman's abilities always did receive, the plaudits of the audience; and it would be his fortune _sui plausu gaudere theatri_. But this was not the proper scene for the exhibition of those elegancies.' This was vulgar in Pitt, and probably every one felt so. But Sheridan rose, cool and collected, and quietly replied:--

'On the particular sort of personality which the right hon. gentleman has thought proper to make use of, I need not make any comment. The propriety, the taste, the gentlemanly point of it, must have been obvious to the House. But let me assure the right hon. gentleman that I do now, and will at any time he chooses to repeat this sort of allusion, meet it with the most sincere good humour. Nay, I will say more: flattered and encouraged by the right hon. gentleman's panegyric on my talents, if ever I again engage in the compositions he alludes to, I may be tempted to an act of presumption--to attempt an improvement on one of Ben Jonson's best characters, the character of the _Angry Boy_, in the "Alchemist."'

The fury of Pitt, contrasted with the coolness of the man he had so shamefully attacked, made this sally irresistible, and from that time neither 'the angry boy' himself, nor any of his colleagues, were anxious to twit Sheridan on his dramatic pursuits.

Pitt wanted to lay a tax on every horse that started in a race. Lord Surry, a _turfish_ individual of the day, proposed one of five pounds on the winner. Sheridan, rising, told his lordship that the next time he visited Newmarket he would probably be greeted with the line:--

'Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold--.'

Lord Rolie, the butt of the Opposition, who had attacked him in the famous satire, 'The Rolliad,' so popular that it went through twenty-two editions in twenty-seven years, accused Sheridan of inflammatory speeches among the operatives of the northern counties on the cotton question. Sheridan retorted by saying that he believed Lord Rolle must refer to 'Compositions less prosaic, but more popular' (meaning the 'Rolliad'), and thus successfully turned the laugh against him.

It was Grattan, I think, who said, 'When I can't talk sense, I talk metaphor.' Sheridan often talked metaphor, though he sometimes mingled it with sense. His famous speech about the Begums of Oude is full of it, but we have one or two instances before that. Thus on the Duke of Richmond's report about fortifications, he said, turning to the duke, that 'holding in his hand the report made by the Board of Officers, he complimented the noble president on his talents as an _engineer_, which were strongly evinced in planning and constructing that very paper.... He has made it a contest of posts, and conducted his reasoning not less on principles of trigonometry than of logic. There are certain assumptions thrown up, like advanced works, to keep the enemy at a distance from the principal object of debate; strong provisos protect and cover the flanks of his assertions, his very queries are his casemates,' and so on.

When Lord Mulgrave said, on another occasion, that any man using his influence to obtain a vote for the crown _ought_ to lose his head, Sheridan quietly remarked, that he was glad his lordship had said '_ought_ to lose his head,' not _would_ have lost it, for in that case the learned gentleman would not have had that evening '_face_ to have shown among us.'

Such are a few of his well-remembered replies in the House; but his fame as an orator rested on the splendid speeches which he made at the impeachment of Warren Hastings. The first of these was made in the House on the 7th of February, 1787. The whole story of the corruption, extortions, and cruelty of the worst of many bad rulers who have been imposed upon that unhappy nation of Hindostan, and who ignorant how to _parcere subjectis_, have gone on in their unjust oppression, only rendering it the more dangerous by weak concessions, is too well known to need a recapitulation here. The worst feature in the whole of Hastings' misconduct was, perhaps, his treatment of those unfortunate ladies whose money he coveted, the Begums of Oude. The Opposition was determined to make the governor-general's conduct a state question, but their charges had been received with little attention, till on this day Sheridan rose to denounce the cruel extortioner. He spoke for five hours and a half, and surpassed all he had ever said in eloquence. The subject was one to find sympathy in the hearts of Englishmen, who, though they beat their own wives, are always indignant at a man who dares to lay a little finger on those of anybody else. Then, too, the subject was Oriental: it might even be invested with something of romance and poetry; the zenanah, sacred in the eyes of the oppressed natives, had been ruthlessly insulted, under a glaring Indian sun, amid the luxuriance of Indian foliage, these acts had been committed, &c. &c. It was a fertile theme for a poet; and how little soever Sheridan cared for the Begums and their wrongs--and that he did care little appears from what he afterwards said of Hastings himself--he could evidently make a telling speech out of the theme, and he did so. Walpole says that he turned everybody's head. 'One heard everybody in the street raving on the wonders of that speech; for my part, I cannot believe it was so supernatural as they say.' He affirms that there must be a witchery in Mr. Sheridan, who had no diamonds--as Hastings had--to win favour with, and says that the Opposition may be fairly charged with sorcery. Burke declared the speech to be 'the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition.' Fox affirmed that 'all he had ever heard, all he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapour before the sun.' But these were partizans. Even Pitt acknowledged 'that it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the human mind.' One member confessed himself so unhinged by it, that he moved an adjournment, because he could not, in his then state of mind, give an unbiassed vote. But the highest testimony was that of Logan, the defender of Hastings. At the end of the first hour of the speech, he said to a friend, 'All this is declamatory assertion without proof.' Another hour's speaking, and he muttered, 'This is a most wonderful oration!' A third, and he confessed 'Mr. Hastings has acted very unjustifiably.' At the end of the fourth, he exclaimed, 'Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal.' And before the speaker had sat down, he vehemently protested that 'Of all monsters of iniquity, the most enormous is Warren Hastings.'

Such in those days was the effect of eloquence; an art which has been eschewed in the present House of Commons, and which our newspapers affect to think is much out of place in an assembly met for calm deliberation. Perhaps they are right; but oh! for the golden words of a Sheridan, a Fox, even a Pitt and Burke.

It is said, though not proved, that on this same night of Sheridan's glory in the House of Commons, his 'School for Scandal' was acted with 'rapturous applause' at Covent Garden, and his 'Duenna' no less successfully at Drury Lane. What a pitch of glory for the dunce who had been shamed into learning Greek verbs at Harrow! Surely Dr. Parr must then have confessed that a man can be great without the classics--nay, without even a decent English education, for Sheridan knew comparatively little of history and literature, certainly less than the men against whom he was pitted or whose powers he emulated. He has been known to say to his friends, when asked to take part with them on some important question, 'You know I'm an ignoramus--instruct me and I'll do my best.' He had even to rub up his arithmetic when he thought he had some chance of being made Chancellor of the Exchequer; but, perhaps, many a statesman before and after him has done as much as that.

No wonder that after such a speech in the House, the celebrated trial which commenced in the beginning of the following year should have roused the attention of the whole nation. The proceedings opened in Westminster Hall, the noblest room in England, on the 13th of February, 1788. The Queen and four of her daughters were seated in the Duke of Newcastle's box; the Prince of Wales walked in at the head of a hundred and fifty peers of the realm. The spectacle was imposing enough. But the trial proceeded slowly for some months, and it was not till the 3rd of June that Sheridan rose to make his second great speech on this subject.

The excitement was then at its highest. Two-thirds of the peers with the peeresses and their daughters were present, and the whole of the vast hall was crowded to excess. The sun shone in brightly to light up the gloomy building, and the whole scene was splendid. Such was the enthusiasm that people paid _fifty guineas_ for a ticket to hear the first orator of his day, for such he then was. The actor's son felt the enlivening influence of a full audience. He had been long preparing for this moment, and he threw into his speech all the theatrical effect of which he had studied much and inherited more. He spoke for many hours on the 3rd, 5th, and 6th, and concluded with these words:

'They (the House of Commons) exhort you by everything that calls sublimely upon the heart of man, by the majesty of that justice which this bold man has libelled, by the wide fame of your own tribunal, by the sacred pledges by which you swear in the solemn hour of decision, knowing that that decision will then bring you the highest reward that ever blessed the heart of man, the consciousness of having done the greatest act of mercy for the world that the earth has ever yet received from any hand but heaven!--My Lords, I have done.'

Sheridan's valet was very proud of his master's success, and as he had been to hear the speech, was asked what part he considered the finest. Plush replied by putting himself into his master's attitude, and imitating his voice admirably, solemnly uttering, 'My Lords, I have done!' He should have added the word 'nothing.' Sheridan's eloquence had no more effect than the clear proof of Hastings' guilt, and the impeachment, as usual, was but a troublesome subterfuge, to satisfy the Opposition and dust the eyeballs of the country.

Sheridan's great speech was made. The orator has concluded his oration; fame was complete, and no more was wanted, Adieu, then, blue-books and parties, and come on the last grand profession of this man of many talents--that of the wit. That it was a profession there can be no doubt, for he lived on it, it was all his capital. He paid his bills in that coin alone: he paid his workmen, his actors, carpenters, builders with no more sterling metal; with that ready tool he extracted loans from the very men who came to be paid; that brilliant ornament maintained his reputation in the senate, and his character in society. But wit without wisdom--the froth without the fluid--the capital without the pillar--is but a poor fortune, a wretched substitute for real worth and honest utility. For a time men forgave to Mr. Sheridan--extravagant and reckless as he was--what would long before have brought an honester, better, but less amusing man to a debtor's prison and the contempt of society; but only for a time was this career possible.

Sheridan has now reached the pinnacle of his fame, and from this point we have to trace that decline which ended so awfully.

Whilst we call him a dishonest man, we must not be supposed to imply that he was so in heart. It is pleaded for him that he tricked his creditors 'for the fun of the thing,' like a modern Robin Hood, and like that forester bold, he was mightily generous with other men's money. Deception is deception whether in sport or earnest, and Sheridan, no doubt, made it a very profitable employment. He had always a taste for the art of duping, and he had begun early in life--soon after leaving Harrow. He was spending a few days at Bristol, and wanted a pair of new boots, but could not afford to pay for them. Shortly before he left, he called on two bootmakers, and ordered of each a pair, promising payment on delivery. He fixed the morning of his departure for the tradesmen to send in their goods. When the first arrived he tried on the boots, complaining that that for the _right_ foot pinched a little, and ordered Crispin to take it back, stretch it, and bring it again at nine the next morning. The second arrived soon after, and this time it was the boot for the _left_ foot which pinched. Same complaint; same order given; each had taken away only the pinching boot, and left the other behind. The same afternoon Sheridan left in his new boots for town, and when the two shoemakers called at nine the next day, each with a boot in his hand, we can imagine their disgust at finding how neatly they had been duped.

Anecdotes of this kind swarm in every account of Richard Sheridan--many of them, perhaps, quite apocryphal, others exaggerated, or attributed to this noted trickster, but all tending to show how completely he was master of this high art. His ways of eluding creditors used to delight me, I remember, when an Oxford boy, and they are only paralleled by Oxford stories. One of these may not be generally known, and was worthy of Sheridan. Every Oxonian knows Hall, the boat-builder at Folly Bridge. Mrs. Hall was, in my time, proprietress of those dangerous skiffs and nutshell canoes which we young harebrains delighted to launch on the Isis. Some youthful Sheridanian had a long account with this elderly and bashful personage, who had applied in vain for her money, till, coming one day to his rooms, she announced her intention not to leave till the money was paid. 'Very well, Mrs. Hall, then you must sit down and make yourself comfortable while I dress, for I am going out directly.' Mrs. H. sat down composedly, and with equal composure the youth took off his coat. Mrs. H. was not abashed, but in another moment the debtor removed his waistcoat also. Mrs. H. was still immoveable. Sundry other articles of dress followed, and the good lady began to be nervous. 'Now, Mrs. Hall, you can stay if you like, but I assure you that I am going to change _all_ my dress.' Suiting the action to the word, he began to remove his lower garments, when Mrs. Hall, shocked and furious, rushed from the room.

This reminds us of Sheridan's treatment of a female creditor. He had for some years hired his carriage-horses from Edbrooke in Clarges Street, and his bill was a heavy one. Mrs. Edbrooke wanted a new bonnet, and blew up her mate for not insisting on payment. The curtain lecture was followed next day by a refusal to allow Mr. Sheridan to have the horses till the account was settled. Mr. Sheridan sent the politest possible message in reply, begging that Mrs. Edbrooke would allow his coachman to drive her in his own carriage to his door, and promising that the matter should be satisfactorily arranged. The good woman was delighted, dressed in her best, and, bill in hand, entered the M.P.'s chariot. Sheridan meanwhile had given orders to his servants. Mrs. Edbrooke was shown up into the back drawing-room, where a slight luncheon, of which she was begged to partake, was laid out; and she was assured that her debtor would not keep her waiting long, though for the moment engaged. The horse-dealer's wife sat down and discussed a wing of chicken and glass of wine, and in the meantime her victimizer had been watching his opportunity, slipped down stairs, jumped into the vehicle, and drove off. Mrs. Edbrooke finished her lunch and waited in vain; ten minutes, twenty, thirty, passed, and then she rang the bell: 'Very sorry, ma'am, but Mr. Sheridan went out on important business half an hour ago.' 'And the carriage?'--'Oh, ma'am, Mr. Sheridan never walks.'

He procured his wine in the same style. Chalier, the wine-merchant, was his creditor to a large amount, and had stopped supplies. Sheridan was to give a grand dinner to the leaders of the Opposition, and had no port or sherry to offer them. On the morning of the day fixed he sent for Chalier, and told him he wanted to settle his account. The importer, much pleased, said he would go home and bring it at once. 'Stay,' cried the debtor, 'will you dine with me to-day; Lord----, Sir----, and So-and-so are coming.' Chalier was flattered and readily accepted. Returning to his office, he told his clerk that he should dine with Mr. Sheridan, and therefore leave early. At the proper hour he arrived in full dress, and was no sooner in the house., than his host despatched a message to the clerk at the office, saying that Mr. Chalier wished him to send up at once three dozen of Burgundy, two of claret, two of port, &c., &c. Nothing seemed more natural, and the wine was forwarded, just in time for the dinner. It was highly praised by the guests, who asked Sheridan who was his wine-merchant. The host bowed towards Chalier, gave him a high recommendation, and impressed him with the belief that he was telling a polite falsehood in order to secure him other customers. Little did he think that he was drinking his own wine, and that it was not, and probably never would be, paid for!

In like manner, when he wanted a particular Burgundy an innkeeper at Richmond, who declined to supply it till his bill was paid, he sent for the man, and had no sooner seen him safe in the house than he drove off to Richmond, saw his wife, told her he had just had a conversation with mine host, settled everything, and would, to save them trouble, take the wine with him in his carriage. The condescension overpowered the good woman, who ordered it at once to be produced, and Sheridan drove home about the time that her husband was returning to Richmond, weary of waiting for his absent debtor. But this kind of trickery could not always succeed without some knowledge of his creditor's character. In the case of Holloway, the lawyer, Sheridan took advantage of his well-known vanity of his judgment of horse-flesh. Kelly gives the anecdote as authentic. He was walking one day with Sheridan, close to the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, when, as ill-luck would have it, up comes Holloway on horseback, and in a furious rage, complains that he has called on Mr. Sheridan time and again in Hertford Street, and can never gain admittance. He proceeds to violent threats, and slangs his debtor roundly. Sheridan, cool as a whole bed of cucumbers, takes no notice of these attacks, but quietly exclaims: 'What a beautiful creature you're riding, Holloway!' The lawyer's weak point was touched.

'You were speaking to me the other day about a horse for Mrs. Sheridan; now this would be a treasure for a lady.'

'Does he canter well?' asks Sheridan, with a look of business.

'Like Pegasus himself.'

'If that's the case, I shouldn't mind, Holloway, stretching a point for him. Do you mind showing me his paces?'

'Not at all,' replies the lawyer, only too happy to show off his own: and touching up the horse, put him to a quiet canter. The moment is not to be lost; the churchyard gate is at hand; Sheridan slips in, knowing that his mounted tormentor cannot follow him, and there bursts into a roar of laughter, which is joined in by Kelly, but not by the returning Holloway.

But if he escaped an importunate lawyer once in a way like this, he Required more ingenuity to get rid of the limbs of the law, when they came, as they did frequently in his later years. It was the fashionable thing in bygone novels of the 'Pelham' school, and Even in more recent comedies, to introduce a well-dressed sheriff's officer at a dinner party or ball, and take him through a variety of predicaments, ending, at length, in the revelation of his real character; and probably some such scene is still enacted from time to time in the houses of the extravagant: but Sheridan's adventures with bailiffs seem to have excited more attention. In the midst of his difficulties he never ceased to entertain his friends, and 'why should he not do so, since he had not to pay?' 'Pay your bills, sir? what a shameful waste of money!' he once said. Thus, one day a young friend was met by him and taken back to dinner, 'quite in a quiet way, just to meet a very old friend of mine, a man of great talent, and most charming companion.' When they arrived they found 'the old friend' already installed, and presenting a somewhat unpolished appearance, which the young man explained to himself by supposing him to be a genius of somewhat low extraction. His habits at dinner, the eager look, the free use of his knife, and so forth, were all accounted for in the same way, but that he was a genius of no slight distinction was clear from the deep respect and attention with which Sheridan listened to his slightest remarks, and asked his opinion on English poetry. Meanwhile Sheridan and the servant between them plied the genius very liberally with wine: and the former, rising, made him a complimentary speech on his critical powers, while the young guest, who had heard nothing from his lips but the commonest platitudes in very bad English, grew more and more amused. The wine told in time, the 'genius' sang songs which were more Saxon than delicate, talked loud, clapped his host on the shoulder, and at last rolled fairly under the table. 'Now,' said Sheridan, quite calmly to his young friend, 'we will go up stairs: and, Jack,' (to his servant) 'take that man's hat and give him to the watch.' He then explained in the same calm tone, that this was a bailiff of whose company he was growing rather tired, and wanted to be freed.

But his finest tricks were undoubtedly those by which he turned, harlequin-like, a creditor into a lender This was done by sheer force of persuasion, by assuming a lofty indignation, or by putting forth his claims to mercy with the most touching eloquence over which he would laugh heartily when his point was gained. He was often compelled to do this during his theatrical management, when a troublesome creditor might have interfered with the success of the establishment. He talked over an upholsterer who came with a writ for £350 till the latter handed him, instead, a cheque for £200. He once, when the actors struck for arrears of wages to the amount of £3,000, and his bankers refused flatly to Kelly to advance another penny, screwed the whole sum out of them in less than a quarter of an hour by sheer talk. He got a gold watch from Harris, the manager, with whom he had broken several appointments, by complaining that as he had no watch he could never tell the time fixed for their meetings; and, as for putting off pressing creditors, and turning furious foes into affectionate friends, he was such an adept at it, that his reputation as a dun-destroyer is quite on a par with his fame as comedian and orator.

Hoaxing, a style of amusement fortunately out of fashion how, was almost a passion with him, and his practical jokes were as merciless as his satire. He and Tickell, who had married the sister of his wife, used to play them off on one another like a couple of schoolboys. One evening, for instance, Sheridan got together all the crockery in the house and arranged it in a dark passage, leaving a small channel for escape for himself, and then, having teased Tickell till he rushed after him, bounded out and picked his way gingerly along the passage. His friend followed him unwittingly, and at the first step stumbled over a washhand-basin, and fell forwards with a crash on piles of plates and dishes, which cut his face and hands in a most cruel manner, Sheridan all the while laughing immoderately at the end of the passage, secure from vengeance.

But his most impudent hoax was that on the Honourable House of Commons itself. Lord Belgrave had made a very telling speech which he wound up with a Greek quotation, loudly applauded. Sheridan had no arguments to meet him with; so rising, he admitted the force of his lordship's quotation (of which he probably did not understand a word), but added that had he gone a little farther, and completed the passage, he would have seen that the context completely altered the sense. He would prove it to the House, he said, and forthwith rolled forth a grand string of majestic gibberish so well imitated that the whole assembly cried, 'Hear, hear!' Lord Belgrave rose again, and frankly admitted that the passage had the meaning ascribed to it by the honourable gentleman, and that he had overlooked it at the moment. At the end of the evening, Fox, who prided himself on his classical lore, came up to and said to him, 'Sheridan, how came you to be so ready with that passage? It is certainly as you say, but I was not aware of it before you quoted it.' Sheridan was wise enough to keep his own counsel for the time, but must have felt delightfully tickled at the ignorance of the would-be savants with whom he was politically associated. Probably Sheridan could not at any time have quoted a whole passage of Greek on the spur of the moment; but it is certain that he had not kept up his classics, and at the time in question must have forgotten the little he ever knew of them.