(_Concluded from page 124_.)
_Sheridan_.
"In early life, Sheridan had been generally accounted handsome: he was
rather above the middle size, and well proportioned. He excelled in
several manly exercises: he was a proficient in horsemanship, and
danced with great elegance. His eyes were black, brilliant, and
always particularly expressive. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted his
portrait, is said to have affirmed, that their pupils were larger than
those of any human being he had ever met with. They retained their
beauty to the last; but the lower parts of his face exhibited, in his
latter years, the usual effects of intemperance. His arms were strong,
although by no means large; and his hands small and delicate. On a
cast of one of them, the following appropriate couplet is stated, by
Moore, to have been written:--
Good at a fight, but better at a play;
Godlike in giving; but the devil to pay!
"No man of his day possessed so much tact in appropriating and
adorning the wit of others. He pillaged his predecessors of their
ideas, with as much skill and effrontery as he did his contemporaries
of their money. It was his ambition to appear indolent; but he was, in
fact, particularly, though not regularly laborious. The most striking
parts of his best speeches were written and rewritten, on separate
slips of paper, and, in many cases, laid by for years, before they
were spoken. He not only elaborately polished his good ideas, but,
when they were finished, waited patiently, until an opportunity
occurred of uttering them with the best effect. Moore states, that
the only time he could have had for the pre-arrangement of his
conceptions, must have been during the many hours of the day which he
passed in bed; when, frequently, while the world gave him credit for
being asleep, he was employed in laying the frame-work of his wit and
eloquence for the evening.
"Like that of his great political rival, Pitt, his eloquence required
the stimulus of the bottle. Port was his favourite wine; it quickened,
he said, the circulation and the fancy together; adding, that he
seldom spoke to his satisfaction until after he had taken a couple of
bottles. Arthur O'Leary used to remark, that, like a porter, he never
was steady unless he had a load on his head.
"He also needed the excitement of wine when engaged in composition.
'If an idea be reluctant,' he would sometimes say, 'a glass of port
ripens it, and it bursts forth; if it come freely, a glass of port is
a glorious reward for it.' He usually wrote at night, with several
candles burning around him.
"The most serious appointments were, to him, matters of no importance.
After promising to attend the funeral of his friend Richardson, he
arrived at the church after the conclusion of the burial service;
which, however, to their mutual disgrace, he prevailed on the
clergyman to repeat. But, notwithstanding his liability to the charge
of desecration, even in more than one instance, he professed, and it
is but charitable to presume that he felt, in his better moments, a
deep sense of the worth of piety. He had ever considered, he said,
a deliberate disposition to make proselytes in infidelity, as an
unaccountable depravity, a brutal outrage, the motive for which he had
never been able to trace or conceive.
"Sheridan enjoyed a distinguished reputation for colloquial wit. From
among the best of the occasional dicta, &c. attributed to him, the
following are selected:--
"An elderly maiden lady, an inmate of a country house, at which
Sheridan was passing a few days, expressed an inclination to take a
stroll with him, but he excused himself, on account of the badness of
the weather. Shortly afterwards, she met him sneaking out alone.
'So, Mr. Sheridan,' said she, 'it has cleared up.' 'Yes, madam,' was
the reply; 'it certainly has cleared up enough for one, but not enough
for two;' and off he went.
"He jocularly observed, on one occasion, to a creditor, who
peremptorily required payment of the interest due on a long-standing
debt,' My dear sir, you know it is not my _interest_ to pay the
_principal_; nor is it my _principle_ to pay the _interest_.'
"One day, the prince of Wales having expatiated on the beauty of Dr.
Darwin's opinion, that the reason why the bosom of a beautiful woman
possesses such a fascinating effect on man is, because he derived from
that source the first pleasurable sensations of his infancy. Sheridan
ridiculed the idea very happily. 'Such children, then,' said he, 'as
are brought up by hand, must needs be indebted for similar sensations
to a very different object; and yet, I believe, no man has ever felt
any intense emotions of amatory delight at beholding a pap-spoon.'
"Boaden, the author of several theatrical pieces, having given Drury
lane theatre the title of a wilderness, Sheridan, when requested,
shortly afterwards, to produce a tragedy, written by Boaden, replied,
'The wise and discreet author calls our house a wilderness:--now, I
don't mind allowing the oracle to have his opinion; but it is really
too much for him to expect, that I will suffer him to prove his
words.'
"Kelly having to perform an Irish character, Johnstone took great
pains to instruct him in the brogue, but with so little success, that
Sheridan said, on entering the green-room, at the conclusion of the
piece, 'Bravo, Kelly! I never heard you speak such good English in all
my life!'
"He delighted in practical jokes, and seems to have enjoyed a sheer
piece of mischief, with all the gusto of a school-boy. At this kind of
sport, Tickell and Sheridan were often play-fellows: and the tricks
which they inflicted on each other, were frequently attended with
rather unpleasant consequences. One night, he induced Tickell to
follow him down a dark passage, on the floor of which he had placed
all the plates and dishes he could muster, in such a manner, that
while a clear path was left open for his own escape, it would have
been a miracle if Tickell did not smash two-thirds of them. The result
was as Sheridan had anticipated: Tickell fell among the crockery,
which so severely cut him in many places, that Lord John Townshend
found him, the next day, in bed, and covered with patches. 'Sheridan
has behaved atrociously towards me,' said he, 'and I am resolved to be
revenged on him. But,' added he, his admiration at the trick entirely
subduing his indignation, 'how amazingly well it was managed!'
"He once took advantage of the singular appetite of Richardson for
argument, to evade payment of a heavy coach-fare. Sheridan had
occupied a hackney-chariot for several hours, and had not a penny in
his pocket to pay the coachman. While in this dilemma, Richardson
passed, and he immediately proposed to take the disputant up, as they
appeared to be going in the same direction. The offer was accepted,
and Sheridan adroitly started a subject on which his companion was
usually very vehement and obstinate. The argument was maintained with
great warmth on both sides, until at length Sheridan affected to lose
his temper, and pulling the check-string, commanded the coachman to
let him out instantly, protesting that he would not ride another
yard with a man who held such opinions, and supported them in such a
manner. So saying, he descended and walked off, leaving Richardson to
enjoy his fancied triumph, and to pay the whole fare. Richardson, it
is said, in a paroxysm of delight at Sheridan's apparent defeat, put
his head out of the window and vociferated his arguments until he was
out of sight."
The minor or appendix biographies are not so neatly executed as the
more lengthy sketches. It is rather oddly said, "that Alderman Wood
shortly before the demise of George the Fourth, obtained leave to
bring in a bill for the purpose of preventing the spread of canine
madness." Again, as the Alderman is a hop-factor, why observe "he
is said to have realized a considerable fortune by his fortunate
speculations in hops." This describes him as a mere speculator, and
not as an established trader in hops.
The present volume of the Georgian Era is handsomely printed, and is,
without exception, the _cheapest book of the day_, considered either
as to its merit or size--quality or quantity: what can transcend
nearly 600 pages of such condensed reading as we have proved this work
to contain--for half-a-guinea! Were it re-written and printed in the
style of a fashionable novel, it would reach round the world, and in
that case, it should disappear at _Terra del Fuego_.
The embellishments of the Georgian Era are not its most successful
portion; but a fine head of George I. fronts the title-page. The
anecdotes, by the way, will furnish us two or three agreeable pages
anon.
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