Books: Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1

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MEMOIRS

OF THE

LIFE OF THE RT. HON.

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

BY THOMAS MOORE

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.

TO

GEORGE BRYAN, ESQ.,

THIS WORK IS INSCRIBED,

BY

HIS SINCERE AND AFFECTIONATE FRIEND,

THOMAS MOORE.

PREFACE.

The first four Chapters of this work were written nearly seven years
ago. My task was then suspended during a long absence from England; and
it was only in the course of the last year that I applied myself
seriously to the completion of it.

To my friend, Mr. Charles Sheridan, whose talents and character reflect
honor upon a name, already so distinguished, I am indebted for the chief
part of the materials upon which the following Memoirs of his father are
founded. I have to thank him, not only for this mark of confidence, but
for the delicacy with which, though so deeply interested in the subject
of my task, he has refrained from all interference with the execution of
it:--neither he, nor any other person, beyond the Printing-office,
having ever read a single sentence of the work.

I mention this, in order that the responsibility of any erroneous views
or indiscreet disclosures, with which I shall be thought chargeable in
the course of these pages, may not be extended to others, but rest
solely with myself.

The details of Mr. Sheridan's early life were obligingly communicated to
me by his younger sister, Mrs. Lefanu, to whom, and to her highly gifted
daughter, I offer my best thanks for the assistance which they have
afforded me.

The obligations, of a similar nature, which I owe to the kindness of Mr.
William Linley, Doctor Bain, Mr. Burgess, and others, are acknowledged,
with due gratitude, in my remarks on their respective communications.

CONTENTS TO VOL. I.

CHAPTER I.

Birth and Education of Mr. Sheridan.--His First Attempts in Literature.

CHAPTER II.

Duels with Mr. Mathews.--Marriage with Miss Linley

CHAPTER III.

Domestic Circumstances.--Fragments of Essays found among his Papers.--
Comedy of "The Rivals."--Answer to "Taxation no Tyranny."--Farce of "St.
Patrick's Day."

CHAPTER IV.

The Duenna.--Purchase of Drury-Lane Theatre.--The Trip to Scarborough.--
Poetical Correspondence with Mrs. Sheridan

CHAPTER V.

The School for Scandal

CHAPTER VI.

Further Purchase of Theatrical Property.--Monody to the Memory of
Garrick.--Essay on Metre.--The Critic.--Essay on Absentees.--Political
Connections.--"The Englishman."--Elected for Stafford

CHAPTER VII.

Unfinished Plays and Poems

CHAPTER VIII.

His First Speeches in Parliament.--Rockingham Administration.--
Coalition.--India Bill.--Re-election for Stafford

CHAPTER IX.

The Prince of Wales.--Financial Measures.--Mr. Pitt's East India Bill.--
Irish Commercial Propositions.--Plan of the Duke of Richmond.--Sinking
Fund.

CHAPTER X.

Charges against Mr. Hastings.--Commercial Treaty with France.--Debts of
the Prince of Wales.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF MR. SHERIDAN.--HIS FIRST ATTEMPTS IN LITERATURE.

Richard Brinsley [Footnote: He was christened also by the name of
Butler, after the Earl of Lanesborough.] Sheridan was born in the month
of September, 1751, at No. 12, Dorset Street, Dublin, and baptized in
St. Mary's Church, as appears by the register of the parish, on the
fourth of the following month. His grandfather, Dr. Sheridan, and his
father, Mr. Thomas Sheridan, have attained a celebrity, independent of
that which he has conferred on them, by the friendship and
correspondence with which the former was honored by Swift, and the
competition and even rivalry which the latter so long maintained with
Garrick. His mother, too, was a woman of considerable talents, and
affords one of the few instances that have occurred, of a female
indebted for a husband to her literature; as it was a pamphlet she wrote
concerning the Dublin theatre that first attracted to her the notice of
Mr. Thomas Sheridan. Her affecting novel, Sidney Biddulph, could boast
among its warm panegyrists Mr. Fox and Lord North; and in the Tale of
Nourjahad she has employed the graces of Eastern fiction to inculcate a
grave and important moral,--putting on a fairy disguise, like her own
Mandane, to deceive her readers into a taste for happiness and virtue.
Besides her two plays, The Discovery and The Dupe,--the former of which
Garrick pronounced to be "one of the best comedies he ever read,"--she
wrote a comedy also, called The Trip to Bath, which was never either
acted or published, but which has been supposed by some of those
sagacious persons, who love to look for flaws in the titles of fame, to
have passed, with her other papers, into the possession of her son, and,
after a transforming sleep, like that of the chrysalis, in his hands, to
have taken wing at length in the brilliant form of The Rivals. The
literary labors of her husband were less fanciful, but not, perhaps,
less useful, and are chiefly upon subjects connected with education, to
the study and profession of which he devoted the latter part of his
life. Such dignity, indeed, did his favorite pursuit assume in his own
eyes, that he is represented (on the authority, however, of one who was
himself a schoolmaster) to have declared, that "he would rather see his
two sons at the head of respectable academies, than one of them prime
minister of England, and the other at the head of affairs in Ireland."

At the age of seven years, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was, with his elder
brother, Charles Francis, placed under the tuition of Mr. Samuel Whyte,
of Grafton Street, Dublin,--an amiable and respectable man, who, for
near fifty years after, continued at the head of his profession in that
metropolis. To remember our school-days with gratitude and pleasure, is
a tribute at once to the zeal and gentleness of our master, which none
ever deserved more truly from his pupils than Mr. Whyte, and which the
writer of these pages, who owes to that excellent person all the
instructions in English literature he has ever received, is happy to
take this opportunity of paying. The young Sheridans, however, were
little more than a year under his care--and it may be consoling to
parents who are in the first crisis of impatience, at the sort of
hopeless stupidity which some children exhibit, to know, that the dawn
of Sheridan's intellect was as dull and unpromising as its meridian day
was bright; and that in the year 1759, he who, in less than thirty years
afterwards, held senates enchained by his eloquence and audiences
fascinated by his wit, was, by common consent both of parent and
preceptor, pronounced to be "a most impenetrable dunce."

From Mr. Whyte's school the boys were removed to England, where Mr. and
Mrs. Sheridan had lately gone to reside, and in the year 1762 Richard
was sent to Harrow--Charles being kept at home as a fitter subject for
the instructions of his father, who, by another of those calculations of
poor human foresight, which the deity, called Eventus by the Romans,
takes such wanton pleasure in falsifying, considered his elder son as
destined to be the brighter of the two brother stars. At Harrow, Richard
was remarkable only as a very idle, careless, but, at the same time,
engaging boy, who contrived to win the affection, and even admiration of
the whole school, both masters and pupils, by the mere charm of his
frank and genial manners, and by the occasional gleams of superior
intellect, which broke through all the indolence and indifference of his
character.

Harrow, at this time, possessed some peculiar advantages, of which a
youth like Sheridan might have powerfully availed himself. At the head
of the school was Doctor Robert Sumner, a man of fine talents, but,
unfortunately, one of those who have passed away without leaving any
trace behind, except in the admiring recollection of their
contemporaries. His taste is said to have been of a purity almost
perfect, combining what are seldom seen together, that critical judgment
which is alive to the errors of genius, with the warm sensibility that
deeply feels its beauties. At the same period, the distinguished
scholar, Dr. Parr, who, to the massy erudition of a former age, joined
all the free and enlightened intelligence of the present, was one of the
under masters of the school; and both he and Dr. Sumner endeavored, by
every method they could devise, to awaken in Sheridan a consciousness of
those powers which, under all the disadvantages of indolence and
carelessness, it was manifest to them that he possessed. But
remonstrance and encouragement were equally thrown away upon the good-
humored but immovable indifference of their pupil; and though there
exist among Mr. Sheridan's papers some curious proofs of an industry in
study for which few have ever given him credit, they are probably but
the desultory efforts of a later period of his life, to recover the loss
of that first precious time, whose susceptibility of instruction, as
well as of pleasure, never comes again.

One of the most valuable acquisitions he derived from Harrow was that
friendship, which lasted throughout his life, with Dr. Parr,--which
mutual admiration very early began, and the "_idem sentire de re
publica_" of course not a little strengthened.

As this learned and estimable man has, within the last few weeks, left a
void in the world which will not be easily filled up, I feel that it
would be unjust to my readers not to give, in his own words, the
particulars of Sheridan's school-days, with which he had the kindness to
favor me, and to which his name gives an authenticity and interest too
valuable on such a subject to be withheld:

"Hatton, August 3, 1818.

"DEAR SIR,

"With the aid of a scribe I sit down to fulfil my promise about Mr.
Sheridan. There was little in his boyhood worth communication. He was
inferior to many of his school-fellows in the ordinary business of a
school, and I do not remember any one instance in which he distinguished
himself by Latin or English composition, in prose or verse. [Footnote:
It will be seen, however, though Dr. Parr was not aware of the
circumstance, that Sheridan did try his talent at English verse before
he left Harrow.] Nathaniel Halhed, one of his school-fellows, wrote well
in Latin and Greek. Richard Archdall, another school-fellow, excelled in
English verse. Richard Sheridan aspired to no rivalry with either of
them. He was at the uppermost part of the fifth form, but he never
reached the sixth, and, if I mistake not, he had no opportunity of
attending the most difficult and the most honorable of school business,
when the Greek plays were taught--and it was the custom at Harrow to
teach these at least every year. He went through his lessons in Horace,
and Virgil, and Homer well enough for a time. But, in the absence of the
upper master, Doctor Sumner, it once fell in my way to instruct the two
upper forms, and upon calling up Dick Sheridan, I found him not only
slovenly in construing, but unusually defective in his Greek grammar.
Knowing him to be a clever fellow, I did not fail to probe and to tease
him. I stated his case with great good-humor to the upper master, who
was one of the best tempered men in the world; and it was agreed between
us, that Richard should be called oftener and worked more severely. The
varlet was not suffered to stand up in his place; but was summoned to
take his station near the master's table, where the voice of no prompter
could reach him; and, in this defenceless condition, he was so harassed,
that he at last gathered up some grammatical rules, and prepared himself
for his lessons. While this tormenting process was inflicted upon him, I
now and then upbraided him. But you will take notice that he did not
incur any corporal punishment for his idleness: his industry was just
sufficient to protect him from disgrace. All the while Sumner and I saw
in him vestiges of a superior intellect. His eye, his countenance, his
general manner, were striking. His answers to any common question were
prompt and acute. We knew the esteem, and even admiration, which,
somehow or other, all his school-fellows felt for him. He was
mischievous enough, but his pranks were accompanied by a sort of
vivacity and cheerfulness, which delighted Sumner and myself. I had much
talk with him about his apple-loft, for the supply of which all the
gardens in the neighborhood were taxed, and some of the lower boys were
employed to furnish it. I threatened, but without asperity, to trace the
depredators, through his associates, up to their leader. He with perfect
good-humor set me at defiance, and I never could bring the charge home
to him. All boys and all masters were pleased with him. I often praised
him as a lad of great talents,--often exhorted him to use them well;
but my exhortations were fruitless. I take for granted that his taste
was silently improved, and that he knew well the little which he did
know. He was removed from school too soon by his father, who was the
intimate friend of Sumner, and whom I often met at his house. Sumner had
a fine voice, fine ear, fine taste, and, therefore, pronunciation was
frequently the favorite subject between him and Tom Sheridan. I was
present at many of their discussions and disputes, and sometimes took a
very active part in them,--but Richard was not present. The father, you
know, was a wrong-headed, whimsical man, and, perhaps, his scanty
circumstances were one of the reasons which prevented him from sending
Richard to the University. He must have been aware, as Sumner and I
were, that Richard's mind was not cast in any ordinary mould. I ought to
have told you that Richard, when a boy, was a great reader of English
poetry; but his exercises afforded no proof of his proficiency. In
truth, he, as a boy, was quite careless about literary fame. I should
suppose that his father, without any regular system, polished his taste,
and supplied his memory with anecdotes about our best writers in our
Augustan age. The grandfather, you know, lived familiarly with Swift. I
have heard of him, as an excellent scholar. His boys in Ireland once
performed a Greek play, and when Sir William Jones and I were talking
over this event, I determined to make the experiment in England. I
selected some of my best boys, and they performed the Oedipus Tyrannus,
and the Trachinians of Sophocles. I wrote some Greek Iambics to
vindicate myself from the imputation of singularity, and grieved I am
that I did not keep a copy of them. Milton, you may remember, recommends
what I attempted.

"I saw much of Sheridan's father after the death of Sumner, and after my
own removal from Harrow to Stanmer. I respected him,--he really liked
me, and did me some important services,--but I never met him and Richard
together. I often inquired about Richard, and, from the father's
answers, found they were not upon good terms,--but neither he nor I ever
spoke of his son's talents but in terms of the highest praise." In a
subsequent letter Dr. Parr says: "I referred you to a passage in the
Gentleman's Magazine, where I am represented as discovering and
encouraging in Richard Sheridan those intellectual powers which had not
been discovered and encouraged by Sumner. But the statement is
incorrect. We both of us discovered talents, which neither of us could
bring into action while Sheridan was a school-boy. He gave us few
opportunities of praise in the course of his school business, and yet he
was well aware that we thought highly of him, and anxiously wished more
to be done by him than he was disposed to do.

"I once or twice met his mother,--she was quite celestial. Both her
virtues and her genius were highly esteemed by Robert Sumner. I know not
whether Tom Sheridan found Richard tractable in the art of speaking,--
and, upon such a subject, indolence or indifference would have been
resented by the father as crimes quite inexpiable. One of Richard's
sisters now and then visited Harrow, and well do I remember that, in the
house where I lodged, she triumphantly repeated Dryden's Ode upon St.
Cecilia's Day, according to the instruction given to her by her father.
Take a sample:

_None_ but the brave,
None but the _brave_,
None _but_ the brave deserve the fair.

Whatever may have been the zeal or the proficiency of the sister,
naughty Richard, like Gallio, seemed to care naught for these things.

"In the later periods of his life Richard did not cast behind him
classical reading. He spoke copiously and powerfully about Cicero. He
had read, and he had understood, the four orations of Demosthenes, read
and taught in our public schools. He was at home in Virgil and in
Horace. I cannot speak positively about Homer,--but I am very sure that
he read the Iliad now and then; not as a professed scholar would do,
critically, but with all the strong sympathies of a poet reading a poet.
[Footnote: It was not one of the least of the triumphs of Sheridan's
talent to have been able to persuade so acute a scholar as Dr. Parr,
that the extent of his classical acquirements was so great as is here
represented, and to have thus impressed with the idea of his remembering
so much, the person who best knew how little he had learned.] Richard
did not, and could not forget what he once knew, but his path to
knowledge was his own,--his steps were noiseless,--his progress was
scarcely felt by himself,--his movements were rapid but irregular.

"Let me assure you that Richard, when a boy, was by no means vicious.
The sources of his infirmities were a scanty and precarious allowance
from the father, the want of a regular plan for some profession, and,
above all, the act of throwing him upon the town, when he ought to have
been pursuing his studies at the University. He would have done little
among mathematicians at Cambridge;--he would have been a rake, or an
idler, or a trifler, at Dublin;--but I am inclined to think that at
Oxford he would have become an excellent scholar.

"I have now told you all that I know, and it amounts to very little. I
am very solicitous for justice to be done to Robert Sumner. He is one of
the six or seven persons among my own acquaintance whose taste I am
accustomed to consider perfect, and, were he living, his admiration...."
[Footnote: The remainder of the letter relates to other subjects.]

During the greater part of Richard's stay at Harrow his father had been
compelled, by the embarrassment of his affairs, to reside with the
remainder of the family in France, and it was at Blois, in the September
of 1766, that Mrs. Sheridan died--leaving behind her that best kind of
fame, which results from a life of usefulness and purity, and which it
requires not the aid of art or eloquence to blazon. She appears to have
been one of those rare women, who, united to men of more pretensions,
but less real intellect than themselves, meekly conceal this superiority
even from their own hearts, and pass their lives without remonstrance or
murmur, in gently endeavoring to repair those evils which the
indiscretion or vanity of their partners has brought upon them.

As a supplement to the interesting communication of Dr. Parr, I shall
here subjoin an extract from a letter which the eldest sister of
Sheridan, Mrs. E. Lefanu, wrote a few months after his death to Mrs.
Sheridan, in consequence of a wish expressed by the latter that Mrs.
Lefanu would communicate such particulars as she remembered of his early
days. It will show, too, the feeling which his natural good qualities,
in spite of the errors by which they were obscured and weakened, kept
alive to the last, in the hearts of those connected with him, that sort
of retrospective affection, which, when those whom we have loved become
altered, whether in mind or person, brings the recollection of what they
once were, to mingle with and soften our impression of what they are.

After giving an account of the residence of the family in France, she
continues: "We returned to England, when I may say I first became
acquainted with my brother--for faint and imperfect were my
recollections of him, as might be expected from my age. I saw him; and
my childish attachment revived with double force. He was handsome, not
merely in the eyes of a partial sister, but generally allowed to be so.
His cheeks had the glow of health; his eyes,--the finest in the world,--
the brilliancy of genius, and were soft as a tender and affectionate
heart could render them. The same playful fancy, the same sterling and
innoxious wit, that was shown afterwards in his writings, cheered and
delighted the family circle. I admired--I almost adored him. I would
most willingly have sacrificed my life for him, as I, in some measure,
proved to him at Bath, where we resided for some time, and where events
that you must have heard of engaged him in a duel. My father's
displeasure threatened to involve me in the denunciations against him,
for committing what he considered as a crime. Yet I risked everything,
and in the event was made happy by obtaining forgiveness for my
brother.... You may perceive, dear sister, that very little indeed have
I to say on a subject so near your heart, and near mine also. That for
years I lost sight of a brother whom I loved with unabated affection--a
love that neither absence nor neglect could chill--I always consider as
a great misfortune."

On his leaving Harrow, where he continued till near his eighteenth year,
he was brought home by his father, who, with the elder son, Charles, had
lately returned from France, and taken a house in London. Here the two
brothers for some time received private tuition from Mr. Lewis Kerr, an
Irish gentleman, who had formerly practised as a physician, but having,
by loss of health, been obliged to give up his profession, supported
himself by giving lessons in Latin and Mathematics. They attended also
the fencing and riding schools of Mr. Angelo, and received instructions
from their father in English grammar and oratory. Of this advantage,
however, it is probable, only the elder son availed himself, as Richard,
who seems to have been determined to owe all his excellence to nature
alone, was found as impracticable a pupil at home as at school. But,
however inattentive to his studies he may have been at Harrow, it
appears, from one of the letters of his school-fellow, Mr. Halhed, that
in poetry, which is usually the first exercise in which these young
athletae of intellect try their strength, he had already distinguished
himself; and, in conjunction with his friend Halhed, had translated the
seventh Idyl, and many of the lesser poems of Theocritus. This literary
partnership was resumed soon after their departure from Harrow. In the
year 1770, when Halhed was at Oxford, and Sheridan residing with his
father at Bath, they entered into a correspondence, (of which,
unluckily, only Halhed's share remains,) and, with all the hope and
spirit of young adventurers, began and prosecuted a variety of works
together, of which none but their translation of Aristaenetus ever saw
the light.

There is something in the alliance between these boys peculiarly
interesting. Their united ages, as Halhed boasts in one of his letters,
did not amount to thirty-eight. They were both abounding in wit and
spirits, and as sanguine as the consciousness of talent and youth could
make them; both inspired with a taste for pleasure, and thrown upon
their own resources for the means of gratifying it; both carelessly
embarking, without rivalry or reserve, their venture of fame in the same
bottom, and both, as Halhed discovered at last, passionately in love
with the same woman.

It would have given me great pleasure to have been enabled to enliven my
pages with even a few extracts from that portion of their
correspondence, which, as I have just mentioned, has fallen into my
hands. There is in the letters of Mr. Halhed a fresh youthfulness of
style, and an unaffected vivacity of thought, which I question whether
even his witty correspondent could have surpassed. As I do not, however,
feel authorized to lay these letters before the world, I must only avail
myself of the aid which their contents supply towards tracing the
progress of his literary partnership with Sheridan, and throwing light
on a period so full of interest in the life of the latter.

Their first joint production was a farce, or rather play, in three acts,
called "Jupiter," written in imitation of the burletta of Midas, whose
popularity seems to have tempted into its wake a number of these musical
parodies upon heathen fable. The amour of Jupiter with _Major_
Amphitryon's wife, and _Sir Richard_ Ixion's courtship of Juno, who
substitutes _Miss Peggy Nubilis_ in her place, form the subject of
this ludicrous little drama, of which Halhed furnished the burlesque
scenes,--while the form of a rehearsal, into which the whole is thrown,
and which, as an anticipation of "The Critic" is highly curious, was
suggested and managed entirely by Sheridan. The following extracts will
give some idea of the humor of this trifle; and in the character of
Simile the reader will at once discover a sort of dim and shadowy pre-
existence of Puff:--

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