such as- "The more you show, the less we wish to see. "And bare their bodies, as they mask their minds," etc. This poem, however, must have been undertaken many years after his entrance into Parliament, as the following curious political memorandum will prove :-"I like it no better for being from France-whence all ills come-altar of liberty, begrimed at once with blood and mire."

There are also some Anacreontics-lively, but boyish and extravagant. For instance, in expressing his love of bumpers :

"Were mine a goblet that had room
For a whole vintage in its womb.
I still would have the liquor swim
An inch or two above the brim."

The following specimen is from one of those poems, whose length and completeness prove them to have been written at a time of life when he was more easily pleased, and had not yet arrived at that state of glory and torment for the poet, when

"Toujours mécontent de ce qu'il vient de faire,
Il plait à tout le monde et ne saurait se plaire.
"The Muses call'd, the other morning,

On Phoebus, with a friendly warning
That invocations came so fast,
They must give up their trade at last,
And if he meant to’assist them all,
The aid of Nine would be too small.

Me then, as clerk, the Council chose,
To tell this truth in humble

prose.

But Phoebus, possibly intending

To show what all their hopes must end in,
To give the scribbling youths a sample,
And frighten them by my example,
Bade me ascend the poet's throne,
And give them verse-much like their own.

"Who has not heard each poet sing
The powers of Heliconian spring?
Its noble virtues we are told

By all the rhyming crew of old.-
Drink but a little of its well,

And straight you could both write and spell,
While such rhyme-giving pow'rs run through it,
A quart would make an epic poet." etc. etc.

A poem on the miseries of a literary drudge begins thus promisingly :

Think ye how dear the sickly meal is bought,
By him who works at verse and trades in thought?"

The rest is hardly legible; but there can be little doubt that he would have done this subject justice; for he had himself tasted of the bitterness with which the heart of a man of genius overflows, when forced by indigence to barter away (as it is here expressed) "the reversion of his thoughts," and

"Forestall the blighted harvest of his brain."

VOL. I.

27

314

MEMOIRS OF R. B. SHERIDAN.

It will be easily believed that, in looking over the remains, both dramatic and poetical, from which the foregoing specimens are taken, I have been frequently tempted to indulge in much ampler extracts. It appeared to me, however, more prudent, to rest satisfied with the selections here given; for, while less would have disappointed the curiosity of the reader, more might have done injustice to the memory of the author.

CHAPTER VIII.

HIS FIRST SPEECHES IN PARLIAMENT.-ROCKING

HAM ADMINISTRATION.
BILL.

COALITION. INDIA

THE period at which Mr. Sheridan entered upon his political career was, in every respect, remarkable. A persevering and vindictive war against America, with the folly and guilt of which the obstinacy of the Court and the acquiescence of the people are equally chargeable, was fast approaching that crisis, which every unbiassed spectator of the contest had long foreseen,—and at which, however humiliating to the haughty pretensions of England, every friend to the liberties of the human race rejoiced. It was, perhaps, as difficult for this country to have been long and virulently opposed to such principles as the Americans asserted in this contest, without being herself corrupted by the cause which she maintained, as it was for the French to have fought, in the same conflict, by the side of the oppressed, without catching a portion of that enthusiasm for liberty, which such an alliance was calculated to inspire. Accordingly, while the voice of Philosophy was heard along the neighbouring shores,

speaking aloud those oracular warnings, which preceded the death of the Great Pan of Despotism, the courtiers and lawyers of England were, with an emulous spirit of servility, advising and sanctioning such strides of power, as would not have been unworthy of the most dark and slavish times.

When we review, indeed, the history of the late reign, and consider how invariably the arms and councils of Great Britain, in her Eastern wars, her conflict with America, and her efforts against revolutionary France, were directed to the establishment and perpetuation of despotic principles, it seems little less than a miracle that her own liberty should have escaped with life from the contagion. Never, indeed, can she be sufficiently grateful to the few patriot spirits of this period, to whose courage and eloquence she owes the high station of freedom yet left to her ;never can her sons pay a homage too warm to the memory of such men as a Chatham, a Fox, and a Sheridan; who, however much they may have sometimes sacrificed to false views of expediency, and, by compromise with friends and coalition with foes, too often weakened their hold upon public confidence; however the attraction of the Court may have sometimes made them librate in their orbit, were yet the saving lights of Liberty in those times, and alone preserved the ark of the Constitution from foun