satires then circulating, under the titles of "The Rolliad" and the "Probationary Odes." "He was aware," he said, "that the Honourable Gentleman had suspected that he was either the author of those compositions, or some way or other concerned in them; but he assured him, upon his honour, he was not-nor had he ever seen a line of them till they were in print in the newspaper."

Mr. Rolle, the hero of The Rolliad, was one of those unlucky persons, whose destiny it is to be immortalised by ridicule, and to whom the world owes the same sort of gratitude for the wit of which they were the butts, as the merchants did, in Sinbad's story, to those pieces of meat to which diamonds adhered. The chief offence, besides his political obnoxiousness, by which he provoked this satirical warfare, (whose plan of attack was all arranged at a club held at Becket's,) was the lead which he took in a sort of conspiracy, formed on the ministerial benches, to interrupt, by coughing, hawking, and other unseemly noises, the speeches of Mr. Burke. The chief writers of these lively productions were Tickell, General Fitzpatrick*, Lord John Townshendt, Richardson, George Ellis, and Dr. Lawrence. There were also a few minor contributions from the pens of Bate Dudley, Mr. O'Beirne (afterwards Bishop of Meath), and Sheridan's friend, Read. In two of the writers, Mr.

To General Fitzpatrick some of the happiest pleasantries are to be attributed; among others, the verses on Brooke Watson, those on the Marquis of Graham, and "The Liars."

Lord John Townshend, the only survivor, at present, of this confederacy of wits, was the author, in conjunction with Tickell, of the admirable Satire, entitled "Jekyll,"-Tickell having contributed only the lines parodied from Pope. To the exquisite humour of Lord John we owe also the Probationary Ode for Major Scott, and the playful parody on "Donec

gratus erum tibi."

+ By Doctor Lawrence the somewhat ponderous irony of the prosaic department was chiefly managed. In allusion to the personal appearance of this eminent civilian, one of the wits of the day thus parodied a passage of Virgil:

"Quo tetrior alter Non fuit, excepto Laurentis corpore Turni.”

Ellis and Dr. Lawrence, we have a proof of the changeful nature of those atoms, whose concourse for the time consti tutes Party, and of the volatility with which, like the motes in the sunbeam, described by Lucretius, they can

“Commutare viam, retroque repulsa reverti

Nunc huc, nunc illuc, in cunctas denique partes.”

Change their light course, as fickle chance may guide,
Now here, now there, and shoot from side to side.

Doctor Lawrence was afterwards a violent supporter of Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Ellis showed the versatility of his wit, as well as of his politics, by becoming one of the most brilliant contributors to The Antijacobin.

The Rolliad and The Antijacobin may, on their respective sides of the question, be considered as models of that style of political satire, whose lightness and vivacity give it the ap

It is related that, on one occasion, when Mr. Ellis was dining with Mr. Pitt, and embarrassed naturally by the recollection of what he had been guilty of towards his host in The Rolliad, some of his brother-wits, to amuse themselves at his expense, endeavoured to lead the conversation to the subject of this work, by asking him various questions as to its authors, &c.,-which Mr. Pitt overhearing, from the upper end of the table, leaned kindly towards Ellis and said,

“Immo age, et à prima, dic, hospes, origine nobis.”

The word "hospes,” applied to the new convert, was happy, and the “erroresque tuos," that follows, was, perhaps, left to be implied.

The following just observations upon The Rolliad and Probationary Odes occur in the manuscript Life of Sheridan which I have already cited: —“They are, in most instances, specimens of the powers of men, who, giv ing themselves up to ease and pleasure, neither improved their minds with great industry, nor exerted them with much activity; and have therefore left no very considerable nor durable memorials of the happy and vigorous abilities, with which nature had certainly endowed them. The effusions themselves are full of fortunate allusions, ludicrous terms, artful panegyric, and well aimed satire. The verses are at times far superior to the occasion, and the whole is distinguished by a taste, both in language and matter, perfectly pure and classical; but they are mere occasional productions. They will sleep with the papers of the Craftsman, so vaunted in their own time,

pearance of proceeding rather from the wantonness of wit than of ill-nature, and whose very malice, from the fancy with which it is mixed up, like certain kinds of fireworks, explodes in sparkles. They, however, who are most inclined to forgive, in consideration of its polish and playfulness, the personality in which the writers of both these works indulged, will also readily admit that by no less shining powers can a licence so questionable be either assumed or palliated, and that nothing but the lively effervescence of the draught can make us forget the bitterness infused into it. At no time was this truth ever more strikingly exemplified than at present, when a separation seems to have taken place between satire and wit, which leaves the former like the toad, without the "jewel in its head ;" and when the hands, into which the weapon of personality has chiefly fallen, have brought upon it a stain and disrepute, that will long keep such writers as those of the Rolliad and Antijacobin from touching it again.

Among other important questions, that occupied the attention of Mr. Sheridan at this period, was the measure brought forward under the title of "Irish Commercial Propositions" for the purpose of regulating and finally adjusting the commercial intercourse between England and Ireland. The line taken by him and Mr. Fox in their opposition to this plan was such as to accord, at once with the prejudices of the English manufacturers and the feelings of the Irish patriots, the former regarding the measure as fatal to their interests, and the latter rejecting with indignation the boon

but which are never now raked up, except by the curiosity of the historian and the man of literature.

"Wit, being generally founded upon the manners and characters of its own day, is crowned in that day, beyond all other exertions of the mind, with splendid and immediate success. But there is always something that equalises. In return, more than any other production, it suffers suddenly and irretrievably from the hand of Time. It receives a character the most opposite to its own. From being the most generally understood and perceived, it becomes of all writing the most difficult and the most obscure. Satires, whose meaning was open to the multitude, defy the erudition of the scholar, and comedies, of which every line was felt as soon as it was spoken, require the labour of an antiquary to explain them."

which it offered, as coupled with a condition for the surren der of the legislative independence of their country.

In correct views of political economy, the advantage throughout this discussion was wholly on the side of the minister; and, in a speech of Mr. Jenkinson, we find (advanced, indeed, but incidentally, and treated by Mr. Fox as no more than amusing theories,) some of those liberal principles of trade which have since been more fully developed, and by which the views of all practical statesmen are, at the present day, directed. The little interest attached by Mr. Fox to the science of Political Economy-so remarkably proved by the fact of his never having read the work of Adam Smith on the subject-is, in some degree, accounted for by the scepticism of of the following passage, which occurs in one of his animated speeches on this very question. Mr. Pitt having asserted, in answer to those who feared the competition of Ireland in the market from her low prices of labour, that "great capital would in all cases overbalance cheapness of labour," Mr. Fox questions the abstract truth of this position, and adds,-General positions of all kinds ought to be very cautiously admitted; indeed, on subjects so infinitely complex and mutable as politics and commerce, a wise man hesitates at giving too implicit a credit to any general maxim of any denomination."

If the surrender of any part of her legislative power could have been expected from Ireland in that proud moment, when her new-born Independence was but just beginning to smile in her lap, the acceptance of the terms then proffered by the Minister, might have averted much of the evils, of which she was afterwards the victim. The proposed plan being, in itself, (as Mr. Grattan called it,) "an incipient and creeping Union," would have prepared the way less violently for the completion of that fated measure, and spared at least the corruption and the blood which were the preliminaries of its perpetration at last. But the pride, so natural and honourable to the Irish-had fate but placed them in a situation to assert it with any permanent effect-repelled the idea of being bound even by the commercial regulations of England. The wonderful eloquence of Grattan, which, like an

eagle guarding her young, rose grandly in defence of the freedom to which itself had given birth, would alone have been sufficient to determine a whole nation to his will. Accordingly such demonstrations of resistance were made both by people and parliament, that the Commercial Propositions were given up by the minister, and this apparition of a Union withdrawn from the eyes of Ireland for the present-merely to come again, in another shape, with many a "mortal murder on its crown, and push her from her stool."

As Mr. Sheridan took a strong interest in this question, and spoke at some length on every occasion when it was brought before the House, I will, in order to enable the reader to judge of his manner of treating it, give a few passages from his speech on the discussion of that Resolution, which stipulated for England a controul over the external legislation of Ireland :

"Upon this view, it would be an imposition on common sense to pretend that Ireland could in future have the exercise of free will or discretion upon any of those subjects of legislation, on which she now stipulated to follow the edicts of Great Britain; and it was a miserable sophistry to contend, that her being permitted the ceremony of placing those laws upon her own Statute-Book, as a form of promulgating them, was an argument that it was not the British but the Irish statutes that bound the people of Ireland. For his part, if he were a member of the Irish Parliament, he should prefer the measure of enacting by one decisive vote, that all British laws to the purposes stipulated, should have immediate operation in Ireland as in Great Britain; choosing rather to avoid the mockery of enacting without deliberation, and deciding where they had no power to dissent. Where fetters were to be worn, it was a wretched ambition to contend for the distinction of fastening our own shackles."

"All had been delusion, trick, and fallacy: a new scheme of commercial arrangement is proposed to the Irish as a boon; and the surrender of their Constitution is tacked to it as a mercantile regulation. Ireland, newly es caped from harsh trammels and severe discipline, is treated like a highmettled horse, hard to catch; and the Irish Secretary is to return to the field, soothing and coaxing him, with a sieve of provender in one hand, but with a bridle in the other, ready to slip over his head while he is snuffling at the food. But this political jockeyship, he was convinced, would not succeed."

In defending the policy, as well as generosity of the conCessions made to Ireland by Mr. Fox in 1782, he says,