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Published by J.Robins & Lendon& Dublin, Norm 1826

DUBLIN AND LONDON MAGAZINE

NOVEMBER, 1825.

LIFE OF SHERIDAN.

A NEW Work-even though it he a large quarto-with the name of Moore in the title-page, is sure, at any time, to create an intense interest in the reading public. At present that interest is considerably heightened by circumstances, independent of the high and well-earned reputation of the author. The volume has appeared in a season when we are accus tomed to a kind of literary famine, and it treats of a subject which is interesting alike to the scholar and the politician-the lover and the patriot. Next to Lord Byron, we know of no man whose memoirs could be more acceptable than those of Sheridan; and, indeed, the life of this extraordinary man—at least in a moral point of view-is more instructive, and perhaps more entertaining, than that of the noble bard's possibly could be. His course was more devious; he continued longer on the public stage, and performed a more busy and intricate part. We cannot contemplate with indifference the career of one who raised himself, by the mere strength of unassisted, uncultivated talent, from comparative obscurity to a seat in the legislature, and a placea pre-eminent place-in the republic of letters. The player's son, as he was insultingly denominated by the aristocratic brood at Harrow, became the companion and adviser of the heir-apparent; and, though some dark spots disfigure the disk of his splendid name, there are few-very few who have been exposed to similar temptations, more guiltless of error than Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

It is now more than seven years since Mr. Moore promised the world the memoirs before us, and he tells us in the preface that the first four chapters were written at that time. The delay which has taken place, we are sorry to say, is attributable to the circumstance which obliged Mr. Moore to reside for some time on the

BY THOMAS MOORE.*

Continent. But, though we should have gladly hailed this memorial to the merits of Sheridan at an earlier period, we cannot say that we regret its not having appeared much sooner. Time is favourable to the development of truth; and the biographer has afforded testimonials in abundance that he has been diligent in seeking after information. Such of his friends as apprehended that the complicated nature of his subject would embarrass him have been agreeably disappointed; for the most virulent Tory must acknowledge that he has been singularly candid. In no one point have his partialities blinded him to truth; for, while he points out the errors of the Whigs, he extenuates many of the faults attributed to their opponents. We are quite confident that Mr. Moore has written nothing hitherto that does him more honour than the work before us.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born in the month of September, 1751, at No. 12, Dorset Street, Dublin. His grandfather is well known to have been the friend of Dean Swift; and his father was the celebrated rival of Garrick, as well as author of an English Dictionary, and various works on Elocution. His mother, too, was distinguished for her literary attainments, and has left behind her numerous memorials of her taste and genius. Born thus with an hereditary claim to literature, it is remarkable that Richard and his elder brother were pronounced by their parents and their master, Mr. Whyte, of Grafton Street, impenetrable dunces.'

On the removal of Mr. Sheridan's family to England, Richard was sent, in 1762, to Harrow School, where he remained until his eighteenth year, beloved by his masters and fellowpupils, but without having given any indications of superior intellect. At this time, however, he appears to have been conscious of his own powers,

* Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan. By Thomas Moore. London, Longman, 1825. VOL. I.-No 9.

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though he wanted industry to cultivate them.

While at Harrow he formed an intimacy with a youth named Halhed, in conjunction with whom he produced a farce in imitation of Midas; but, through the indolence and procrastination of Sheridan, it was never brought to maturity. Soon after these tyros entered into a literary partnership, brought out the first number of a periodical, and published a translation of Aristænetus, the complete failure of which seems to have blasted the hopes the young poets entertained of being enriched by their devotion to the muses.

In 1770 the elder Mr. Sheridan removed to Bath, where the family of Mr. Linley then resided. An acquaintance between the fathers led to an intimacy between their children; and Richard and his brother Charles became enamoured, unknowingly to each other, of Miss Linley-a lady deservedly celebrated for her musical talents and correctness of deport

ment.

In addition to the numerous admirers which the beauty and accomplishments of Miss Linley attracted, there was one whose base and unhallowed passion excited feelings of disgust, while it alarmed the youthful lover for the safety of his mistress. The name of this wretch was Matthews-a man of property, and an inmate in Mr. Linley's family, who made use of the opportunities he enjoyed to annoy the daughter of his host by his indiscreet attentions.

In consequence of this persecution, and an increasing dislike to her profession, which made her shrink more and more from the gaze of the many, in proportion as she became devoted to the love of one, she adopted, early in 1772, the romantic resolution of flying secretly to France, and taking refuge in a convent, intending, at the same time, to indemnify her father, to whom she was bound till the age of twenty-one, by the surrender to him of part of the sum which Mr. Long had settled upon her. Sheridan, who, it is probable, had been the chief adviser of her flight, was, of course, not slow in offering to be the partner of it. His sister, whom he seems to have persuaded that his conduct in this affair arose from a wish solely to serve Miss Linley as a friend, without any design or desire to take advantage of her elopement as a lover, not only assisted

them with money out of her little fund for house expenses, but gave them letters of introduction to a family with whom she had been acquainted at St. Quentin. On the evening appointed for their departure, Maria Linley, were engaged at a concert, while Mr. Linley, his eldest son, and Miss from which the young Cecilia herself had been, on a plea of illness, excused, she was conveyed by Sheridan in a sedanchair from her father's house in the Crescent, to a post-chaise which waited for them on the London road, and in which she found a woman, whom her lover had hired, as a sort of protecting Minerva, to accompany them in their flight.

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It will be recollected that Sheridan was at this time little more than twenty, and his companion just entering her eighteenth year. On their arrival in London, with an adroitness which was, at least, very dramatic, he introduced her to an old friend of his family (Mr. Ewart, a respectable brandy-merchant in the city), as a rich heiress who had consented to elope with him to the Continent; in consequence of which the old gentleman, with many commendations of his wisdom, for having given up the imprudent pursuit of Miss Linley, not only accommodated the fugitives with a passage on board a ship which he had ready to sail from the port of London to Dunkirk, but gave them letters of recommendation to his correspondents at that place, who with the same zeal and dispatch facilitated their journey to Lisle.

On their leaving Dunkirk, as was natural to expect, the chivalrous and disinterested protector degenerated into a mere selfish lover. It was represented by him, with arguments which seemed to appeal to prudence as well as feeling, that, after the step which they had taken, she could not possibly appear in England again but as his wife. He was, therefore, he said, resolved not to deposit her in a convent, till she had consented, by the ceremony of a marriage, to confirm to him that right of protecting her which he had now but temporarily assumed. It did not, we may suppose, require much eloquence to convince her heart of the truth of this reasoning; and, accordingly, at a little village not far from Calais, they were married about the latter end of March, 1772, by a priest well known for his services on such occasions.'

On Sheridan's return he called Matthews to account for having published a defamatory notice during his absence. The result of this meeting was the disgrace of this hoary villain, who immediately after retired to his estate in Wales. Public opprobium

having followed him to his retreat, he was induced, by the advice of a kind of Sir Lucius Ó'Trigger, to seek another meeting with young Sheridan, who was imprudent enough to afford him an opportunity of regaining his forfeited honour. The second duel had nearly terminated a life, to which, as Mr. Moore says, we are indebted for an example as noble in its excitements, and a lesson as useful in its warnings, as ever genius, and its errors, have bequeathed to mankind.'

Although Sheridan and Miss Linley had been privately married in France, they deemed it necessary to conceal the fact. The young lady, in the mean time, had returned to her father, and was fulfilling her engagements at an oratorio held at Oxford, when the result of the second duel was communicated to her. From

some words which fell from her at the moment, the secret of her marriage was discovered; and Mr. Linley consented to the union of the youthful lovers. They were married the 13th of April, 1773.

A few weeks previous to his marriage,' says Mr. Moore, 'Sheridan had been entered a student of the Middle Temple. It was not, however, to be expected that talents like his, so sure of a quick return of fame and emolument, would wait for the distant and dearlyearned emoluments, which a life of labour in this profession promises. Nor, indeed, did his circumstances admit of any such patient speculation. A part of the sum which Mr. Long had settled upon Miss Linley, and occasional assistance from her father (his own having withdrawn all countenance from him), were now the only resources, besides his own talents, left him. The celebrity of Mrs. Sheridan as a singer was, it is true, a ready source of wealth; and offers of the most advantageous kind were pressed upon them, by managers of concerts both in town and country. But with a pride and delicacy, which received the tribute of Dr. Johnson's praise, he rejected at once all thoughts of allowing her to re-appear in public; and, instead of profiting by the display of his wife's talents, adopted the

manlier resolution of seeking an independence by his own. An engagement had been made for her some months before by her father, to perform at the music-meeting that was to take place at Worcester this summer. But Sheridan, who consi

dered that his own claims upon her had superseded all others, would not suffer her to keep this engagement.'-P. 84.

He seems to have now employed himself on a variety of literary projects, none of which produced any substantial benefit, until the appearance of his comedy of 'The Rivals,' at Covent-Garden, on the 17th of January, 1775. Its success, at first, was doubtful; but, being recast for the second night, it rose at once into public favour.

"The celebrity,' says Mr. Moore, 'which Sheridan had acquired, as the chivalrous derably increased by the success of The lover of Miss Linley, was of course consiRivals; and, gifted as he and his beautiful wife were with all that forms the magnetism of society,-the power to attract, and the disposition to be attracted,—their life, as may easily be supposed, was one of gaiety both at home and abroad. Though little able to cope with the entertainments of their wealthy acquaintance, her music, and the good company which his talents drew around him, were an ample repayment for the more solid hospitalities which they received. Among the families visited by them was that of Mr. Coote (Purden), at whose musical parties Mrs. Sheriridan frequently sung, accompanied occasionally by the two little daughters* of Mr. Coote, who were the originals of the children introduced into Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of Mrs. Sheridan as St. Cecilia. It was here that the Duchess of Devonshire first met Sheridan; and, as I have been told, long hesitated as to the propriety of inviting to her house two persons of such equivocal rank in society, as he and his wife were at that time considered. Her Grace was reminded of these scruples some years after, when "the player's son" had become the admiration of the proudest and fairest; and when a house, provided for the Duchess herself at Bath, was left two months unoccupied, in consequence of the social attractions of She

**The charm of her singing, as well as her fondness for children, are interestingly described in a letter to my friend Mr. Rogers, from one of the most tasteful writers of the present day" Hers was truly a voice as of the cherub choir,' and she was always ready to sing without any pressing. She sung here a great deal, and to my infinite delight; but what had a peculiar charm was, that she used to take my daughter, then a child, on her lap, and sing a number of childish songs with such a playfulness of manner, and such a sweetness of look and voice, as was quite enchanting.'

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ridan, which prevented a party then assembled at Chatsworth from separating. These are triumphs which, for the sake of all humbly-born heirs of genius, deserve to be commemorated.-P. 103,9.

In the same year he produced St. Patrick's Day,' a farce, and 'The Duenna,' an opera. Such was the reception of the latter, that it was played for sixty-three nights successively. His prospects were now so flattering, that about this time he entered into a negotiation with Garrick for the purchase of his share in DruryLane Theatre. In 1777 this business was completed, and Sheridan became part proprietor.

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'Mr. Sheridan,' says his biographer, was now approaching the summit of his dramatic fame;-he had already produced the best opera in the language, and there now remained for him the glory of writing also the best comedy. As this species of composition seems more, perhaps, than any other, to require that knowledge of human nature and the world which experience alone can give, it seems not a little extraordinary that nearly all our first-rate comedies should have been the productions of very young men. Those of Congreve were all written before he was five-and twenty. Farquhar produced the Constant Couple in his twoand-twentieth year, and died at thirty. Vanbrugh was a young ensign when he sketched out the Relapse and the Provoked Wife, and Sheridan crowned his reputation with the School for Scandal at six-and-twenty.

It is, perhaps, still more remarkable to find, as in the instance before us, that works which, at this period of life, we might suppose to have been the rapid offspring of a careless, but vigorous, fancy,-anticipating the results of experience by a sort of second-sight inspiration, should, on the contrary, have been the slow result of many and doubtful experiments, gradually unfolding beauties un foreseen even by him who produced them, and arriving, at length, step by step, at perfection. That such was the tardy process by which the School for Scandal was produced, will appear from the first sketches of its plan and dialogue, which I am here enabled to lay before the reader, and which cannot fail to interest deeply all those who take delight in tracing the alchymy of genius, and in watching the first slow workings of the menstruum, out of which its finest transmutatious arise.

"Genius," says Buffon, "is Patience;" or, (as another French writer has explained his thought)-" La Patience

cherche, et le Génie trouve ;" and there is little doubt that to the co-operation of these two powers all the brightest inventions of this world are owing;-that Patience must first explore the depths where the pearl lies hid, before Genius boldly dives and brings it up full into light. There are, it is true, some striking exceptions to this rule; and our own times have witnessed more than one extraordinary intellect, whose depth has not prevented their treasures from lying ever ready within reach. But the records of Immortality furnish few such instances; and all we know of the works, that she has hitherto marked with her seal, sufficiently authorize the general position,-that nothing great and durable has ever been produced with case, and that Labour is the parent of all the lasting wonders of this world, whether in verse or stone, whether poetry or pyramids '-P. 154, 5.

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In the following year he became the purchaser of Mr. Lacy's moiety in the theatre, for the sum of 45,000l. all those thousands were conjured up, By what spell,' says Mr. Moore, it would be difficult accurately to ascertain. That happy art, in which the people of this country are such adepts

-of putting the future in pawn for the supply of the present-must have been the chief resource of Mr. Sheridan in all these latter purchases.'

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'We must now,' says Mr. Moore, prepare to follow the subject of this Memoir into a field of display, altogether different, where he was in turu to become an actor before the public himself, and where, instead of inditing lively speeches for others, he was to deliver the dictates of his eloquence and wit from his own lips. However the lovers of the drama may lament this diversion of his talents, and doubt whether even the chance of another School for Scandal were not worth more than all his subsequent career, yet to the individual himself, full of ambition and conscious of versatility of powers, such an opening into a new course of action and fame must have been like one of those sudden turnings of the read in a beautiful country, which dazzle the eyes of the traveller with new glories, and invite him on to untried paths of fertility and sunshine.

'It has been before remarked how early, in a majority of instances, the dramatic talent has come to its fullest maturity. Mr. Sheridan would possibly never have exceeded what he had already done, and his celebrity had now reached that point of elevation, where, by a sort of optical de ception in the atmosphere of fame, to re

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