1825.] REVIEW-Moore's Life of Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan, 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 Edipus 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 Stanmore. Í respect 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 -neither he nor I ever spoke of his son's talents but in terms of the highest praise Doctor Sumner, it once fell in my way to instruct the two upper forms, and upon calling 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 teaze him. I stated his case with-great goodhumour 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 supe-ed him, he really liked me, and did me rior 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 appleloft, for the supply of which all the gardens in the neighbourhood 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-humour 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 favourite subject between him and Tom Sheridan. I was present at many of their discussions and disputes, and sometimes took a very active part in thembut 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 "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 Sum ner. 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 schoolbusiness, 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. * * In the later periods of his life Richard did not cast behind him his 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 t. Richard did not, Vol. LXXXVI. part ii. p. 84. It was 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. and 348 REVIEW. Moore's Life of Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan. 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." It would appear that the talent for accomplishing by dexterous arti-fice what others are satisfied to leave dependent or less oblique and subtle modes of action seems to have been born with Sheridan.-The most romantic portion of his life was his connexion with the accomplished and beautiful Miss Linley, his first wife, the particulars of which are stated in her interesting letter which commences the present Number. In this transaction, though only twenty years of age, he made love like a diplomatist, in a spirit of sly watchfulness wholly without example, managing to blind all eyes but those of his mistress to a passion which no lover but himself could have concealed, while, besides father, sisters, and other members of the same domestic society with her for whom he sighed, he deceived completely his brother and his friend, both enamoured of the same lovely object, and equally unconscious of his successful rivalship. A genius for negociation not less peculiar evinced itself by its effects, in his purchase of Drury Lane Theatre. Sheridan there produced on a sudden the inconceivable sum of 10,000l. but kept from every mortal observation the channel through which he obtained it. Mr. Moore gives a minute and interesting account of Mr. Sheridan's treaty for the purchase of Mr. Garrick's half of the property of Drury Lane Theatre, valued in all at 70,000l. This moiety was to be divided between Mr. Sheridan, who was to advance 10,000/. for two fourteenths, his father-in-law, Mr. Linley, who was to advance 10,000l. for two more, and Dr. Ford, who was to advance 15,000l. for three fourteenths. [Oct. "There was, indeed, something (says Mr. Moore) mysterious and miraculous about all his acquisitions, whether in love, in learning, in wit, or in wealth. How or when his stock of knowledge was laid in, nobody knew -it was as much a matter of marvel to those who never saw him read, as the existence of the chameleon has been to those who fancied it never eat. His advances in the heart of his mistress were, as we have seen, equally trackless and inaudible, and his triumph was the first that even rivals knew of his love. In like manner, the productions of his wit took the world by surprise,-being perfected in secret, till ready for display, and then seeming to break from under the cloud of his indolence in full maturity of splendour. His financial resources had no less an air of magic about them; and the mode in which he conjured up, at this time, the money for his first purchase into the theatre, remains, as far as I can learn, still a mystery. It has been said that Mr. Garrick supplied him with the means. There was evidently at this time no such confidential understand ing between them as an act of friendship of so signal a nature would imply: and it appears that Sheridan had the purchasemoney ready, even before the terms upon which Garrick would sell were ascertained. That Dr. Ford should have advanced the money is not less improbable; for the share of which, contrary to his first intention, he ultimately became proprietor, absorbed, there is every reason to think, the whole of his disposable means.' The period when Sheridan entered on his political career, was very remarkable. The American war was at its height; and not only were the public events in which he was called upon to take a part, of an extraordinary nature, but the principal actors in the scene were possessed of that lofty order of intellect which nature sometimes appears to keep in reserve for great occasions. Burke, Fox, and Pitt, were the leading stars of the political hemisphere; and Mr. Sheridan was returned to the House of Commons as a powerful auxiliary to the Opposition. He made his first speech in Parliament on the 20th of November, 1780, when a petition was presented to the House complaining of the undue election of the sitting members (Mr. Monckton and himself) for Stafford. The fame which he had acquired by his literary and dramatic talents, was sufficient to excite the curiosity and attention of his audience. The indignation which he expressed on this occasion at the charges brought by the petition against the electors of Stafford, was coolly turned into ridicule by Mr. 1895.] REVIEW.-Moore's Life of Right Hon. R: B. Sheridan. Rigby, Paymaster of the Forces. But "Scarcely had the impulse (observes Mr. Moore) which his own genius had given to the prosecution of Hastings, begun to abate, when the indisposition of the King opened another field, not only for the display of all his various powers, but for the fondest speculations of his interest and ambition. The robust health and temperate habits of the Monarch, while they held out the temptation of a long lease of power to those who either enjoyed or were inclined to speculate in his favour, gave proportionably the grace of disinterestedness to the followers of an Heir-Apparent, whose means of rewarding their devotion were, from the same causes, uncertain and remote. The alarming illness of the Monarch gave a new turn to the - prospect: Hope was now seen, like the winged victory of the ancients, to change sides; and both the expectations of those who looked forward to the reign of the far 349 Prince, as the great and happy millenium of Whiggism, and the apprehension of the his Royal Highness and his friends were not greater number, to whom the morals of less formidable than their politics, seemed now on the very eve of being realized." On the lamented illness of George III. Sheridan entered into a secret negociation with Lord Thurlow, by which his colleague Mr. Fox was seriously embarrassed; and at the time when the Whigs refused office, alleging the constitutional necessity of a Minister's possessing the patronage of the Household, with that of the other great departments, Mr. Sheridan is accused of suppressing an important communication made to him by Lord Yarmouth, that whatever might become of the theoretical question, the Household would, in fact, resign. By withholding this message from Lords Grey and Grenville, the purpose of a Whig Ministry, whether or not it had been seriously entertained by the Sovereign, was defeated, and the Liverpool Cabinet let into the enjoyment of their freehold estate. Against these spots in the political life of Mr. Sheridan, there are to be opposed many passages of unquestionable and unfading beauty. In every important crisis it may be said with truth, that he preferred his country to all party interests, and independently and nobly summoned the nation to a brave discharge of its duties. His support of the Addington administration was consistent with his own views of the public welfare, and more so with the Whig interests than the Whigs themselves could be brought to acknowledge. His opposition to the union of the Whigs and Grenvilles was a further proof of tact and sagacity, in which he excelled Mr. Fox. The bold and prominent stand which Mr. Sheridan made against the insurgent seamen, was a fine illustration of the proper limits which the constitution assigns to English party; and his appeal to Parliament on the earliest burst of national feeling among the Spaniards, afforded a proof how well he could discover the true principles on which an effectual resistance might be made to the power which then domineered over Europe. So far have we traced Sheridan to the zenith of his brilliant career. After the dissolution of the Parliament in 1812, his fortunes began rapidly to decline. He lost his election for Staf ford; 350 REVIEW-Moore's Life of Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan. ford; and this failure, it is probable, hastened his ruin. "He was now excluded (says Mr. Moore) both from the theatre and from Parliament; the two anchors by which he held in life were gone, and he was left a lonely and helpless wreck upon the waters. The Prince Regent offered to bring him into Parliament; but the thought of returning to that scene of his triumphs and his freedom with the Royal owner's mark, as it were, upon him, was more than he could bear, and he declined the offer." "The distresses of Sheridan now in creased every day, and through the short remainder of his life it is a melancholy task to follow him. The sum arising from the sale of his theatrical property was soon exhausted by the various claims upon it, and he was driven to part with all that he most valued, to satisfy further demands, and provide for the subsistence of the day. Those books which were presented to him by various friends, now stood, in their splendid bindings, on the shelves of the pawnbroker. The handsome cup given him by the electors of Stafford, shared the same fate. Three or four fine pictures by Gainsborough, and one by Morland, were sold for little more than five hundred pounds; and even the precious portrait of his first wife, by Reynolds, though not actually sold during his life, vanished away from his eyes into other hands.". The most humiliating trial of his pride was yet to come. He was soon after arrested and carried to a sponginghouse, where he remained two or three days. This abode formed a sad contrast to those princely halls, of which he had so lately been the most brilliant and favoured guest, and which were possibly, at that very moment, lighted up and crowded with gay company, unmindful of him within those prison walls:-He was liberated on the interference of Mr. Whitbread. These trials made the most distressing ravages on his constitution. His spirits were broken, and he became the victim of disease as well as penury. The disorder with which he was now attacked arose from a diseased state of the stomach, brought on partly by irregular living, and partly by the harassing anxieties that had, for so many years, without intermission, beset him. "While death was thus gaining fast on Sheridan, the calamities of his life were thickening round him also; nor did the last corner, in which he now lay down to die, afford him any asylum from the clamours of his legal pursuers. Writs and executions came in rapid succession, and bailiffs at [Oct. length gained possession of his house. It was about the beginning of May that Lord Holland, on being informed by Mr. Rogers (who was one of the very few that watched the going out of this great light with interest) of the dreary situation in which his old friend was lying, paid him a visit one evening, in company with Mr. Rogers, and, by the cordiality, suavity, and cheerfulness of his conversation, shed a charm round that chamber of sickness, which, perhaps, no other voice but his own could have imparted. "An evening or two after (Wednesday, May 15,) I was with Mr. Rogers, when, on returning home, he found the following afflicting note upon his table:— «Saville row. "I find things settled so that 150l. will remove all difficulty. I am absolutely undone and broken-hearted. I shall negotiate for the plays successfully in the course of a week, when all shall be returned. I have desired Fairbrother to get back the Guarantee for thirty. "They are going to put the carpets ont of the window, and break into Mrs. S. room and take me-for God's sake let me see you. "R. B. S.' "It was too late to do any thing when this note was received, being then between twelve and one at night; but Mr. Rogers and I walked down to Saville row together, to assure ourselves that the threatened arrest had not yet been put in execution. A servant spoke to us out of the area, and said that all was safe for the night, but that it was intended, in pursuance of this new proceeding, to paste bills over the front of the house next day. with Mr. Rogers, and willingly undertook "On the following morning I was early to be the bearer of a draught for 150l. to Saville-row. I found Mr. Sheridan goodnatured and cordial as ever; and though he was then within a few weeks of his death, his voice had not lost its fullness or strength, nor was that lustre, for which his eyes were so remarkable, diminished. He showed, too, his usual sauguineness of disposition in speaking of the price that he expected for his dramatic works, and of the certainty he felt of being able to arrange all his affairs, if his complaint would but suffer him to leave his bed. began rapidly to fail him; his stomach was "In the following month his powers completely worn out, and could no longer bear any kind of sustenance. During the whole of this time, as far as I can learn, it does not appear that (with the exceptions I have mentioned) any one of his noble or royal friends ever called at his door, or even sent to inquire after him! "In the mean time, the clamours and incursions of creditors increased. A Sheriff's officer 1825.] REVIEW.Blore's Monumental Remains, outrage. "After a succession of shivering fits, he fell into a state of exhaustion, in which he continued, with but few more signs of suffering, till his death. A day or two before that event, the Bishop of London read prayers by his bed-side: and on Sunday, the 7th of July, in the 65th year of his age, he died. "On the following Saturday the funeral took place, his remains having been pre-viously removed from Saville-row to the house of his friend, Mr. Peter Moore, in Great George-street, Westminster. From thence, at one o'clock, the procession moved on foot to the Abbey, where, in the only spot in Poet's-corner that remained unoccupied, the body was interred; and the following simple inscription marks its restingplace: 1 "Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Thus gloomily terminated the eventful life of this splendid genius. Had his youthful principles been fixed by judicious and steady culture, and his habits regulated by the unremitting demands of a profession, there would have been less room for wayward impulse to act in-less material on which it could successfully operate-the life of this lamented son of genius might have escaped the most trying of its vicissitudes-his moral taste its progressive degeneracy-his decent pride Its mortifications and his political fame the incompleteness of its lustre. As it is, and at the worst, we must admire we must forgive one who, while Literature exists in England, can never be forgotten. 72. Blore's Monumental Remains, ITis with feelings of the highest satisfaction that we again turn our attention to this superiorly beautiful publication. Already do the engravings comprise a period of two centuries, exhibiting those marked distinctions în style so instructive to the Antiquary and useful to the Architect, as the following chronolo 351 gical enumeration of the monuments 1290 Queen Eleanor, 2 plates. 1370 Earl of Warwick. 1439 Earl of Warwick, 2 plates. In the former remarks on this work, we gave it as our firm belief that Mr. Blore, the excellent draughtsman of the whole, who himself engraves a great number of the Plates, was hastening with rapid strides to equal his associate H. Le Keux, and our sentiments are fully borne out in the effigy of Rich. Beauchamp Earl of Warwick in Part III. and the monument. of Aylmer de Valence in Part IV. We therefore strenuously urge him to increase his confidence in his own abilities, and imitate those bold shadows of Le Keux, which in the monuments of Queen Eleanor and John Gower, and the effigy of Edward III. make us doubt the evidence of our senses, almost forcing us to declare that it is the sculptured marble, and not the impress of copper that we behold. luable work will, we doubt not, be The succeeding numbers of this vasoon as anxiously sought for on the Continent as in this country; our neighbours, since the wanton mutilation of similar remains in France, having become passionately enamoured of the costume and architecture du moyen åge. In the summer months just past we had the fullest evidence to what extent their present admiration of monumental effigies carry them, for we never visited Westminster Abbey during that period without finding the enthusiastic French artists in every part of that interesting building copying with skill and avidity its principal sepulchral |