Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Volume I Part 29

"'Shall I be ill to-day?--shall I be nervous?'--'Your La's.h.i.+p was nervous yesterday.'--'Was I?--then I'll have a cold--I haven't had a cold this fortnight--a cold is becoming--no--I'll not have a cough; that's fatiguing--I'll be quite well.'--'You become sickness--your La's.h.i.+p always looks vastly well when you're ill.'

"'Leave the book half read and the rose half finished--you know I love to be caught in the fact.'

"One who knows that no credit is ever given to his a.s.sertions has the more right to contradict his words.

"He goes the western circuit, to pick up small fees and impudence.

"A new wooden leg for Sir Charles Easy.

"An ornament which proud peers wear all the year round--chimneysweepers only on the first of May.

"In marriage if you possess any thing very good, it makes you eager to get every thing else good of the same sort.

"The critic when he gets out of his carriage should always recollect, that his footman behind is gone up to judge as well as himself.

"She might have escaped in her own clothes, but I suppose she thought it more romantic to put on her brother's regimentals."

The rough sketches and fragments of poems, which Mr. Sheridan left behind him, are numerous; but those among them that are sufficiently finished to be cited, bear the marks of having been written when he was very young, and would not much interest the reader--while of the rest it is difficult to find four consecutive lines, that have undergone enough of the _toilette_ of composition to be presentable in print. It was his usual practice, when he undertook any subject in verse, to write down his thoughts first in a sort of poetical prose,--with, here and there, a rhyme or a metrical line, as they might occur--and then, afterwards to reduce with much labor, this anomalous compound to regular poetry. The birth of his prose being, as we have already seen, so difficult, it may be imagined how painful was the travail of his verse.

Indeed, the number of tasks which he left unfinished are all so many proofs of that despair of perfection, which those best qualified to attain it are always most likely to feel.

There are some fragments of an Epilogue apparently intended to be spoken in the character of a woman of fas.h.i.+on, which give a lively notion of what the poem would have been, when complete. The high carriages, that had just then come into fas.h.i.+on, are thus adverted to:--

"My carriage stared at!--none so high or fine-- Palmer's mail-coach shall be a sledge to mine.

No longer now the youths beside us stand, And talking lean, and leaning press the hand; But ogling upward, as aloft we sit, Straining, poor things, their ankles and their wit, And, much too short the inside to explore, Hang like supporters, half way up the door."

The approach of a "veteran husband," to disturb these flirtations and chase away the lovers, is then hinted at:--

"To persecuted virtue yield a.s.sistance, And for one hour teach younger men their distance, Make them, in very spite, appear discreet, And mar the public mysteries of the street."

The affectation of appearing to make love, while talking on different matters, is ill.u.s.trated by the following simile:

"So when dramatic statesmen talk apart, With practis'd gesture and heroic start, The plot's their theme, the gaping galleries guess, While Hull and Fearon think of nothing less."

The following lines seem to belong to the same Epilogue:--

"The Campus Martius of St. James's Street, Where the beau's cavalry pace to and fro, Before they take the field in Rotten Row; Where Brooks' Blues and Weltze's Light Dragoons Dismount in files and ogle in platoons."

He had also begun another Epilogue, directed against female gamesters, of which he himself repeated a couplet or two to Mr. Rogers a short time before his death, and of which there remain some few scattered traces among his papers:--

"A night of fretful pa.s.sion may consume All that thou hast of beauty's gentle bloom, And one distemper'd hour of sordid fear Print on thy brow the wrinkles of a year.

[Footnote: These four lines, as I have already remarked, are taken--with little change of the words, but a total alteration of the sentiment--from the verses which he addressed to Mrs. Sheridan in the year 1773. See page 83.]

Great figure loses, little figure wins.

Ungrateful blushes and disorder'd sighs, Which love disclaims nor even shame supplies.

Gay smiles, which once belong'd to mirth alone, And startling tears, which pity dares not own."

The following stray couplet would seem to have been intended for his description of Corilla:--

"A crayon Cupid, redd'ning into shape, Betrays her talents to design and sc.r.a.pe."

The Epilogue, which I am about to give, though apparently finished, has not, as far as I can learn, yet appeared in print, nor am I at all aware for what occasion it was intended.

"In this gay month when, through the sultry hour, The vernal sun denies the wonted shower, When youthful Spring usurps maturer sway, And pallid April steals the blush of May, How joys the rustic tribe, to view displayed The liberal blossom and the early shade!

But ah! far other air our soil delights; _Here_ 'charming weather' is the worst of blights.

No genial beams rejoice our rustic train, Their harvest's still the better for the rain.

To summer suns our groves no tribute owe, They thrive in frost, and flourish best in snow.

When other woods resound the feather'd throng, Our groves, our woods, are dest.i.tute of song.

The thrush, the lark, all leave our mimic vale, No more we boast our Christmas nightingale; Poor Rossignol--the wonder of his day, Sung through the winter--but is mute in May.

Then bashful spring, that gilds fair nature's scene, O'ercasts our lawns, and deadens every green; Obscures our sky, embrowns the wooden shade, And dries the channel of each tin cascade!

Oh hapless we, whom such ill fate betides, Hurt by the beam which cheers the world besides!

Who love the ling'ring frost, nice, chilling showers, While Nature's _Benefit_--is death to ours; Who, witch-like, best in noxious mists perform, Thrive in the tempest, and enjoy the storm.

O hapless we--unless your generous care Bids us no more lament that Spring is fair, But plenteous glean from the dramatic soil, The vernal harvest of our winter's toil.

For April suns to us no pleasure bring-- Your presence here is all we feel of Spring; May's riper beauties here no bloom display, Your fostering smile alone proclaims it May."

A poem upon Windsor Castle, half ludicrous and half solemn, appears, from the many experiments which he made upon it, to have cost him considerable trouble. The Castle, he says,

"Its base a mountain, and itself a rock, In proud defiance of the tempests' rage, Like an old gray-hair'd veteran stands each shock-- The st.u.r.dy witness of a n.o.bler age."

He then alludes to the "c.o.c.kney" improvements that had lately taken place, among which the venerable castle appears, like

"A helmet on a Macaroni's head-- Or like old Talbot, turn'd into a fop, With coat embroider'd and scratch wig at top."

Some verses, of the same mixed character, on the short duration of life and the changes that death produces, thus begin:--

"Of that same tree which gave the box, Now rattling in the hand of FOX, Perhaps his coffin shall be made.--"

He then rambles into prose, as was his custom, on a sort of knight- errantry after thoughts and images:--"The lawn thou hast chosen for thy bridal s.h.i.+ft--thy shroud may be of the same piece. That flower thou hast bought to feed thy vanity--from the same tree thy corpse may be decked.