Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Volume I Part 3

Miss Linley went frequently to Oxford, to perform at the oratorios and concerts; and it may easily be imagined that the ancient allegory of the Muses throwing chains over Cupid was here reversed, and the quiet shades of learning not a little disturbed by the splendor of these "angel visits." The letters of Halhed give a lively idea, not only of his own intoxication, but of the sort of contagious delirium, like that at Abdera described by Lucian, with which the young men of Oxford were affected by this beautiful girl. In describing her singing he quotes part of a Latin letter which he himself had written to a friend upon first hearing her; and it is a curious proof of the readiness of Sheridan, notwithstanding his own fertility, to avail himself of the thoughts of others, that we find in this extract, word for word, the same extravagant comparison of the effects of music to the process of Egyptian embalmment--"extracting the brain through the ears"--which was afterwards transplanted into the dialogue of the Duenna: "_Mortuum quondam ante aegypti medici quam pollincirent cerebella de auribus unco quodam hamo solebant extrahere; sic de meis auribus non cerebrum, sed cor ipsum exhausit lusciniola, &c., &c._" He mentions, as the rivals most dreaded by her admirers, Norris, the singer, whose musical talents, it was thought, recommended him to her, and Mr. Watts, a gentleman commoner, of very large fortune.

While all hearts and tongues were thus occupied about Miss Linley, it is not wonderful that rumors of matrimony and elopement should, from time to time, circulate among her apprehensive admirers; or that the usual ill-compliment should be paid to her s.e.x of supposing that wealth must be the winner of the prize. It was at one moment currently reported at Oxford that she had gone off to Scotland with a young man of L3,000 a year, and the panic which the intelligence spread is described in one of these letters to Sheridan, (who, no doubt, shared in it) as producing "long faces" everywhere. Not only, indeed, among her numerous lovers, but among all who delighted in her public performances, an alarm would naturally be felt at the prospect of her becoming private property:

"_Te juga Taygeti, posito te Maenala flebunt Venatu, maestoque diu lugebere Cyntho.

Delphica quinetiam fratris delubra tacebunt._"

[Footnote: Claudian. De Rapt. Proserp. Lib. ii. v. 244.]

Thee, thee, when hurried from our eyes away, Laconia's hills shall mourn for many a day-- The Arcadian hunter shall forget his chase, And turn aside to think upon that face; While many an hour Apollo's songless shrine Shall wait in silence for a voice like thine!

But to the honor of her s.e.x, which is, in general, more disinterested than the other, it was found that neither rank nor wealth had influenced her heart in its election; and Halhed, who, like others, had estimated the strength of his rivals by their rent-rolls, discovered at last that his unpretending friend, Sheridan, (whose advances in courts.h.i.+p and in knowledge seem to have been equally noiseless and triumphant,) was the chosen favorite of her, at whose feet so many fortunes lay. Like that Saint, Cecilia, by whose name she was always called, she had long welcomed to her soul a secret visitant, [Footnote: "The youth, found in her chamber, had in his hand two crowns or wreaths, the one of lilies, the other of roses, which he had brought from Paradise."--_Legend of St. Cecilia_.] whose gifts were of a higher and more radiant kind than the mere wealthy and lordly of this world can proffer. A letter, written by Halhed on the prospect of his departure for India, [Footnote: The letter is evidently in answer to one which he had just received from Sheridan, in which Miss Linley had written a few words expressive of her wishes for his health and happiness. Mr. Halhed sailed for India about the latter end of this year.] alludes so delicately to this discovery, and describes the state of his own heart so mournfully, that I must again, in parting with him and his correspondence, express the strong regret that I feel at not being able to indulge the reader with a perusal of these letters. Not only as a record of the first short flights of Sheridan's genius, but as a picture, from the life, of the various feelings of youth, its desires and fears, its feverish hopes and fanciful melancholy, they could not have failed to be read with the deepest interest.

To this period of Mr. Sheridan's life we are indebted for most of those elegant love-verses, which are so well known and so often quoted. The lines "Uncouth is this moss-covered grotto of stone," were addressed to Miss Linley, after having offended her by one of those lectures upon decorum of conduct, which jealous lovers so frequently inflict upon their mistresses,--and the grotto, immortalized by their quarrel, is supposed to have been in Spring Gardens, then the fas.h.i.+onable place of resort in Bath.

I have elsewhere remarked that the conceit in the following stanza resembles a thought in some verses of Angeria.n.u.s:--

And thou, stony grot, in thy arch may'st preserve Two lingering drops of the night-fallen dew, Let them fall on her bosom of snow, and they'll serve As tears of my sorrow entrusted to you.

_At quum per niveam cervicem influxerit humor Dicite non roris sed pluvia haec lacrimae._

Whether Sheridan was likely to have been a reader of Angeria.n.u.s is, I think, doubtful--at all events the coincidence is curious.

"Dry be that tear, my gentlest love," is supposed to have been written at a later period; but it was most probably produced at the time of his courts.h.i.+p, for he wrote but few love verses after his marriage--like the nightingale (as a French editor of Bonefonius says, in remarking a similar circ.u.mstance of that poet) "qui developpe le charme de sa voix tant qu'il vent plaire a sa compagne--sont-ils unis? il se tait, il n'a plus le besoin de lui plaire." This song having been hitherto printed incorrectly, I shall give it here, as it is in the copies preserved by his relations.

Dry be that tear, my gentlest love, Be hush'd that struggling sigh, Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove More fix'd, more true than I.

Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear, Cease boding doubt, cease anxious fear.-- Dry be that tear.

Ask'st thou how long my love will stay, When all that's new is past;-- How long, ah Delia, can I say How long my life will last?

Dry be that tear, be hush'd that sigh, At least I'll love thee till I die.-- Hush'd be that sigh.

And does that thought affect thee too, The thought of Sylvio's death, That he who only breathed for you, Must yield that faithful breath?

Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear, Nor let us lose our Heaven here.-- Dry be that tear.

[Footnote: An Elegy by Halhed, transcribed in one of his letters to Sheridan, begins thus:

"Dry be that tear, be hush'd that struggling sigh."]

There is in the second stanza here a close resemblance to one of the madrigals of Montreuil, a French poet, to whom Sir J. Moore was indebted for the point of his well known verses, "If in that breast, so good, so pure." [Footnote:

The grief that on my quiet preys, That rends my heart and checks my tongue, I fear will last me all my days, And feel it will not last me long.

It is thus in Montreuil:

C'est un mal que j'aurai tout le terns de ma vie Mais je ne l'aurai pas long-tems.]

Mr. Sheridan, however, knew nothing of French, and neglected every opportunity of learning it, till, by a very natural process, his ignorance of the language grew into hatred of it. Besides, we have the immediate source from which he derived the thought of this stanza, in one of the essays of Hume, who, being a reader of foreign literature, most probably found it in Montreuil. [Footnote: Or in an Italian song of Menage, from which Montreuil, who was accustomed to such thefts, most probably stole it. The point in the Italian is, as far as I can remember it, expressed thus:

In van, o Filli, tu chiedi Se lungamente durera Pardore

Chi lo potrebbe dire?

Incerta, o Filli, e l'ora del morire.]

The pa.s.sage in Hume (which Sheridan has done little more than versify) is as follows:--"Why so often ask me, _How long my love shall yet endure?_ Alas, my Caelia, can I resolve the question? _Do I know how long my life shall yet endure?"_ [Footnote: The Epicurean]

The pretty lines, "Mark'd you her cheek of rosy hue?" were written not upon Miss Linley, as has been generally stated, but upon Lady Margaret Fordyce, and form part of a poem which he published in 1771, descriptive of the princ.i.p.al beauties of Bath, ent.i.tled "Clio's Protest, or the Picture varnished,"--being an answer to some verses by Mr. Miles Peter Andrews, called "The Bath Picture," in which Lady Margaret was thus introduced:

"Remark too the dimpling, sweet smile Lady Marg'ret's fine countenance wears."

The following is the pa.s.sage in Mr. Sheridan's poem, entire; and the beauty of the six favorite lines s.h.i.+nes out so conspicuously, that we cannot wonder at their having been so soon detached, like ill-set jems, from the loose and clumsy workmans.h.i.+p around them.

"But, hark!--did not our bard repeat The love-born name of M-rg-r-t?-- Attention seizes every ear; "We pant for the description _here_: If ever dulness left thy brow, '_Pindar,_' we say, ''twill leave thee now.'

But O! old Dulness' son anointed His mother never disappointed!-- And here we all were left to seek A dimple in F-rd-ce's cheek!

"And could you really discover, In gazing those sweet beauties over, No other charm, no winning grace, Adorning either mind or face, But one poor _dimple_ to express The _quintessence_ of _loveliness_?

....Mark'd you her cheek of rosy hue?

Mark'd you her eye of sparkling blue?

That eye in liquid circles moving; That cheek abash'd at Man's approving; The _one_, Love's arrows darting round; The _other_, blus.h.i.+ng at the wound: Did she not speak, did she not move, Now _Pallas_--now the Queen of Love!"

There is little else in this poem worth being extracted, though it consists of about four hundred lines; except, perhaps, his picture of a good country housewife, which affords an early specimen of that neat pointedness of phrase, which gave his humor, both poetic and dramatic, such a peculiar edge and polish:--

"We see the Dame, in rustic pride, A bunch of keys to grace her side, Stalking across the well-swept entry, To hold her council in the pantry; Or, with prophetic soul, foretelling The peas will boil well by the sh.e.l.ling; Or, bustling in her private closet, Prepare her lord his morning posset; And, while the hallowed mixture thickens, Signing death-warrants for the chickens: Else, greatly pensive, poring o'er Accounts her cook had thumbed before; One eye cast up upon that _great book_, Yclep'd _The Family Receipt Book_; By which she's ruled in all her courses, From stewing figs to drenching horses.

--Then pans and pickling skillets rise, In dreadful l.u.s.tre, to our eyes, With store of sweetmeats, rang'd in order, And _potted nothings_ on the border; While salves and caudle-cups between, With squalling children, close the scene."

We find here, too, the source of one of those familiar lines, which so many quote without knowing whence they come;--one of those stray fragments, whose parentage is doubtful, but to which (as the law says of illegitimate children) "_pater est populus_."

"You write with ease, to show your breeding, _But easy writing's curst hard reading_."

In the following pa.s.sage, with more of the tact of a man of the world than the ardor of a poet, he dismisses the object nearest his heart with the mere pa.s.sing gallantry of a compliment:--

"O! should your genius ever rise, And make you _Laureate_ in the skies, I'd hold my life, in twenty years, You'd spoil the _music_ of the _spheres_.

--Nay, should the rapture-breathing Nine In one celestial concert join, Their sovereign's power to rehea.r.s.e, --Were you to furnish them with verse, By Jove, I'd fly the heavenly throng, Though _Phoebus_ play'd and _Linley_ sung."

On the opening of the New a.s.sembly Rooms at Bath, which commenced with a ridotto, Sept. 30, 1771, he wrote a humorous description of the entertainment, called "An Epistle from Timothy Screw to his Brother Henry, Waiter at Almack's," which appeared first in the Bath Chronicle, and was so eagerly sought after, that Crutwell, the editor, was induced to publish it in a separate form. The allusions in this trifle have, of course, lost their zest by time; and a specimen or two of its humor will be all that is necessary here.

"Two rooms were first opened--the _long_ and the _round_ one, (These _Hogstyegon_ names only serve to confound one,) Both splendidly lit with the new chandeliers, With drops hanging down like the bobs at Peg's ears: While jewels of _paste_ reflected the rays, And _Bristol-stone_ diamonds gave strength to the blaze: So that it was doubtful, to view the bright cl.u.s.ters, Which sent the most light out, the ear-rings or l.u.s.tres.

Nor less among you was the medley, ye fair!

I believe there were some besides quality there: Miss _Spiggot_, Miss _Brussels_, Miss _Tape_, and Miss _Socket_, Miss _Trinket_, and aunt, with her leathern pocket, With good Mrs. _Soaker_, who made her old chin go, For hours, hobn.o.bbing with Mrs. _Syringo_: Had Tib staid at home, I b'lieve none would have miss'd her, Or pretty _Peg Runt_, with her tight little sister," &c. &c.

CHAPTER II.

DUELS WITH MR. MATHEWS.--MARRIAGE WITH MISS LINLEY.