Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Volume II Part 16

The immediate payment of 300_l_. and a moiety of the profits for the first sixty nights, were the terms upon which Mr. Sheridan purchased the play of Vortigern from the Irelands. The latter part of the conditions was voided the first night; and, though it is more than probable that a genuine tragedy of Shakspeare, if presented under similar circ.u.mstances, would have shared the same fate, the public enjoyed the credit of detecting and condemning a counterfeit, which had pa.s.sed current through some of the most learned and tasteful hands of the day. It is but justice, however, to Mr. Sheridan to add, that, according to the account of Ireland himself, he was not altogether without misgivings during his perusal of the ma.n.u.scripts, and that his name does not appear among the signatures to that attestation of their authenticity which his friend Dr.

Parr drew up, and was himself the first to sign. The curious statement of Mr. Ireland, with respect to Sheridan's want of enthusiasm for Shakspeare, receives some confirmation from the testimony of Mr. Boaden, the biographer of Kemble, who tells us that "Kemble frequently expressed to him his wonder that Sheridan should trouble himself _so little_ about Shakspeare." This peculiarity of taste,--if it really existed to the degree that these two authorities would lead us to infer,--affords a remarkable coincidence with the opinions of another ill.u.s.trious genius, lately lost to the world, whose admiration of the great Demiurge of the Drama was leavened with the same sort of heresy.

In the January of this year, Mr. William Stone--the brother of the gentleman whose letter from Paris has been given in a preceding Chapter--was tried upon a charge of High Treason, and Mr. Sheridan was among the witnesses summoned for the prosecution. He had already in the year 1794, in consequence of a reference from Mr. Stone himself, been examined before the Privy Council, relative to a conversation which he had held with that gentleman, and, on the day after his examination, had, at the request of Mr. Dundas, transmited to that Minister in writing the particulars of his testimony before the Council. There is among his papers a rough draft of this Statement, in comparing which with his evidence upon the trial in the present year, I find rather a curious proof of the faithlessness of even the best memories. The object of the conversation which he had held with Mr. Stone in 1794--and which const.i.tuted the whole of their intercourse with each other--was a proposal on the part of the latter, submitted also to Lord Lauderdale and others, to exert his influence in France, through those channels which his brother's residence there opened to him, for the purpose of averting the threatened invasion of England, by representing to the French rulers the utter hopelessness of such an attempt. Mr. Sheridan, on the trial, after an ineffectual request to be allowed to refer to his written Statement, gave the following as part of his recollections of the conversation:--

"Mr. Stone stated that, in order to effect this purpose, he had endeavored to collect the opinions of several gentlemen, political characters in this country, whose opinions he thought would be of authority sufficient to advance his object; that for this purpose he had had interviews with different gentlemen; he named Mr. Smith and, I think, one or two more, whose names I do not now recollect. He named some gentlemen connected with Administration--if the Counsel will remind me of the name--"

Here Mr. Law, the examining Counsel, remarked, that "upon the cross-examination, if the gentlemen knew the circ.u.mstance, they would mention it." The cross-examination of Sheridan by Sergeant Adair was as follows:--

"You stated in the course of your examination that Mr. Stone said there was a gentleman connected with Government, to whom he had made a similar communication, should you recollect the name of that person if you were reminded of it?--I certainly should.--Was it General Murray?--General Murray certainly."

Notwithstanding this, however, it appears from the written Statement in my possession, drawn up soon after the conversation in question, that this "gentleman connected with Government," so difficult to be remembered, was no other than the Prime Minister, Mr. Pitt himself. So little is the memory to be relied upon in evidence, particularly when absolved from responsibility by the commission of its deposit to writing.

The conduct of Mr. Sheridan throughout this transaction appears to have been sensible and cautious. That he was satisfied with it himself may be collected from the conclusion of his letter to Mr. Dundas:--"Under the circ.u.mstances in which the application, (from Mr. Dundas,) has been made to me, I have thought it equally a matter of respect to that application and of respect to myself, as well as of justice to the person under suspicion, to give this relation more in detail than at first perhaps might appear necessary. My own conduct in the matter not being in question, I can only say that were a similar case to occur, I think I should act in every circ.u.mstance precisely in the manner I did on this occasion."

The parliamentary exertions of Mr. Sheridan this year, though various and active, were chiefly upon subordinate questions; and, except in the instance of Mr. Fox's Motion of Censure upon Ministers for advancing money to the Emperor without the consent of Parliament, were not distinguished by any signal or sustained displays of eloquence. The grand questions, indeed, connected with the liberty of the subject, had been so hotly contested, that but few new grounds were left on which to renew the conflict. Events, however,--the only teachers of the great ma.s.s of mankind,--were beginning to effect what eloquence had in vain attempted.

The people of England, though generally eager for war, are seldom long in discovering that "the cup but sparkles near the brim;" and in the occurrences of the following year they were made to taste the full bitterness of the draught. An alarm for the solvency of the Bank, an impending invasion, a mutiny in the fleet, and an organized rebellion in Ireland,--such were the fruits of four years' warfare, and they were enough to startle even the most sanguine and precipitate into reflection.

The conduct of Mr. Sheridan on the breaking out of the Mutiny at the Nore is too well known and appreciated to require any ill.u.s.tration here. It is placed to his credit on the page of history, and was one of the happiest impulses of good feeling and good sense combined, that ever public man acted upon in a situation demanding so much of both. The patriotic prompt.i.tude of his interference was even more striking than it appears in the record of his parliamentary labors; for, as I have heard at but one remove from his own authority, while the Ministry were yet hesitating as to the steps they should take, he went to Mr. Dundas and said.--"My advice is that you cut the buoys on the river--send Sir Charles Grey down to the coast, and set a price on Parker's head. If the Administration take this advice instantly, they ill save the country--if not, they will lose it; and, on their refusal, I will impeach them in the House of Commons this very evening."

Without dwelling on the contrast which is so often drawn--less with a view to elevate Sheridan than to depreciate his party--between the conduct of himself and his friends at this fearful crisis, it is impossible not to concede that, on the scale of public spirit, he rose as far superior to them as the great claims of the general safety transcend all personal considerations and all party ties. It was, indeed, a rare triumph of temper and sagacity. With less temper, he would have seen in this awful peril but an occasion of triumph over the Minister whom he had so long been struggling to overturn--and, with less sagacity, he would have thrown away the golden opportunity of establis.h.i.+ng himself for ever in the affections and the memories of Englishmen, as one whose heart was in the common-weal, whatever might be his opinions, and who, in the moment of peril, could sink the partisan in the patriot.

As soon as he had performed this exemplary duty, he joined Mr. Fox and the rest of his friends who had seceded from Parliament about a week before, on the very day after the rejection of Mr. Grey's motion for a reform. This step, which was intended to create a strong sensation, by hoisting, as it were, the signal of despair to the country, was followed by no such striking effects, and left little behind but a question as to its prudence and patriotism. The public saw, however, with pleasure, that there were still a few champions of the const.i.tution, who did not "leave her fair side all unguarded" in this extremity. Mr. Tierney, among others, remained at his post, encountering Mr. Pitt on financial questions with a vigor and address to which the latter had been hitherto unaccustomed, and perfecting by practice that shrewd power of a.n.a.lysis, which has made him so formidable a sifter of ministerial sophistries ever since. Sir Francis Burdett, too, was just then entering into his n.o.ble career of patriotism; and, like the youthful servant of the temple in Euripides, was aiming his first shafts at those unclean birds, that settle within the sanctuary of the Const.i.tution and sully its treasures:--

[Greek: "ptaenon t'agalas A blaptusae Semn' anathaemata"]

By a letter from the Earl of Moira to Col. M'Mahon in the summer of this year it appears, that in consequence of the calamitous state of the country, a plan had been in agitation among some members of the House of Commons, who had hitherto supported the measures of the Minister, to form an entirely new Administration, of which the n.o.ble Earl was to be the head, and from which both Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, as equally obnoxious to the public, were to be excluded. The only materials that appear to have been forthcoming for this new Cabinet were Lord Moira himself, Lord Thurlow, and Sir William Pulteney--the last of whom it was intended to make Chancellor of the Exchequer. Such a tottering balance of parties, however, could not have been long maintained; and its relapse, after a short interval, into Toryism, would but have added to the triumph of Mr.

Pitt, and increased his power. Accordingly Lord Moira, who saw from the beginning the delicacy and difficulty of the task, wisely abandoned it.

The share that Mr. Sheridan had in this transaction is too honorable to him not to be recorded, and the particulars cannot be better given than in Lord Moira's own words:--

"You say that Mr. Sheridan has been traduced, as wis.h.i.+ng to abandon Mr.

Fox, and to promote a new Administration. I had accidentally a conversation with that gentleman at the House of Lords. I remonstrated strongly with him against a principle which I heard Mr. Fox's friends intended to lay down, namely, that they would support a new Administration, but that not any of them would take part in it. I solemnly declare, upon my honor, that I could not shake Mr. Sheridan's conviction of the propriety of that determination. He said that he and Mr. Fox's other friends, as well as Mr. Fox himself, would give the most energetic support to such an Administration as was in contemplation; but that their acceptance of office would appear an acquiescence under the injustice of the interdict supposed to be fixed upon Mr. Fox. I did not and never can admit the fairness of that argument. But I gained nothing upon Mr. Sheridan, to whose uprightness in that respect I can therefore bear the most decisive testimony. Indeed I am ashamed of offering testimony, where suspicion ought not to have been conceived."

CHAPTER VIII.

PLAY OF "THE STRANGER"--SPEECHES IN PARLIAMENT.--PIZARRO.--MINISTRY OF MR. ADDINGTON.--FRENCH INSt.i.tUTE.--NEGOTIATION WITH MR. KEMBLE.

The theatrical season of 1798 introduced to the public the German drama of "The Stranger," translated by Mr. Thompson, and (as we are told by this gentleman in his preface) altered and improved by Sheridan. There is reason, however, to believe that the contributions of the latter to the dialogue were much more considerable than he was perhaps willing to let the translator acknowledge. My friend Mr. Rogers has heard him, on two different occasions, declare that he had written every word of the Stranger from beginning to end; and, as his vanity could not be much interested in such a claim, it is possible that there was at least some virtual foundation for it.

The song introduced in this play, "I have a silent sorrow here," was avowedly written by Sheridan, as the music of it was by the d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re--two such names, so brilliant in their respective spheres, as the Muses of Song and Verse have seldom had the luck to bring together.

The originality of these lines has been disputed; and that expedient of borrowing which their author _ought_ to have been independent of in every way, is supposed to have been resorted to by his indolence on this occasion. Some verses by Tickell are mentioned as having supplied one of the best stanzas; but I am inclined to think, from the following circ.u.mstances, that this theft of Sheridan was of that venial and domestic kind--from himself. A writer, who brings forward the accusation in the Gentleman's Magazine, (vol. lxxi. p. 904,) thus states his grounds:--

"In a song which I purchased at Bland's music-shop in Holborn in the year 1794, int.i.tled, 'Think not, my love' and professing to be set to music by Thomas Wright. (I conjecture, Organist of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and composer of the pretty Opera called Rusticity.) are the following words:--

"The song to which the writer alludes, "Think not, my love," was given to me, as a genuine production of Mr. Sheridan, by a gentleman nearly connected with his family; and I have little doubt of its being one of those early love-strains which, in his _tempo de' dolci sospiri_, he addressed to Miss Linley. As, therefore, it was but "a feather of his own" that the eagle made free with, he may be forgiven. The following is the whole of the song:--

"This treasured grief, this loved despair, My lot forever be; But, dearest, may the pangs I bear Be never known to thee!'

"Now, without insisting that the opening thought in Mr. Sheridan's famous song has been borrowed from that of 'Think not, my love,' the second verse is manifestly such a theft of the lines I have quoted as entirely overturns Mr. Sheridan's claim to originality in the matter, unless 'Think not, my love,' has been written by him, and he can be proved to have only stolen from himself."

"Think not, my love, when secret grief Preys on my saddened heart, Think not I wish a mean relief.

Or would from sorrow part.

"Dearly I prize the sighs sincere, That my true fondness prove.

Nor would I wish to check the tear, That flows from hapless love!

"Alas! tho' doom'd to hope in vain The joys that love requite, Yet will I cherish all its pain, With sad, but dear delight.

"This treasured grief, this lov'd despair, My lot for ever be; But, dearest, may the pangs I bear Be never known to thee!"

Among the political events of this year, the rebellion of Ireland holds a memorable and fearful preeminence. The only redeeming stipulation which the Duke of Portland and his brother Alarmists had annexed to their ill-judged Coalition with Mr. Pitt was, that a system of conciliation and justice should, at last, be adopted towards Ireland. Had they but carried thus much wisdom into the ministerial ranks with them, their defection might have been pardoned for the good it achieved, and, in one respect at least, would have resembled the policy of those Missionaries, who join in the ceremonies of the Heathen for the purpose of winning him over to the truth. On the contrary, however, the usual consequence of such coalitions with Power ensued,--the good was absorbed in the evil principle, and, by the false hope which it created, but increased the mischief. Lord Fitzwilliam was not only deceived himself, but, still worse to a n.o.ble and benevolent nature like his, was made the instrument of deception and mockery to millions. His recall, in 1795, a.s.sisted by the measures of his successor, drove Ireland into the rebellion which raged during the present year, and of which the causes have been so little removed from that hour to this, that if the people have become too wise to look back to it, as an example, it is a.s.suredly not because their rulers have much profited by it as a lesson.

I am aware that, on the subject of Ireland and her wrongs, I can ill trust myself with the task of expressing what I feel, or preserve that moderate, historical tone, which it has been my wish to maintain through the political opinions of this work. On every other point, my homage to the high character of England, and of her inst.i.tutions, is prompt and cordial;--on this topic alone, my feelings towards her have been taught to wear "the badge of bitterness." As a citizen of the world, I would point to England as its brightest ornament,--but, as a disfranchised Irishman, I blush to belong to her. Instead, therefore, of hazarding any farther reflections of my own on the causes and character of the Rebellion of 1798, I shall content myself with giving an extract from a Speech which Mr. Sheridan delivered on the subject, in the June of that year:--

"What! when conciliation was held out to the people of Ireland, was there any discontent? When the government of Ireland was agreeable to the people, was there any discontent? After the prospect of that conciliation was taken away,--after Lord Fitzwilliam was recalled,--after the hopes which had been raised were blasted,--when the spirit of the people was beaten down, insulted, despised, I will ask any gentleman to point out a single act of conciliation which has emanated from the Government of Ireland? On the contrary; has not that country exhibited one continual scene of the most grievous oppression, of the most vexatious proceedings; arbitrary punishments inflicted; torture declared necessary by the highest authority in the sister-kingdom next to that of the legislature?

And do gentlemen say that the indignant spirit which is roused by such exercise of government is unprovoked? Is this conciliation? Is this lenity? Has everything been done to avert the evils of rebellion? It is the fas.h.i.+on to say, and the Address holds the same language, that the rebellion which now rages in the sister-kingdom has been owing to the machinations of 'wicked men.' Agreeing to the amendment proposed, it was my first intention to move that these words should be omitted. But, Sir, the fact they a.s.sert is true. It is, indeed, to the measures of wicked men that the deplorable state of Ireland is to be imputed. It is to those wicked Ministers who have broken the promises they held out, who betrayed the party they seduced into their views, to be the instruments of the foulest treachery that ever was practised against any people. It is to those wicked Ministers who have given up that devoted country to plunder,--resigned it a prey to this faction, by which it has so long been trampled upon, and abandoned it to every species of insult and oppression by which a country was ever overwhelmed, or the spirit of a people insulted, that we owe the miseries into which Ireland is plunged, and the dangers by which England is threatened. These evils are the doings of wicked Ministers, and applied to them, the language of the Address records a fatal and melancholy truth."

The popularity which the conduct of Mr. Sheridan, on the occasion of the Mutiny, had acquired for him,--everywhere but among his own immediate party,--seems to have produced a sort of thaw in the rigor of his opposition to Government; and the language which he now began to hold, with respect to the power and principles of France, was such as procured for him, more than once in the course of the present Session, the unaccustomed tribute of compliments from the Treasury-bench. Without, in the least degree, questioning his sincerity in this change of tone, it may be remarked, that the most watchful observer of the tide of public opinion could not have taken it at the turn more seasonably or skilfully.

There was, indeed, just at this time a sensible change in the feeling of the country. The dangers to which it had been reduced were great, but the crisis seemed over. The new wings lent to Credit by the paper-currency, --the return of the navy to discipline and victory,--the disenchantment that had taken place with respect to French principles, and the growing persuasion, since strengthened into conviction, that the world has never committed a more gross mistake than in looking to the French as teachers of liberty,--the insulting reception of the late pacific overtures at Lisle, and that never-failing appeal to the pride and spirit of Englishmen, which a threat of invading their sacred sh.o.r.e brings with it,--all these causes concurred, at this moment, to rally the people of England round the Government, and enabled the Minister to extract from the very mischiefs which himself had created the spirit of all others most competent to bear and surmount them. Such is the elasticity of a free country, however, for the moment, misgoverned,--and the only glory due to the Minister under whom such a people, in spite of misgovernment, flourishes, is that of having proved, by the experiment, how difficult it is to ruin them.

While Mr. Sheridan took these popular opportunities of occasionally appearing before the public, Mr. Fox persevered, with but little interruption, in his plan of secession from Parliament altogether. From the beginning of the Session of this year, when, at the instance of his const.i.tuents, he appeared in his place to oppose the a.s.sessed Taxes Bill, till the month of February, 1800, he raised his voice in the House but upon two questions,--each "dignus vindice,"--the Abolition of the Slave-Trade, and a Change of System in Ireland. He had thrown into his opposition too much real feeling and earnestness to be able, like Sheridan, to soften it down, or shape it to the pa.s.sing temper of the times. In the harbor of private life alone could that swell subside; and, however the country missed his warning eloquence, there is little doubt that his own mind and heart were gainers by a retirement, in which he had leisure to "prune the ruffled wings" of his benevolent spirit,--to exchange the ambition of being great for that of being useful, and to listen, in the stillness of retreat, to the lessons of a mild wisdom, of which, had his life been prolonged, his country would have felt the full influence.

From one of Sheridan's speeches at this time we find that the change which had lately taken place in his public conduct had given rise to some unworthy imputations upon his motives. There are few things less politic in an eminent public man than a too great readiness to answer accusations against his character. For, as he is, in general, more extensively read or heard than his accusers, the first intimation, in most cases, that the public receives of any charge against him will be from his own answer to it. Neither does the evil rest here;--for the calumny remains embalmed in the defence, long after its own ephemeral life is gone. To this unlucky sort of sensitiveness Mr. Sheridan was but too much disposed to give way, and accordingly has been himself the chronicler of many charges against him, of which we should have been otherwise wholly ignorant. Of this nature were the imputations founded on his alleged misunderstanding with the Duke of Portland, in 1789, to which I have already made some allusion, and of which we should have known nothing but for his own notice of it. His vindication of himself, in 1795, from the suspicion of being actuated by self-interest, in his connection with the Prince, or of having received from him, (to use his own expressions,) "so much as the present of a horse or a picture," is another instance of the same kind, where he has given substance and perpetuity to rumor, and marked out the track of an obscure calumny, which would otherwise have been forgotten.

At the period immediately under our consideration he has equally enabled us to collect, from his gratuitous defence of himself, that the line lately taken by him in Parliament, on the great questions of the Mutiny and Invasion, had given rise to suspicions of his political steadiness, and to rumors of his approaching separation from Mr. Fox.

"I am sorry," he said, on one occasion, "that it is hardly possible for any man to speak in this House, and to obtain credit for speaking from a principle of public spirit; that no man can oppose a Minister without being accused of faction, and none, who usually opposed, can support a Minister, or lend him a.s.sistance in anything, without being accused of doing so from interested motives. I am not such a c.o.xcomb as to say, that it is of much importance what part I may take; or that it is essential that I should divide a little popularity, or some emolument, with the ministers of the Crown; nor am I so vain as to imagine, that my services might be solicited. Certainly they have not. That might have arisen from want of importance in myself, or from others, whom I have been in the general habit of opposing, conceiving that I was not likely either to give up my general sentiments, or my personal attachments. However that may be, certain it is, they never have made any attempt to apply to me for my a.s.sistance."

In reviewing his parliamentary exertions during this year, it would be injustice to pa.s.s over his speech on the a.s.sessed Taxes Bill, in which, among other fine pa.s.sages, the following vehement burst of eloquence occurs:

"But we have gained, forsooth, several s.h.i.+ps by the victory of the First of June,--by the capture of Toulon,--by the acquisition of those charnel-houses in the West Indies, in which 50,000 men have been lost to this country. Consider the price which has been paid for these successes.

For these boasted successes, I will say, give me back the blood of Englishmen which has been shed in this fatal Contest.--give me back the 250 millions of debt which it has occasioned.--give me back the honor of the country which has been tarnished,--give me back the credit of the country, which has been destroyed,--give me back the solidity of the Bank of England, which has been overthrown; the attachment of the people to their ancient Const.i.tution, which has been shaken by acts of oppression and tyrannical laws,--give me back the kingdom of Ireland, the connection of which is endangered by a cruel and outrageous system of military coercion,--give me back that pledge of eternal war, which must be attended with inevitable ruin !"

The great success which had attended The Stranger, and the still increasing taste for the German Drama, induced Mr. Sheridan, in the present year, to embark his fame even still more responsibly in a venture to the same romantic sh.o.r.es. The play of Pizarro was brought out on the 24th of May, 1799. The heroic interest of the plot, the splendor of the pageantry, and some skilful appeals to public feeling in the dialogue, obtained for it at once a popularity which has seldom been equalled. As far, indeed, as multiplied representations and editions are a proof of success, the legitimate issue of his Muse might well have been jealous of the fame and fortune of their spurious German relative. When the author of the Critic made Puff say, "Now for my magnificence,--my noise and my procession!" he little antic.i.p.ated the ill.u.s.tration which, in twenty years afterwards, his own example would afford to that ridicule. Not that in pageantry, when tastefully and subordinately introduced, there is any thing to which criticism can fairly object:--it is the dialogue of this play that is unworthy of its author, and ought never, from either motives of profit or the vanity of success, to have been coupled with his name.

The style in which it is written belongs neither to verse nor prose, but is a sort of amphibious native of both,--neither gliding gracefully through the former element, nor walking steadily on the other. In order to give pomp to the language, inversion is subst.i.tuted for metre; and one of the worst faults of poetry, a superfluity of epithet, is adopted, without that harmony which alone makes it venial or tolerable.

It is some relief however, to discover, from the ma.n.u.scripts in my possession, that Mr. Sheridan's responsibility for the defects of Pizarro is not very much greater than his claim to a share in its merits. In the plot, and the arrangement of the scenes, it is well known, there is but little alteration from the German original. The omission of the comic scene of Diego, which Kotzebue himself intended to omit,--the judicious suppression of Elvira's love for Alonzo,--the introduction, so striking in representation, of Rolla's pa.s.sage across the bridge, and the re-appearance of Elvira in the habit of a nun, form, I believe, the only important points in which the play of Mr. Sheridan deviates from the structure of the original drama. With respect to the dialogue, his share in its composition is reducible to a compa.s.s not much more considerable.

A few speeches, and a few short scenes, re-written, const.i.tute almost the whole of the contribution he has furnished to it. The ma.n.u.script- translation, or rather imitation, of the "Spaniards in Pern,"

which he used as the ground-work of Pizarro, has been preserved among his papers:--and, so convenient was it to his indolence to take the style as he found it, that, except, as I have said, in a few speeches and scenes, which might be easily enumerated, he adopted, with scarcely any alteration, the exact words of the translator, whose taste, therefore, (whoever he may have been,) is answerable for the spirit and style of three-fourths of the dialogue. Even that scene where Cora describes the "white buds" and "crimson blossoms" of her infant's teeth, which I have often heard cited as a specimen of Sheridan's false ornament, is indebted to this unknown paraphrast for the whole of its embroidery.

But though he is found to be innocent of much of the contraband matter, with which his co-partner in this work had already vitiated it, his own contributions to the dialogue are not of a much higher or purer order. He seems to have written down, to the model before him, and to have been inspired by nothing but an emulation of its faults. His style, accordingly, is kept hovering in the same sort of limbo, between blank verse and prose,--while his thoughts and images, however s.h.i.+ning and effective on the stage, are like the diamonds of theatrical royalty, and will not bear inspection off it. The scene between Alonzo and Pizarro, in the third act, is one of those almost entirely rewritten by Sheridan; and the following medley group of personifications affords a specimen of the style to which his taste could descend:--

"Then would I point out to him where now, in cl.u.s.tered villages, they live like brethren, social and confiding, while through the burning day Content sits basking on the cheek of Toil, till laughing Pastime leads them to the hour of rest."

The celebrated harangue of Rolla to the Peruvians, into which Kemble used to infuse such heroic dignity, is an amplification of the following sentences of the original, as I find them given in Lewis's ma.n.u.script translation of the play:--

"_Rolla_. You Spaniards fight for gold; we for our country.