As saints by fiends, or hymns by calumny.
Come, gentle Amoret (for ‘neath that name,
In worthier verse is sung thy beauty’s fame);
Come — for but thee who seeks the Muse? and while
Celestial blushes check thy conscious smile,
With timid grace, and hesitating eye,
The perfect model, which I boast, supply: —
Vain Muse! couldst thou the humbled sketch create
Of her, or slighted charm couldst imitate —
Could thy bled strain in kindred colours trace
The fainted wonder of her form and face —
Poets would study the immortal line,
And Reynolds own his art subdued by thine;
That art, which well might added lustre give
To Nature’s bed, and Heaven’s superlative:
On Granby’s cheek might bid new glories rise,
Or point a purer beam from Devon’s eyes!
Hard is the task to shape that beauty’s praise,
Whose judgment scorns the homage flattery pays!
But praising Amoret we cannot err,
No tongue o’ervalues Heav’n, or flatters her!
Yet she by Fate’s perverseness — she alone
Would doubt our truth, nor deem such praise her own
Adorning Fashion, unadorn’d by dress,
Simple from taste, and not from carelessness;
Discreet in gesture, in deportment mild
Not stiff with prudence, nor uncouthly wild:
No date has Amoret! no studied mien;
She frowns no goddess, and she moves no queen.
The softer charm that in her manner lies
Is fram’d to captivate, yet not surprise;
It justly suits th’ expression of her face, —
’Tis less than dignity, and more than grace!
On her pure cheek the native hue is such,
That form’d by Heav’n to be admired so much,
The hand divine, with a less partial care,
Might well have fix’d a fainter crimson there,
And bade the gentle inmate of her breast, —
Inshrined Modesty! — supply the rest.
But who the perils of her lips shall paint?
Strip them of smiles — still, still all words are faint!
But moving Love himself appears to teach
Their action, though denied to rule her speech;
And thou who seest her speak and dost not hear,
Mourn not her distant accents ‘scape thine ear;
Viewing those lips, thou still may’ll make pretence
To judge of what she says, and swear ’tis sense:
Cloth’d with such grace, with such expression fraught,
They move in meaning, and they pause in thought!
But dost thou farther watch, with charm’d surprise,
The mild irresolution of her eyes,
Curious to mark how frequent they repose,
In brief eclipse and momentary close —
Ah! seest thou not an ambush’d Cupid there,
Too tim’rous of his charge, with jealous care
Veils and unveils those beams of heav’nly light,
Too full, too fatal else, for mortal sight?
Nor yet, such pleasing vengeance fond to meet,
In pard’ning dimples hope a safe retreat.
What though her peaceful breast should ne’er allow
Subduing frowns to arm her alter’d brow,
By Love, I swear, and by his gentle wiles,
More fatal still the mercy of her smiles!
Thus lovely, thus adorn’d, possessing all
Of bright or fair that can to woman fall,
The height of vanity might well be thought
Prerogative in her, and Nature’s fault.
Yet gentle Amoret, in mind supreme
As well as charms, rejects the vainer theme;
And half mistrustful of her beauty’s Store,
She barbs with wit those darts too keen before: —
Read in all knowledge that her sex should reach,
Though Greville, or the Muse, should deign to teach,
Fond to improve, nor tim’rous to discern
How far it is a woman’s grace to learn;
In Millar’s dialect she would not prove
Apollo’s priestess, but Apollo’s love,
Grac’d by those signs, which truth delights to own,
The timid blush, and mild submitted tone:
Whate’er she says, though sense appear throughout,
Displays the tender hue of female doubt;
Deck’d with that charm, how lovely Wit appears,
How graceful Science, when that robe she wears!
With timid grace, and hesitating eye,
The perfect model, which I boast, supply: —
Such too her talents, and her bent of mind,
As speak a sprightly heart by thought refined,
A taste for mirth, by contemplation school’d,
A turn for ridicule, by candour ruled,
A scorn of folly, which she tries to hide;
An awe for talent, which she owns with pride!
Peace! idle Muse, — no more thy strain prolong,
But yield a theme, thy warmest praises wrong;
Just to her merit, though thou canst not raise
Thy feeble verse, behold th’ acknowledged praise
Has spread conviction through the envious train,
And cast a fatal gloom o’er Scandal’s reign!
And lo! each pallid hag, with blister’d tongue,
Mutters assent to all thy zeal has sung —
Owns all the colours just; the outline true;
Thee my inspirer; and my model — CREWE!
INTRODUCTION
AS Mr. Sichel says finely, the Monody — the Verses to the Memory of Garrick — is “in truth not so much an elegy on the life of a friend, as an epilogue to the play of Garrick’s life.” It was indeed, “of the theatre.” Sheridan wrote it to be delivered under theatrical conditions, to be spoken from the stage of Drury Lane Theatre, as David Garrick had spoken ten years before, his Ode in Commemoration of Shakespeare. The central “property” on the stage was not, of course, as then the bust of Shakespeare, but a monumental urn to the memory of Garrick. Before it stood the reciter, Mrs. Yates, surrounded by the choir and the orchestra. It was recited for the first time at Drury Lane Theatre on March 11th, 1779, after the comedy of The West Indian, when according to The Town and Country Magazine of the time: —
The stage was disposed nearly in the form as at Oratorios, with the difference only of a vacancy being left for Mrs. Yates to speak the poem. Before the organ a monument was erected.... It was generally remarked that if Mrs. Yates had not been obliged (we suppose for want of time) to read several passages, it would have had a still finer effect. However, it must be owned that she did justice to her author, as might be expected from the most pathetic speaker on the stage. The Monody is divided into three parts, between each of which, and at the conclusion, airs of a solemn nature are sung by Mr. Webster, Mr. Gaudry, a young lady, and Mrs. Wrighten. supported by a band of choristers.
This Stress upon the theatrical purpose of the Monody is deliberate. Its delivery from the Stage would at once, for many auditors, summon their recollections of Garrick’s Shakespeare Ode, with its many-changing metres. Accordingly it is not surprising to find that “The critics have nibbled at this Monody on account of the metre not being varied, and thereby leaving too constant a monotony on the auditor’s ear, which they say ought to have been relieved by a variation of measure.” Thus ‘The Town and Country Magazine, which shows that “the critics” had wanted, not a prolonged address in the heroic couplet, but an ode in varied measures. Moore urged that the monotony would have been diminished by a “greater variety of cadence,” an occasional disturbance of the “regular footfall, so long established.” But, he adds, the only licence of
this kind hazarded through the poem— “All perishable” — was objected to by some of the author’s critical friends who suggested that it would have been better as “All doomed to perish.” Sheridan was using the conventional metre for theatrical addresses, the only accepted form for Prologues and Epilogues. He did not, it is true, use it here with the deftness and polish that he achieved in the Verses for Amoret — the so-called Dedicatory Poem for The School for Scandal — yet one would not deny the justness of Mr. Sichel’s praise— “All the elements of Sheridan’s Prologues and Epilogues characterize it — finish, fancy, grace, ingenuity, condensation.” Byron, in his famous passage saying that “whatever Sheridan has done, or chosen to do, has been par excellence, always the best of its kind,” described the Garrick Monody as “the best Address” in the language. The praise would be more impressive if it could be ascertained what other “Addresses” he had in mind.
Besides the objections to its structure or its monotony of cadence, time has matured other charges against it. There is the inevitable charge of plagiarism. “Sheridan” comments Boaden in his Life of Mrs. Siddons, “used freely everything recollected that made for his purpose,” adding that he obviously remembered Cibber, Lloyd’s Actor, and its paraphrase and commentary the Rosciad of Churchill. So, too, Moore: —
“The chief thought which pervades this poem, — namely, the fleeting nature of the actor’s art and fame, — had already been more simply expressed by Garrick himself in his Prologue to The Clandestine Marriage: —
The painter’s dead, yet still he charms the eye,
While England lives, his fame can never die;
But he, who struts his hour upon the Stage,
Can scarce protract his fame through half an age;
Nor pen nor pencil can the actor save;
The art and artist have one common grave.
Colley Cibber, too, in his portrait (if I remember right) of Betterton, breaks off into the same reflection, in the following graceful passage, which is one of those instances, where prose could not be exchanged for poetry without loss:— “Pity it is that the momentary Beauties, flowing from an harmonious Elocution, cannot, like those of Poetry, be their own record; that the animated Graces of the Player can live no longer than the instant Breath and Motion that presents them, or, at bet, can but faintly glimmer through the Memory of a few surviving Spectators.”
This “chief thought” is, indeed, no more than a great commonplace of the theatre. It had been uttered a thousand times when players were gathered together or playing was discussed. Colley Cibber, in that unsurpassed and unsurpassable example of histrionic criticism, his Short View of the actors of his youth, had placed it in his very first page, as an epigraph (as it were) to his entire commentary. Robert Lloyd had brought The Astor to a full close with it:
Relentless death untwists the mingled fame,
And sinks the player in the poet’s name, —
The pliant muscles of the various face,
The mien that gave each sentence strength and grace,
The tuneful voice, the eye that spoke the mind,
Are gone, nor leave a single trace behind.
Garrick in his Prologue to The Clandestine Marriage — a tribute to the memory of Quin and Mrs. Cibber — attested that it was a commonplace when he echoed Shakespeare’s: —
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poore Player
That struts and frets his houre upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
The charge of “plagiarism” is, therefore, unimportant. A more serious charge is the absence of personal feeling, which Moore has formulated:
— The Monody does not seem to have kept the stage more than five or six nights — nor is this surprising. The recitation of a long, serious address must always be, to a certain degree, ineffective on the stage; and though this subject contained within it many strong sources of interest, as well personal as dramatic, they were not, perhaps, turned to account by the poet with sufficient warmth and earnestness on his own part, to excite a very ready response of sympathy in others. Feeling never wanders into generalities — it is only by concentrating his rays upon one point that even Genius can kindle strong emotion; and, in order to produce any such effect in the present instance upon the audience, Garrick himself ought to have been kept prominently and individually before their eyes in almost every line. Instead of this, however, the man is soon forgotten in his Art, which is then deliberately compared with other Arts, and the attention, through the greater part of the poem, is diffused over the transitoriness of actors in general, instead of being brought strongly to a focus upon the particular loss just sustained.
The truth is, indeed, that the poem is a Monody to the Memory of Any Actor — or rather, of the actor who is the Burbage, the Betterton, the Garrick, the Irving of his generation. And therein lies its dignity and grace.
DEDICATION
TO the RIGHT HONOURABLE COUNTESS SPENCER, whose approbation and esteem were justly considered by MR. GARRICK as the highest panegyric his talents or conduct could acquire, this imperfect tribute to his memory is, with great deference, inscribed by her ladyship’s most obedient humble servant:
RICHARD BRINS LET SHERIDAN.
March 25, 1779.
VERSES TO THE MEMORY OF GARRICK
SPOKEN AS A MONODY, AT THE THEATRE ROYAL IN DRURY LANE.
IF dying excellence deserves a tear,
If fond remembrance still is cherish’d here,
Can we persist to bid your sorrows flow
For fabled suff’rers and delusive woe?
Or with quaint smiles dismiss the plaintive strain,
Point the quick jest, indulge the comic vein,
Ere yet to buried Roscius we assign
One kind regret — one tributary line!
His fame require we act a tend’rer part:
His memory claims the tear you gave his art!
The gen’ral voice, the meed of mournful verse,
The splendid sorrows that adorned his hearse,
The throng that mourn’d as their dead favourite pass’d,
The grac’d respect that claim’d him to the last,
While Shakespeare’s image from its hallow’d base
Seemed to prescribe the grave, and point the place,
Nor these, — nor all the sad regrets that flow
From fond fidelity’s domestic woe, —
So much are Garrick’s praise, so much his due,
As on this spot — one tear bestowed by you.
Amid the hearts which seek ingenuous fame,
Our toil attempts the most precarious claim!
To him whose mimic pencil wins the prize,
Obedient Fame immortal wreaths supplies:
Whate’er of wonder Reynolds now may raise,
Raphael still boasts contemporary praise:
Each dazzling light and gaudier bloom subdu’d,
With undiminish’d awe his works are view’d:
E’en Beauty’s portrait wears a softer prime,
Touch’d by the tender hand of mellowing Time.
The patient Sculptor owns a humbler part,
A ruder toil, and more mechanic art;
Content with slow and tim’rous stroke to trace
The ling’ring line, and mould the tardy grace:
But once atchiev’d, tho’ barbarous wreck o’erthrow
The sacred fane, and lay its glories low,
Yet shall the sculptur’d ruin rise to-day,
Grac’d by defeat, and worshipp’d in decay;
Th’ enduring record bears the artist’s name,
Demands his honours, and asserts his fame.
Superior hopes the Poet’s bosom fire;
Oh, proud distinction of the sacred lyre!
Wide as th’ inspiring Phoebus darts his ray,
Diffusive splendour gilds his vot’ry’s lay.
Whether the song heroic woes rehearse,
With epic grandeur, and the pomp of ve
rse;
Or, fondly gay, with unambitious guile,
Attempt no prize but fav’ring beauty’s smile;
Or bear dejected to the lonely grove
The soft despair of unprevailing love —
Whate’er the theme, thro’ every age and clime
Congenial passions meet th’ according rime;
The pride of Glory — Pity’s sigh sincere —
Youth’s earliest blush — and Beauty’s virgin tear.
Such is their meed, their honours thus secure,
Whose arts yield objects, and whose works endure.
The Actor, only, shrinks from Time’s award;
Feeble tradition is his mem’ry’s guard;
By whose faint breath his merits must abide,
Unvouch’d by proof — to substance unallied!
E’en matchless Garrick’s art, to Heaven resign’d,
No fix’d effect, no model leaves behind!
The grace of action, the adapted mien,
Faithful as nature to the varied scene,
Th’ expressive glance, whose subtle comment draws
Entranc’d attention, and a mute applause;
Gesture that marks, with force and feeling fraught,
A sense in silence, and a will in thought;
Harmonious speech, whose pure and liquid tone
Gives verse a music, scarce confess’d its own;
As light from gems assumes a brighter ray,
And cloath’d with orient hues, transcends the day!
Passion’s wild break, and frown that awes the sense,
And every Charm of gentler Eloquence —
All perishable! like th’ electric fire,
But strike the frame, and, as they strike, expire;
Incense too pure a bodied flame to bear,
Its fragrance charms the sense, and blends the air.
Where, then — while sunk in cold decay he lies,
And pale eclipse for ever veils those eyes —
Where is the blest memorial that ensures
Our Garrick’s fame? — whose is the trust?— ’Tis yours.
And O! by every charm his art essay’d
To soothe your cares! — by ev’ry grief allay’d!
By the hush’d wonder which his accents drew!
By his last parting tear, repaid by you!
By all those thoughts, which many a distant night
Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan Page 59