By what spell all these thousands were conjured up, it would be difficult accurately to ascertain. That happy art — in which the people of this country are such adepts — of putting the future in pawn for the supply of the present, must have been the chief resource of Mr. Sheridan in all these later purchases.
Among the visible signs of his increased influence in the affairs of the theatre, was the appointment, this year, of his father to be manager; — a reconciliation having taken place between them, which was facilitated, no doubt, by the brightening prospects of the son, and by the generous confidence which his prosperity gave him in making the first advances towards such a reunion.
One of the novelties of the year was a musical entertainment called The Camp, which was falsely attributed to Mr. Sheridan at the time, and has since been inconsiderately admitted into the Collection of his Works. This unworthy trifle (as appears from a rough copy of it in my possession) was the production of Tickell, and the patience with which his friend submitted to the imputation of having written it was a sort of “martyrdom of fame” which few but himself could afford.
At the beginning of the year 1779 Garrick died, and Sheridan, as chief mourner, followed him to the grave. He also wrote a Monody to his memory, which was delivered by Mrs. Yates, after the play of the West Indian, in the month of March following. During the interment of Garrick in Poet’s Corner, Mr. Burke had remarked that the statue of Shakspeare seemed to point to the grave where the great actor of his works was laid. This hint did not fall idly on the ear of Sheridan, as the following fixation of the thought, in the verses which he afterwards wrote, proved: —
“The throng that mourn’d, as their dead favorite pass’d,
The grac’d respect that claim’d him to the last;
While Shakspeare’s image, from its hallow’d base,
Seem’d to prescribe the grave and point the place.”
This Monody, which was the longest flight ever sustained by its author in verse, is more remarkable, perhaps, for refinement and elegance, than for either novelty of thought or depth of sentiment. There is, however, a fine burst of poetical eloquence in the lines beginning “Superior hopes the poet’s bosom fire;” and this passage, accordingly, as being the best in the poem, was, by the gossiping critics of the day, attributed to Tickell, — from the same laudable motives that had induced them to attribute Tickell’s bad farce to Sheridan. There is no end to the variety of these small missiles of malice, with which the Gullivers of the world of literature are assailed by the Lilliputians around them.
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 best, can but faintly glimmer through the memory of a few surviving spectators.”
With respect to the style and versification of the Monody, the heroic couplet in which it is written has long been a sort of Ulysses’ bow, at which Poetry tries her suitors, and at which they almost all fail. Redundancy of epithet and monotony of cadence are the inseparable companions of this metre in ordinary hands; nor could all the taste and skill of Sheridan keep it wholly free from these defects in his own. To the subject of metre, he had, nevertheless, paid great attention. There are among his papers some fragments of an Essay [Footnote: Or rather memorandums collected, as was his custom, with a view to the composition of such an Essay. He had been reading the writings of Dr. Foster, Webb, &c. on this subject, with the intention, apparently, of publishing an answer to them. The following (which is one of the few consecutive passages I can find in these notes) will show how little reverence he entertained for that ancient prosody, upon which, in the system of English education, so large and precious a portion of human life is wasted:— “I never desire a stronger proof that an author is on a wrong scent on these subjects, than to see Quintilian, Aristotle, &c., quoted on a point where they have not the least business. All poetry is made by the ear, which must be the sole judge — it is a sort of musical rhythmus. If then we want to reduce our practical harmony to rules, every man, with a knowledge of his own language and a good ear, is at once competent to the undertaking. Let him trace it to music — if he has no knowledge, let him inquire.
“We have lost all notion of the ancient accent; — we have lost their pronunciation; — all puzzling about it is ridiculous, and trying to find out the melody of our own verse by theirs is still worse. We should have had all our own metres, if we never had heard a word of their language, — this I affirm. Every nation finds out for itself a national melody; and we may say of it, as of religion, no place has been discovered without music. A people, likewise, as their language improves, will introduce a music into their poetry, which is simply (that is to say, the numerical part of poetry, which must be distinguished from the imaginary) the transferring the time of melody into speaking. What then have the Greeks or Romans to do with our music? It is plain that our admiration of their verse is mere pedantry, because we could not adopt it. Sir Philip Sidney failed. If it had been melody, we should have had it; our language is just as well calculated for it.
“It is astonishing that the excessive ridiculousness of a Gradus or Prosodial Dictionary has never struck our scholars. The idea of looking into a book to see whether the sound of a syllable be short or long is absolutely as much a bull of Boeotian pedantry as ever disgraced Ireland.” He then adds, with reference to some mistakes which Dr. Foster had appeared to him to have committed in his accentuation of English words:— “What strange effects has this system brought about! It has so corrupted the ear, that absolutely our scholars cannot tell an English long syllable from a short one. If a boy were to make the a in ‘cano’ or ‘amo’ long, Dr. F. would no doubt feel his ear hurt, and yet….”
Of the style in which some of his observations are committed to paper, the following is a curious specimen:— “Dr. Foster says that short syllables, when inflated with that emphasis which the sense demands, swell in height, length, and breadth beyond their natural size. — The devil they do! Here is a most omnipotent power in emphasis. Quantity and accent may in vain toil to produce a little effect, but emphasis comes at once and monopolizes the power of them both.”]
which he had commenced on the nature of poetical accent and emphasis; and the adaptation of his verses to the airs in the Duenna — even allowing for the aid which he received from Mrs. Sheridan — shows a degree of musical feeling, from which a much greater variety of cadence might be expected, than we find throughout the versification of this poem. The taste of the time, however, was not prepared for any great variations in the music of the couplet. The regular foot-fall, established so long, had yet been but little disturbed; and the only license 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 be better thus: “All doom’d to perish.”
Whatever in more important points may be the inferiority of the present school of poetry to that which preceded it, in the music of versification there can be but little doubt of its improvement; nor has criticism, perhaps, ever rendered a greater service to the art, than in helping to u
nseal the ears of its worshippers to that true spheric harmony of the elders of song, which, during a long period of our literature, was as unheard as if it never existed.
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. Even in those parts which apply most directly to Garrick, the feeling is a good deal diluted by this tendency to the abstract; and, sometimes, by a false taste of personification, like that in the very first line, —
“If dying excellence deserves a tear,”
where the substitution of a quality of the man for the man himself [Footnote: Another instance of this fault occurs in his song “When sable Night:” —
“As some fond mother, o’er her babe deploring,
Wakes its beauty with a tear;”
where the clearness and reality of the picture are spoiled by the affectation of representing the beauty of the child as waked, instead of the child itself.] puts the mind, as it were, one remove farther from the substantial object of its interest, and disturbs that sense of reality, on which the operations even of Fancy itself ought to be founded.
But it is very easy to play the critic — so easy as to be a task of but little glory. For one person who could produce such a poem as this, how many thousands exist and have existed, who could shine in the exposition of its faults! Though insufficient, perhaps, in itself, to create a reputation for an author, yet, as a “stella Coronae” — one of the stars in that various crown, which marks the place of Sheridan in the firmament of Fame, — it not only well sustains its own part in the lustre, but draws new light from the host of brilliancy around it.
It was in the course of this same year that he produced the entertainment of the Critic — his last legitimate offering on the shrine of the Dramatic Muse. In this admirable farce we have a striking instance of that privilege which, as I have already said, Genius assumes, of taking up subjects that had passed through other hands, and giving them a new value and currency by his stamp. The plan of a Rehearsal was first adopted for the purpose of ridiculing Dryden, by the Duke of Buckingham; but, though there is much laughable humor in some of the dialogue between Bayes and his friends, the salt of the satire altogether was not of a very conservative nature, and the piece continued to be served up to the public long after it had lost its relish. Fielding tried the same plan in a variety of pieces — in his Pasquin, his Historical Register, his Author’s Farce, his Eurydice, &c., — but without much success, except in the comedy of Pasquin, which had, I believe, at first a prosperous career, though it has since, except with the few that still read it for its fine tone of pleasantry, fallen into oblivion. It was reserved for Sheridan to give vitality to this form of dramatic humor, and to invest even his satirical portraits — as in the instance of Sir Fretful Plagiary, which, it is well known, was designed for Cumberland — with a generic character, which, without weakening the particular resemblance, makes them representatives for ever of the whole class to which the original belonged. Bayes, on the contrary, is a caricature — made up of little more than personal peculiarities, which may amuse as long as reference can be had to the prototype, but, like those supplemental features furnished from the living subject by Taliacotius, fall lifeless the moment the individual that supplied them is defunct.
It is evident, however, that Bayes was not forgotten in the composition of The Critic. His speech, where the two Kings of Brentford are singing in the clouds, may be considered as the exemplar which Sheridan had before him in writing some of the rehearsal scenes of Puff: —
“Smith. Well, but methinks the sense of this song is not very plain.
“Bayes. Plain! why did you ever hear any people in the clouds sing plain? They must be all for flight of fancy at its fullest range, without the least check or control upon it. When once you tie up spirits and people in clouds to speak plain, you spoil all.”
There are particular instances of imitation still more direct. Thus in
The Critic:
“Enter SIR WALTER RALEIGH and SIR CHRISTOPHER HATTON.
“Sir Christ. H. True, gallant Raleigh. —
“Dangle. What, had they been talking before?
“Puff. Oh yes, all the way as they came along.”
In the same manner in The Rehearsal, where the Physician and Usher of the two Kings enter: —
“Phys. Sir, to conclude —
“Smith. What, before he begins?
“Bayes. No, Sir, you must know they had been talking of this a pretty while without.
“Smith. Where? in the tyring room?
“Bayes. Why, ay, Sir. He’s so dull.”
Bayes, at the opening of the Fifth Act, says, “Now, gentlemen, I will be bold to say, I’ll show you the greatest scene that England ever saw; I mean not for words, for those I don’t value, but for state, show, and magnificence.” Puff announces his grand scene in much the same manner:— “Now then for my magnificence! my battle! my noise! and my procession!”
In Fielding, too, we find numerous hints or germs, that have come to their full growth of wit in The Critic. For instance, in Trapwit (a character in “Pasquin”) there are the rudiments of Sir Fretful as well as of Puff: —
“Sneerwell. Yes, faith, I think I would cut that last speech.
“Trapwit. Sir, I’ll sooner cut off an ear or two; Sir, that’s the very best thing in the whole play….
“Trapwit. Now, Mr. Sneerwell, we shall begin my third and last act; and I believe I may defy all the poets who have ever writ, or ever will write, to produce its equal: it is, Sir, so crammed with drums and trumpets, thunder and lightning, battles and ghosts, that I believe the audience will want no entertainment after it.”
The manager, Marplay, in “The Author’s Farce,” like him of Drury Lane in the Critic, “does the town the honor of writing himself;” and the following incident in “The Historical Register” suggested possibly the humorous scene of Lord Burleigh: —
“Enter Four Patriots from different Doors, who meet in the centre and shake Hands.
“Sour-wit. These patriots seem to equal your greatest politicians in their silence.
“Medley. Sir, what they think now cannot well be spoke, but you may conjecture a good deal from their shaking their heads.”
Such coincidences, whether accidental or designed, are at least curious, and the following is another of somewhat a different kind:— “Steal! (says Sir Fretful) to be sure they may; and egad, serve your best thoughts as gipsies do stolen children, disfigure them, to make ’em pass for their own.” [Footnote: This simile was again made use of by him in a speech upon Mr. Pitt’s India Bill, which he declared to be “nothing more than a bad plagiarism on Mr. Fox’s, disfigured, indeed, as gipsies do stolen children, in order to make them pass for their own.”] Churchill has the same idea in nearly the same language: —
“Still pilfers wretched plans and makes them worse,
Like gipsies, lest the stolen brat be known,
Defacing first, then claiming for their own.”
The character of Puff, as I have already shown, was our author’s first d
ramatic attempt; and, having left it unfinished in the porch as he entered the temple of Comedy, he now, we see, made it worthy of being his farewell oblation in quitting it. Like Eve’s flowers, it was his
“Early visitation, and his last.”
We must not, however, forget a lively Epilogue which he wrote this year, for Miss Hannah More’s tragedy of Fatal Falsehood, in which there is a description of a blue-stocking lady, executed with all his happiest point. Of this dense, epigrammatic style, in which every line is a cartridge of wit in itself, Sheridan was, both in prose and verse, a consummate master; and if any one could hope to succeed, after Pope, in a Mock Epic, founded upon fashionable life, it would have been, we should think, the writer of this epilogue. There are some verses, written on the “Immortelle Emilie” of Voltaire, in which her employments, as a savante and a woman of the world, are thus contrasted: —
“Tout lui plait, tout convient a son vaste genie,
Les livres, les bijoux, les compas, les pompons,
Les vers, les diamans, les beribis, l’optique,
L’algebre, les soupers, le Latin, les jupons,
L’opera, les proces, le bal, et la physique.”
How powerfully has Sheridan, in bringing out the same contrasts, shown the difference between the raw material of a thought, and the fine fabric as it comes from the hands of a workman: —
“What motley cares Corilla’s mind perplex,
Whom maids and metaphors conspire to vex!
In studious deshabille behold her sit,
Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan Page 113