Part 78

Mr. Sheridan’s speech in defence of Mr. Fox’s celebrated East-India Bill was so masterly, as to induce the public opinion to select him from the second class of parliamentary speakers. He was viewed as a formidable opponent by Mr. Pitt, and looked up to with admiration, as a principal leader of the opposition.

He was rapidly approaching to perfection as an orator, when the impeachment of Mr. Hastings supplied him with an opportunity of displaying powers which were then unrivalled. He was one of the managers of the prosecution, and his speech delivered in the house of commons, in April, 1787, on the eighth article as stated in the order laid down by Mr. Burke, relative to “money corruptly and illegally taken,” was allowed to equal the most argumentative and impassioned orations that had ever been addressed to the judgment and feelings of the British parliament. He fixed the uninterrupted attention of the house for upwards of five hours, confirmed the minds of those who wavered, and produced co-operation from a quarter which it was supposed would have been hostile to any further proceeding. In the long examination of Mr. Middleton, he gave decided proofs of a strong and discriminating mind; but when, in June, 1788, he summed up the evidence on the charge, respecting the confinement and imprisonment of the princesses of Oude, and the seizure of their treasures, his superiority over his colleagues was established by universal consent. To form a just opinion of this memorable oration, which occupied the attention of the court and excited the admiration of the public for several hours, it would be necessary to have heard Mr. Sheridan himself. It is difficult to select any part of it as the subject of peculiar encomium. The address with which he arranged his materials; the art and force with which he anticipated objections; the unexampled ingenuity with which he commented on the evidence, and the natural boldness of his imagery, are equally entitled to panegyric. He combined the three kinds of eloquence. He was clear and unadorned--diffuse and pathetic--animated and vehement. There was nothing superfluous--no affected turn--no glittering point--no false sublimity. Compassion and indignation were alternately excited, and the wonderful effects related of the eloquence of Greece and Rome were almost revived.

During the indisposition of his late majesty, Mr. Sheridan took a leading part in the attempts which were made to declare the prince of Wales regent, without such restrictions as parliament should think fit to impose. He contended, that the immediate nomination of the heir-apparent ought to take place, as a matter of constitutional right.

He was ever the zealous supporter of parliamentary reform, and the uniform friend of the liberty of the press and of religious toleration; but he rose superior to the selfish drudgery of a mere partizan, and his conduct, during the crisis of the naval mutiny, received the thanks of the minister.

Mrs. Sheridan died in June, 1792, and he had a son by that lady, Mr. Thomas Sheridan, who inherited much of his father’s talents, but fell a victim to indulgence. In 1795, Mr. Sheridan married his second wife, Miss Ogle, youngest daughter of the rev. Dr. Newton Ogle, dean of Winchester. The issue of this second marriage was also a son.

His conduct as manager and principal proprietor of the first theatre in the kingdom, and his punctuality in the discharge of the duties contracted by him in that situation, have rarely been the subject of praise; but in the legal discussion of the claims of the proprietors of Drury-lane theatre, in the court of chancery, so far from any imputation being thrown out against his conduct, it was generally commended; and the chancellor himself (lord Eldon) spoke in the handsomest terms of Mr. Sheridan’s _integrity_, though certainly he thought his _prudence_ was, in some instances, liable to be questioned.

On the formation of the Fox and Grenville administration, after the death of Mr. Pitt, Mr. Sheridan was appointed treasurer of the navy, and returned member for Westminster, after a strong opposition on the part of Mr. Paul. But in the latter years of his life he had not sat in parliament; where, during the period after his last return, he attended irregularly, and spoke seldom. One of the wittiest of his closing efforts in the house, was a speech, in answer to Mr. Yorke, respecting a discussion on the “Nightly Watch,” which had arisen out of the murder of the families of Marr and Williamson, at Wapping.

Mr. Sheridan was one of that circle denominated the prince’s friends. So long as his mind remained unaffected by the pressure of personal distress and embarrassment, and whilst he could contribute to the hilarity of the table by his wit, as he had formerly contributed to forward the interests of the prince by his earnest and unremitted endeavours, he appears to have been a welcome visitor at Carlton-house--but this was all. Nor the brilliancy of genius, nor the master of talent, nor time, nor intellect employed and exhausted in the service of the prince, obtained for this great man the means of a peaceful existence, on his cession from public life. In June, 1816, his constitution was completely broken up, and his speedy dissolution seemed inevitable.

He died at noon, on Sunday, the 7th of July, 1816. For several weeks prior to his death he lay under arrest, and it was only by the firmness and humanity of the two eminent physicians who attended him, Dr. Baillie and Dr. Bain, that an obdurate attorney was prevented from executing a threat to remove him from his house to a death-bed in gaol. He enjoyed, however, to the last moment, the sweetest consolation that the heart can feel in the affectionate tenderness, sympathy, and attention of his amiable wife and son. Mrs. Sheridan, though herself labouring under severe illness watched over him with the most anxious solicitude through the whole of that protracted suffering, which has parted them for ever.

To these particulars of this extraordinary individual, which are extracted from a memoir of him that appeared in _The Times_ newspaper, must be added a passage or two from a celebrated “Estimate of his Character and Talents” in the same journal.

“Mr. Sheridan in his happiest days never effected any thing by steady application. He was capable of intense, but not of regular study. When public duty or private difficulty urged him, he endured the burden as if asleep under its pressure. At length, when the pain could be no longer borne, he roused himself with one mighty effort, and burst like a lion through the toils. There are reasons for believing that his constitutional indolence began its operation upon his habits at an early age. His very first dramatic scenes were written by snatches, with considerable intervals between them. Convivial pleasures had lively charms for one whose wit was the soul of the table; and the sparkling glass--the medium of social intercourse--had no small share of his affection. These were joys to be indulged without effort: as such they were too well calculated to absorb the time of Mr. Sheridan, and sooner or later to make large encroachments on his character. His attendance in parliament became every year more languid--the _vis inertiæ_ more incurable--the plunges by which his genius had now and then extricated him in former times less frequent and more feeble. We never witnessed a contrast much more melancholy than between the brilliant and commanding talent displayed by Mr. Sheridan throughout the first regency discussions, and the low scale of nerve, activity, and capacity, to which he seemed reduced when that subject was more recently agitated in parliament. But indolence and intemperance must banish reflection, if not corrected by it; since no man could support the torture of perpetual self-reproach. Aggravated, we fear, by some such causes, the naturally careless temper of Mr. Sheridan became ruinous to all his better hopes and prospects. Without a direct appetite for spending money, he thought not of checking its expenditure. The economy of time was as much disregarded as that of money. All the arrangements, punctualities, and minor obligations of life were forgotten, and the household of Mr. Sheridan was always in a state of nature. His domestic feelings were originally kind, and his manners gentle: but the same bad habits seduced him from the house of commons, and from home; and equally injured him as an agent of the public good, and as a dispenser of private happiness. It is painful, it is mortifying, but it is our sacred duty, to pursue this history to the end. Pecuniary embarrassments often lead men to shifts and expedients--these exhausted, to others of a less doubtful colour. Blunted sensibility--renewed excesses--loss of cast in society--follow each other in melancholy succession, until solitude and darkness close the scene.

“It has been made a reproach by some persons, in lamenting Mr. Sheridan’s cruel destiny, that ‘his friends’ had not done more for him. We freely and conscientiously declare it as our opinion, that had Mr. Sheridan enjoyed ten receiverships of Cornwall instead of one, he would not have died in affluence. He never would have attained to comfort or independence in his fortune. A vain man may become rich, because his vanity may thirst for only a single mode of gratification; an ambitious man, a _bon vivant_, a sportsman, may severally control their expenses; but a man who is inveterately thoughtless of consequences, and callous to reproof--who knows not when he squanders money, because he feels not those obligations which constitute or direct its uses--such a man it is impossible to rescue from destruction. We go further--we profess not to conjecture to what individuals the above reproach of forgotten friendships has been applied. If against persons of illustrious rank, there never was a more unfounded accusation. Mr. Sheridan, throughout his whole life, stood as high as he ought to have done in the quarters alluded to. He received the most substantial proofs of kind and anxious attachment from these personages; and it is to his credit that he was not insensible to their regard. If the mistaken advocates of Mr. Sheridan were so much his enemies as to wish he had been raised to some elevated office, are they not aware that even one month’s active attendance out of twelve he was at times utterly incapable of giving? But what friends are blamed for neglecting Mr. Sheridan? What _friendships_ did he ever form? We more than doubt whether he could fairly claim the rights of friendship with any leader of the whig administration. We know that he has publicly asserted Mr. Fox to be his friend, and that he has dwelt with much eloquence on the sweets and enjoyments of that connection; but it has never been our fortune to find out that Mr. Fox had, on any public or private occasion, bound himself by reciprocal pledges. Evidence against the admission of such ties on his part may be drawn from the well-known anecdotes of what occurred within a few days of that statesman’s death. The fact is, that a life of conviviality and intemperance seldom favours the cultivation of those better tastes and affections which are necessary to the existence of intimate friendship. That Mr. Sheridan had as many admirers as acquaintances, there is no room to doubt; but they admired only his astonishing powers; there never was a second opinion or feeling as to the unfortunate use which he made of them.

“Never were such gifts as those which Providence showered upon Mr. Sheridan so abused--never were talents so miserably perverted. The term ‘greatness’ has been most ridiculously, and, in a moral sense, most perniciously applied to the character of one who, to speak charitably of him, was the weakest of men. Had he employed his matchless endowments with but ordinary judgment, nothing in England, hardly any thing in Europe, could have eclipsed his name, or obstructed his progress.”

May they who read, and he who writes, reflect, and profit by reflection, on

The talents lost--the moments run To waste--the sins of act, of thought, Ten thousand deeds of folly done, And countless virtues cherish’d not.

_Bowring._

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FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Nasturtium. _Tropocolum majus._ Dedicated to _St. Felix_.

_To the Summer Zephyr._

Zephyr, stay thy vagrant flight, And tell me where you’re going.-- Is it to sip off the dew-drop bright That hangs on the breast of the lily white In yonder pasture growing; Or to revel ’mid roses and mignionette sweet; Or wing’st thou away some fair lady to meet?-- If so, then, hie thee away, bland boy; Thou canst not engage in a sweeter employ.

“From kissing the blue of yon bright summer sky, To the vine-cover’d cottage, delighted, I fly, Where Lucy the gay is shining; To sport in the beams of her lovely eye, While her temples with roses she’s twining. Then do not detain me; I sigh to be there, To fan her young bosom--to play ’mid her hair!”

~July 8.~

_St. Elizabeth_, Queen of Portugal, A. D. 1336. _St. Procopius_, A. D. 303. _Sts. Kilian_, _Colman_, and _Totnam_, A. D. 688. _St. Withburge_, 10th Cent. _B. Theobald_, 13th Cent. _St. Grimbald_, A. D. 903.

_New Churches._

Every one must have been struck by the great number of new churches erected within the suburbs of the metropolis, and the novel forms of their steeples; yet few have been aware of the difficulties encountered by architects in their endeavours to accommodate large congregations in edifices for public worship. Sir Christopher Wren experienced the inconvenience when the fifty churches were erected in queen Anne’s time. He says, “The Romanists, indeed, may build large churches; it is enough if they hear the murmur of the mass, and see the elevation of the host, but ours are to be fitted for auditories. I can hardly think it practicable to make a single room so capacious with pews and galleries, as to hold above two thousand persons, and both to hear distinctly, and see the preacher. I endeavoured to effect this, in building the parish church of St. James’s, Westminster, which I presume is the most capacious, with these qualifications, that hath yet been built; and yet, at a solemn time, when the church was much crowded, I could not discern from a gallery that two thousand were present. A moderate voice may be heard fifty feet distant before the preacher, thirty feet on each side, and twenty behind the pulpit; and not this, unless the pronunciation be distinct and equal, without losing the voice at the last word of the sentence, which is commonly emphatical, and, if obscured, spoils the whole sense. A French is heard further than an English preacher, because he raises his voice, and does not sink his last words. I mention this as an insufferable fault in the pronunciation of some of our otherwise excellent preachers; which schoolmasters might correct in the young, as a vicious pronunciation, and not as the Roman orator spoke; for the principal verb is in Latin usually the last word; and if that be lost, what becomes of the sentence?”

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FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Evening Primrose. _Oenothera biennis._ Dedicated to _St. Elizabeth_.

~July 9.~

_St. Ephrem_ of Edessa, A. D. 378. _The Martyrs of Gorcum_, A. D. 1572. _St. Everildis._

_Health._

In hot weather walk slowly, and as much as possible in the shade.

When fatigued recline on a sofa, and avoid all drafts.

Eat sparingly of meat, and indeed of every thing.

Especially shun unripe fruits, and be moderate with cherries.

Strawberries may be safely indulged in; with a little cream and bread they make a delightful supper, an hour or two before retiring to rest.

If the frame be weakened by excessive heat, a table spoonfull of the best brandy, thrown into a tumbler of spring water, becomes a cooling restorative; otherwise spirits should not be touched.

Spring water, with a toast in it, is the best drink.

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FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Marsh Sowthistle. _Sonchus palustris._ Dedicated to _St. Everildis_.

* * * * *

_Died, July 9, 1822._

Reader! see the famous Captain Starkey, in his own coat wrapt in; Mark his mark’d nose, and mark his eye, His lengthen’d chin, his forehead high, His little stick, his humble hat, The modest tie of his cravat; Mark how easy sit his hose, Mark the shoes that hold his toes; So he look’d when Ranson sketch’d him While alive--but Death has fetch’d him.

*

Auto-biography is agreeable in the writing, and sometimes profitable in the publication, to persons whose names would otherwise die and be buried with them. Of this numerous class was captain Starkey, who to his “immortal memory” wrote and published his own “Memoirs.”[208]

The preface to a fine uncut copy of captain Starkey’s very rare “Memoirs,” _penes me_, commences thus:--“The writers of biographical accounts have _always_ prepared articles, which at once, when held forth to the public, _were highly entertaining, useful, and satisfactory_.” This particular representation, so directly opposed to general experience, is decisively original. Its expression bespeaks an independence of character, rendered further conspicuous by an amiable humility. “I am afraid,” says the captain, “I shall fall infinitely short in commanding your attention; none, on _this_ side of time, are perfect, and it is in the nature of things impossible it should be otherwise.” He trusts, “if truth has any force,” that “patience and candour” will hear him out. Of captain Starkey then--it may be said, that “he knew the truth, and knowing dared maintain it.”

The captain declares, he was born of honest and poor parents, natives of Newcastle upon Tyne, at the Lying-in Hospital, Brownlow-street, Long-acre, London, on the 19th of December, 1757. “My infantile years,” he observes, “were attended with much indisposition.” The nature of his “indisposition” does not appear; but it is reasonable to presume, that as the “infantile years” of all of “living born,” at that time, were passed in “much indisposition,” the captain suffered no more than fell to him in the common lot. It was then the practice to afflict a child as soon as it breathed the air, by forcing spoonfulls of “unctuousities” down its throat, “oil of sweet almonds and syrup of blue violets.” A strong cotton swathe of about six inches in width, and from ten to twenty feet in length, was tightly rolled round the body, beginning under the arm pits and ending at the hips, so as to stiffly encase the entire trunk. After the child was dressed, if its constraint would allow it to suck, it was suckled; but whether suckled or not, the effect of the swathing was soon visible; its eyes rolled in agony, it was pronounced convulsed, and a dose of “Dalby’s Carminative” was administered as “the finest thing in the world for convulsions.” With “pap” made of bread and water, and milk loaded with brown sugar, it was fed from a “pap-boat,” an earthen vessel in the form of a butter-boat. If “these contents” were not quickly “received in full,” the infant was declared “not very well,” but if by crying, kicking of the legs, stiffening of the back, and eructation from the stomach, it resisted further overloading, then it was affirmed that it was “troubled with wind,” and was drenched with “Daffy’s Elixir,” as “the finest thing in the world for wind.” As soon as the “wind” had “a little broken off, poor thing!” it was suckled again, and fed again; being so suckled and fed, and fed and suckled, it was wonderful if it could sleep soundly, and therefore, after it was undressed at night, it had a dose of “Godfrey’s Cordial,” as “the finest thing in the world for composing to rest.” If it was not “composed” out of the world before morning, it awoke to undergo the manifold process of being again over-swathed, over-fed, “Dalby’d, Daffy’d, and Godfrey’d” for that day; and so, day by day, it was put in bonds, “carminativ’d, elixir’d, and cordial’d,” till in a few weeks or months it died, or escaped, as by miracle, to be weaned and made to walk. It was not to be put on its legs “too soon,” and therefore, while the work of repletion was going on, it was not to feel that it had legs, but was kept in arms, or rather kept lolling on the arm, till ten or twelve months old. By this means its body, being unduly distended, was too heavy to be sustained by its weak and comparatively diminutive sized limbs; and then a “go-cart” was provided. The go-cart was a sort of circular frame-work, running upon wheels, with a door to open for admission of the child; wherein, being bolted, and the upper part being only so large as to admit its body from below the arms, the child rested by the arm pits, and kicking its legs on the floor, set the machine rolling on its wheels. This being the customary mode of “bringing children up” at the time of captain Starkey’s birth, and until about the year 1790, few were without a general disorder and weakness of the frame, called “the rickets.” These afflicted ones were sometimes hump-backed, and usually bow-shinned, or knock-kneed, for life, though to remedy the latter defects in some degree, the legs were fastened by straps to jointed irons. From the whole length portrait at the head of this article, which is copied from an etching by Mr. Thomas Ranson, prefixed to captain Starkey’s “Memoirs,” it is reasonably to be conjectured that the captain in his childhood had been ricketty and had worn irons. Mr. Ranson has draped the figure in a long coat. Had this been done to conceal the inward inclination of the captain’s knees, it would have been creditable to Mr. Ranson’s delicacy; for there is a sentiment connected with the meeting of the knees, in the owner’s mind, which he who knows human nature and has human feelings, knows how to respect; and no one either as a man or an artist is better acquainted with the “humanities” than Mr. Ranson. But that gentleman drew the captain from the life, and the captain’s coat is from the coat he actually wore when he stood for his picture. There is a remarkable dereliction of the nose from the eyebrows. It was a practice with the race of nurses who existed when the captain’s nose came into the world, to pinch up that feature of our infant ancestors from an hour old, till “the month was up.” This was from a persuasion that nature, on that part of the face, required to be assisted. A few only of these ancient females remain, and it does not accord with the experience of one of the most experienced among them, that they ever _depressed_ that sensible feature; she is fully of opinion, that for the protrusion at the end of the captain’s, he was indebted to his nurse “during the month;” and she says that, “it’s this, that makes him look so sensible.”