360

HOUSE OF COMMONS GREEK.

He talked over an upholsterer who came with a writ for £350, till the latter handed him, instead, a check for £200. He once, when the actors struck for arrears of wages to the amount of £3000, and his bankers refused flatly to Kelly to advance another penny, screwed the whole sum out of them in less than a quarter of an hour by sheer talk. He got a gold watch from Harris, the manager, with whom he had broken several appointments, by complaining that as he had no watch he could never tell the time fixed for their meetings; and, as for putting off pressing creditors, and turning furious foes into affectionate friends, he was such an adept at it, that his reputation as a dun-destroyer is quite on a par with his fame as comedian

and orator.

Hoaxing, a style of amusement fortunately out of fashion now, was almost a passion with him, and his practical jokes were as merciless as his satire. He and Tickell, who had married the sister of his wife, used to play them off on one another like a couple of schoolboys. One evening, for instance, Sheridan got together all the crockery in the house and arranged it in a dark passage, leaving a small channel for escape for himself, and then, having teased Tickell till he rushed after him, bounded out and picked his way gingerly along the passage. His friend followed him unwittingly, and at the first step stumbled over a washhand-basin, and fell forward with a crash on piles of plates and dishes, which cut his face and hands in a most cruel manner, Sheridan all the while laughing immoderately at the end of the passage, secure from vengeance.

But his most impudent hoax was that on the Honorable House of Commons itself. Lord Belgrave had made a very telling speech which he wound up with a Greek quotation, loudly applauded. Sheridan had no arguments to meet him with; so rising, he admitted the force of his lordship's quotation (of which he probably did not understand a word), but added that had he gone a little farther, and completed the passage, he would have seen that the context completely altered the sense. He would prove it to the House, he said, and forthwith rolled forth a grand string of majestic gibberish so well imitated that the whole assembly cried, "Hear, hear!" Lord Belgrave rose again, and frankly admitted that the passage had the meaning ascribed to it by the honorable gentleman, and that he had overlooked it at the moment. At the end of the evening, Fox, who prided himself on his classical lore, came up to and said to him, "Sheridan, how came you to be so ready with that passage? It is certainly as you say, but I was not aware of it before you quoted it." Sherry was wise enough to keep his own counsel for the time, but

CURIOUS MIMICRY.

361 must have felt delightfully tickled at the ignorance of the would-be savants with whom he was politically associated. Probably Sheridan could not at any time have quoted a whole passage of Greek on the spur of the moment; but it is certain that he had not kept up his classics, and at the time in question must have forgotten the little he ever knew of them.

This facility of imitating exactly the sound of a language without introducing a single word of it is not so very rare, but is generally possessed in greater readiness by those who know no tongue but their own, and are therefore more struck by the strangeness of a foreign one, when hearing it. Many of us have heard Italian songs in which there was not a word of actual Italian sung in London burlesques, and some of us have laughed at Levassor's capital imitation of English; but perhaps the cleverest mimic of the kind I ever heard was M. Laffitte, brother of that famous banker who made his fortune by picking up a pin. This gentleman could speak nothing but French, but had been brought by his business into contact with foreigners of every race at Paris, and when he once began his little trick, it was impossible to believe that he was not possessed of a gift of tongues. His German and Italian

were good enough, but his English was so splendidly counterfeited, that after listening to him for a short time, I suddenly heard a roar of laughter from all present, for I had actually unconsciously answered him, "Yes," "No," "Exactly so," and "I quite agree with you!"

Undoubtedly much of Sherry's depravity must be attributed to his intimacy with a man whom it was a great honor to a youngster then to know, but who would probably be scouted even from a London club in the present day-the Prince of Wales. The part of a courtier is always degrading enough to play; but to be courtier to a prince whose favor was to be won by proficiency in vice and audacity in follies, to truckle to his tastes, to pander to his voracious lusts, to win his smiles by the invention of a new pleasure, and his approbation by the plotting of a new villainy, what an office for the author of "The School for Scandal," and the orator renowned for denouncing the wickednesses of Warren Hastings! What a life for the young poet who had wooed and won the Maid of Bath -for the man of strong domestic affections, who wept over his father's sternness, and loved his son only too well! It was bad enough for such mere worldlings as Captain Hanger or Beau Brummell, but for a man of higher and purer feelings, like Dick Sheridan, who, with all his faults, had some poetry in his soul, such a career was doubly disgraceful.

It was at the house of the beautiful, lively, and adventurous

Q

362

THE ROYAL BOON COMPANION.

Duchess of Devonshire, the partisan of Charles James Fox, who loved him or his cause for Fox and Liberalism were often one in ladies' eyes-so well, that she could give greasy Steele, the butcher, a kiss for his vote, that Sheridan first met the prince-then a boy in years, but already more than an adult in vice. No doubt the youth whom Fox, Brummell, Hanger, Lord Surrey, Sheridan, the tailors, and the women combined to turn at once into the finest gentleman and greatest blackguard in Europe, was at that time as fascinating in appearance and manner as any one, prince or not, could be. He was by far the handsomest of the Hanoverians, and had the least amount of their sheepish look. He possessed all their taste and capacity for gallantry, with none of the German coarseness, which certain other Princes of Wales exhibited in their amorous address. His coarseness was of a more sensual, but less imperious kind. He had his redeeming points, which few of his ancestors had, and his liberal hand and warm heart won him friends, where his conduct could win him little else than contempt. Sheridan was introduced to him by Fox, and Mrs. Sheridan by the Duchess of Devonshire. The prince had that which always takes with Englishmen-a readiness of conviviality, and a recklessness of character. He was ready to chat, drink, and bet with Sheridan, or any new-comer equally well recommended, and an introduction to young George was always followed by an easy recognition. With all this he managed to keep up a certain amount of royal dignity under the most trying circumstances, but he had none of that easy grace which made Charles II. beloved by his associates. When the George had gone too far, he had no resource but to cut the individual with whom he had hobbed and nobbed, and he was as ungrateful in his enmities as he was ready with his friendship. Brummell had taught him to dress, and Sheridan had given him wiser counsels: he quarreled with both for trifles, which, if he had had real dignity, would never have occurred, and if he had had real friendship, would easily have been over

looked.

Sheridan's breach with the prince was honorable to him. He could not wholly approve of the conduct of that personage and his ministers, and he told him openly that his life was at his service, but his character was the property of the country. The prince replied that Sheridan "might impeach his ministers on the morrow-that would not impair their friendship;" yet turned on his heel, and was never his friend again. When, again, the "delicate investigation" came off, he sent for Sheridan, and asked his aid. The latter replied, "Your royal highness honors me, but I will never take part against a woman,

STREET FROLICS AT NIGHT.

363

whether she be right or wrong." His political courage atones somewhat for the want of moral courage he displayed in pandering to the prince's vices.

Many an anecdote is told of Sheridan and "Wales"-many, indeed, that can not be repeated. Their bets were often of the coarsest nature, won by Sheridan in the coarsest manner. A great intimacy sprang up between the two reprobates, and Sherry became one of the satellites of that dissolute prince. There are few of the stories of their adventures which can be told in a work like this, but we may give one or two specimens of the less disgraceful character:

The Prince, Lord Surrey, and Sheridan were in the habit of seeking nightly adventures of any kind that suggested itself to their lively minds. A low tavern, still in existence, was the rendezvous of the heir to the crown and his noble and distinguished associates. This was the "Salutation," in Tavistock Court, Covent Garden, a night-house for gardeners and countrymen, and the sharpers who fleeced both, and was kept by a certain Mother Butler, who favored in every way the adventurous designs of her exalted guests. Here wigs, smock-frocks, and other disguises were in readiness; and here, at call, was to be found a ready-made magistrate, whose sole occupation was to deliver the young Haroun and his companions from the dilemmas which their adventures naturally brought them into, and which were generally more or less concerned with the watch. Poor old watch! what happy days, when members of parliament, noblemen, and sucking monarchs condescended to break thy bob-wigged head! and-blush, Z 350, immaculate constable-to toss thee a guinea to buy plaster with.

In addition to the other disguise, aliases were of course assumed. The prince went by the name of Blackstock, Graystock was my Lord Surrey, and Thinstock Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The treatment of women by the police is traditional. The " unfortunate”—unhappy creatures!—are their pet aversion; and once in their clutches, receive no mercy. The "Charley" of old was quite as brutal as the modern Hercules of the glazed hat, and the three adventurers showed an amount of zeal worthy of a nobler cause, in rescuing the drunken Laïs from his grasp. On one occasion they seem to have hit on a 66 deserving case;" a slight skirmish with the watch ended in a rescue, and the erring creature was taken off to a house of respectability sufficient to protect her. Here she told her tale, which, however improbable, turned out to be true. It was a very old, a very simple one-the common history of many a frail, foolish girl, cursed with beauty, and the prey of a practiced seducer. The main peculiarity lay in the

350

GRATTAN'S QUIP.—SHERIDAN'S SALLIES.

"Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold."

Lord Rolle, the butt of the Opposition, who had attacked him in the famous satire "The Rolliad," so popular that it went through twenty-two editions in twenty-seven years, accused Sheridan of inflammatory speeches among the operatives of the northern counties on the cotton question. Sheridan retorted by saying that he believed Lord Rolle must refer to "Compositions less prosaic, but more popular" (meaning the "Rolliad"), and thus successfully turned the laugh against him.

It was Grattan, I think, who said, "When I can't talk sense, I talk metaphor." Sheridan often talked metaphor, though he sometimes mingled it with sense. His famous speech about the Begums of Oude is full of it, but we have one or two instances before that. Thus on the Duke of Richmond's report about fortifications, he said, turning to the duke, that "holding in his hand the report made by the Board of Officers, he complimented the noble president on his talents as an engineer, which were strongly evinced in planning and constructing that very paper. He has made it a contest of posts, and conducted his reasoning not less on principles of trigonometry than of logic. There are certain assumptions thrown up, like advanced works, to keep the enemy at a distance from the principal object of debate; strong provisos protect and cover the flanks of his assertions: his very queries are his casemates," and so on.

When Lord Mulgrave said, on another occasion, that any man using his influence to obtain a vote for the crown ought to lose his head, Sheridan quietly remarked, that he was glad his lordship had said "ought to lose his head," not would have lost it, for in that case the learned gentleman would not have had that evening "a face to have shown among us."

Such are a few of his well-remembered replies in the House; but his fame as an orator rested on the splendid speeches which he made at the impeachment of Warren Hastings. The first of these was made in the House on the 7th of February, 1787. The whole story of the corruption, extortions, and cruelty of the worst of many bad rulers who have been imposed upon that unhappy nation of Hindoostan, and who, ignorant of how to parcere subjectis, have gone on in their unjust oppression, only rendering it the more dangerous by weak concessions, is too well known to need a recapitulation here. The worst feature in the whole of Hastings's misconduct was, perhaps, his treatment of those unfortunate ladies whose money he coveted, the Begums of Oude. The Opposition was determined to make the governor general's conduct a state question,