The Wits and Beaux of Society. Volume 2

by Mrs. A. T. Thomson; Philip Wharton

"THE FAMOUS LITERARY CLUB."

Among them the bullying Doctor rolled in majestic grumpiness; scolded, dogmatized, contradicted, pished and pshawed; and made himself generally disagreeable; yet, hail the omen, Intellect! such was the force, such the fame of his mind, that the more he snorted, the more they adored him—the more he bullied, the more humbly they knocked under. He was quite 'His Majesty' at the Turk's Head, and the courtiers waited for his coming with anxiety, and talked of him till he came in the same manner as the lacqueys in the anteroom of a crowned monarch. Boswell, who, by the way, was also a member—of course he was, or how should we have had the great man's conversations handed down to us?—was sure to keep them up to the proper mark of adulation if they ever flagged in it, and was as servile in his admiration in the Doctor's absence as when he was there to call him a fool for his pains.

Thus, on one occasion while 'King Johnson' tarried, the courtiers were discussing his journey to the Hebrides and his coming away 'willing to believe the second sight.' Some of them smiled at this, but Bozzy was down on them with more than usual servility. 'He is only willing to believe,' he exclaimed. 'I do believe. The evidence is enough for me, though not for his great mind. What will not fill a quart bottle will fill a pint bottle. I am filled with belief.'—'Are you?' said Colman, slily; 'then cork it up.'

As a specimen of Johnson's pride in his own club, which always remained extremely exclusive, we have what he said of Garrick, who, before he was elected, carelessly told Reynolds he liked the club, and thought 'he would be of them.'

'He'll be of us!' roared the Doctor indignantly, on hearing of this. 'How does he know we will permit him? The first duke in England has no right to hold such language!'

It can easily be imagined that when 'His Majesty' expressed his approval of Richard Brinsley, then a young man of eight-and-twenty, there was no one who ventured to blackball him, and so Sheridan was duly elected.

The fame of 'The School for Scandal' was a substantial one for Richard Brinsley, and in the following year he extended his speculation by buying the other moiety of Drury Lane. This theatre, which took its name from the old Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane, where Killigrew acted in the days of Charles II. is famous for the number of times it has been rebuilt. The first house had been destroyed in 1674; and the one in which Garrick acted was built by Sir Christopher Wren and opened with a prologue by Dryden. In 1793 this was rebuilt. In 1809 it was burnt to the ground; and on its re-opening the Committee advertised a prize for a prologue, which was supposed to be tried for by all the poets and poetasters then in England.[⁷] Sheridan adding afterwards a condition that he wanted an address without a Phoenix in it. Horace Smith and his brother seized the opportunity to parody the style of the most celebrated in their delightful 'Rejected Addresses.' Drury Lane has always been grand in its prologue, for besides Dryden and Byron, it could boast of Sam. Johnson, who wrote the address when Garrick opened the theatre in 1747. No theatre ever had more great names connected with its history.

It was in 1778, after the purchase of the other moiety of this property, that Sheridan set on its boards 'The Critic.' Though this was denounced as itself as complete a plagiarism as any Sir Fretful Plagiary could make, and though undoubtedly the idea of it was borrowed, its wit, so truly Sheridanian, and its complete characters, enhanced its author's fame, in spite of the disappointment of those who expected higher things from the writer of 'The School for Scandal.' Whether Sheridan would have gone on improving, had he remained true to the drama, 'The Critic' leaves us in doubt. But he was a man of higher ambition. Step by step, unexpectedly, and apparently unprepared, he had taken by storm the out-works of the citadel he was determined to capture, and he seems to have cared little to garrison these minor fortresses. He had carried off from among a dozen suitors a wife of such beauty that Walpole thus writes of her in 1773:—

'I was at the ball last night, and have only been at the opera, where I was infinitely struck with the Carrara, who is the prettiest creature upon earth. Mrs. Hartley I find still handsomer, and Miss Linley is to be the superlative degree. The king admires the last, and ogles her as much as he dares in so holy a place as an oratorio, and at so devout a service as Alexander's Feast'

Yet Sheridan did not prize his lovely wife as he should have done, when he had once obtained her. Again he had struck boldly into the drama, and in four years had achieved that fame as a play-writer to which even Johnson could testify so handsomely. He now quitted this, and with the same innate power—the same consciousness of success—the same readiness of genius—took a higher, far more brilliant flight than ever. Yet had he garrisoned the forts he captured, he would have been a better, happier, and more prosperous man. Had he been true to the Maid of Bath, his character would not have degenerated as it did. Had he kept up his connection with the drama, he would not have lost so largely by his speculation in Drury Lane. His genius became his temptation, and he hurried on to triumph and to fall.

Public praise is a syren which the young sailor through life cannot resist. Political life is a fine aim, even when its seeker starts without a shred of real patriotism to conceal his personal ambition. No young man of any character can think, without a thrill of rapture, on the glory of having his name—now obscure—written in capitals on the page of his country's history. A true patriot cares nothing for fame; a really great man is content to die nameless, if his acts may but survive him. Sheridan was not really great, and it may be doubted if he had any sincerity in his political views. But the period favoured the rise of young men of genius. In former reigns a man could have little hope of political influence without being first a courtier; but by this time liberalism had made giant strides. The leaven of revolutionary ideas, which had leavened the whole lump in France, was still working quietly and less passionately in this country, and being less repressed, displayed itself in the last quarter of the eighteenth century in the form of a strong and brilliant opposition. It was to this that the young men of ambition attached themselves, rallying under the standard of Charles James Fox, since it was there only that their talents were sufficient to recommend them.

To this party, Sheridan, laughing in his sleeve at the extravagance of their demands—so that when they clamoured for a 'parliament once a year, or oftener if need be,' he pronounced himself an 'Oftener-if-need-be' man—was introduced, when his fame as a literary man had brought him into contact with some of its hangers on. Fox, after his first interview with him, affirmed that he had always thought Hare and Charles Townsend the wittiest men he had ever met, but that Sheridan surpassed them both; and Sheridan was equally pleased with 'the Man of the People.'

The first step to this political position was to become a member of a certain club, where its leaders gambled away their money, and drank away their minds—to wit, Brookes'. Pretty boys, indeed, were these great Whig patriots when turned loose in these precincts. The tables were for stakes of twenty or fifty guineas, but soon ran up to hundreds. What did it matter to Charles James Fox, to the Man of the People, whether he lost five, seven, or ten thousand of a night, when the one-half came out of his father's, the other out of Hebrew, pockets—the sleek, thick-lipped owners of which thronged his Jerusalem chamber, as he called his back sitting-room, only too glad to 'oblige' him to any amount? The rage for gaming at this pandemonium may be understood from a rule of the club, which it was found necessary to make to interdict it in the eating-room, but to which was added the truly British exception, which allowed two members of Parliament in those days, or two 'gentlemen' of any kind, to toss up for what they had ordered.

This charming resort of the dissipated was originally established in Pall Mall in 1764, and the manager was that same Almack who afterwards opened a lady's club in the rooms now called Willis's, in King Street, St. James's; who also owned the famous Thatched House, and whom Gilly Williams described as having a 'Scotch face, in a bag-wig,' waiting on the ladies at supper. In 1778 Brookes—a wine-merchant and money-lender, whom Tickell, in his famous 'Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox, partridge-shooting, to the Hon. John Townsend, cruising,' describes in these lines;—

'And know I've bought the best champagne from Brookes,

From liberal Brookes, whose speculative skill

Is hasty credit, and a distant bill:

Who, nurs'd in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade:

Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid—'

built and opened the present club-house in St. James's Street, and thither the members of Almack's migrated. Brookes' speculative skill, however, did not make him a rich man, and the 'gentlemen' he dealt with were perhaps too gentlemanly to pay him. He died poor in 1782. Almack's at first consisted of twenty-seven members, one of whom was C.J. Fox. Gibbon, the historian, was actually a member of it, and says that in spite of the rage for play, he found the society there rational and entertaining. Sir Joshua Reynolds wanted to be a member of it too. 'You see,' says Topham Beauclerk thereupon, 'what noble ambition will make a man attempt. That den is not yet opened,' &c.

Brookes', however, was far more celebrated, and besides Fox, Reynolds, and Gibbon, there were here to be found Horace Walpole, David Hume, Burke, Selwyn, and Garrick. It would be curious to discover how much religion, how much morality, and how much vanity there were among the set. The first two would require a microscope to examine, the last an ocean to contain it. But let Tickell describe its inmates:—

'Soon as to Brookes's thence thy footsteps bend

What gratulations thy approach attend!

See Gibbon rap his box—auspicious sign,

That classic compliment and wit combine;

See Beauclerk's cheek a tinge of red surprise,

And friendship give what cruel health denies;

---

Of wit, of taste, of fancy we'll debate,

If Sheridan for once be not too late.

But scarce a thought on politics we'll spare

Unless on Polish politics with Hare.

Good-natured Devon! oft shall there appear

The cool complacence of thy friendly sneer;

Oft shall Fitzpatrick's wit, and Stanhope's ease,

And Burgoyne's manly sense combine to please.

To show how high gaming ran in this assembly of wits, even so early at 1772, there is a memorandum in the books, stating that Mr. Thynne retired from the club in disgust, because he had only won £12,000 in two months. The principal games at this period were quinze and faro.

Into this eligible club Richard Sheridan, who ten years before had been agreeing with Halhed on the bliss of making a couple of hundred pounds by their literary exertions, now essayed to enter as a member; but in vain. One black-ball sufficed to nullify his election, and that one was dropped in by George Selwyn, who, with degrading littleness, would not have the son of an actor among them. Again and again he made the attempt; again and again Selwyn foiled him; and it was not till 1780 that he succeeded. The Prince of Wales was then his devoted friend, and was determined he should be admitted into the club. The elections at that time took place between eleven at night and one o'clock in the morning, and the 'greatest gentleman in Europe' took care to be in the hall when the ballot began. Selwyn came down as usual, bent on triumph. The prince called him to him. There was nothing for it; Selwyn was forced to obey. The prince walked him up and down the hall, engaging him in an apparently most important conversation. George Selwyn answered him question after question, and made desperate attempts to slip away. The other George had always something more to say to him. The long finger of the clock went round, and Selwyn's long white fingers were itching for the black ball. The prince was only more and more interested, the wit only more and more abstracted. Never was the young George more lively, or the other more silent. But it was all in vain. The finger of the clock went round and round, and at last the members came out noisily from the balloting-room, and the smiling faces of the prince's friends showed to the unhappy Selwyn that his enemy had been elected.

So, at least, runs one story. The other, told by Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, is perhaps more probable. It appears that the Earl of Besborough was no less opposed to his election than George Selwyn, and these two individuals agreed at any cost of comfort to be always at the club at the time of the ballot to throw in their black balls. On the night of his success, Lord Besborough was there as usual, and Selwyn was at his rooms in Cleveland Row, preparing to come to the club. Suddenly a chairman rushed into Brookes' with an important note for my lord, who, on tearing it open, found to his horror that it was from his daughter-in-law, Lady Duncannon, announcing that his house in Cavendish Square was on fire, and imploring him to come immediately. Feeling confident that his fellow conspirator would be true to his post, the earl set off at once. But almost the same moment Selwyn received a message informing him that his adopted daughter, of whom he was very fond, was seized with an alarming illness. The ground was cleared; and by the time the earl returned, having, it is needless to say, found his house in a perfect state of security, and was joined by Selwyn, whose daughter had never been better in her life, the actor's son was elected, and the conspirators found they had been duped.

But it is far easier in this country to get into that House, where one has to represent the interests of thousands, and take a share in the government of a nation, than to be admitted to a club where one has but to lounge, to gamble, and to eat dinner; and Sheridan was elected for the town of Stafford with probably little more artifice than the old and stale one of putting five-pound notes under voters' glasses, or paying thirty pounds for a home-cured ham. Whether he bribed or not, a petition was presented against his election, almost as a matter of course in those days, and his maiden speech was made in defence of the good burgesses of that quiet little county-town. After making this speech, which was listened to in silence on account of his reputation as a dramatic author, but which does not appear to have been very wonderful, he rushed up to the gallery, and eagerly asked his friend Woodfall what he thought of it. That candid man shook his head, and told him oratory was not his forte, Sheridan leaned his head on his hand a moment, and then exclaimed with vehement emphasis, 'It is in me, however, and, by Heaven! it shall come out.'

He spoke prophetically, yet not as the great man who determines to conquer difficulties, but rather as one who feels conscious of his own powers, and knows that they must show themselves sooner or later. Sheridan found himself labouring under the same natural obstacles as Demosthenes—though in a less degree—a thick and disagreeable tone of voice; but we do not find in the indolent but gifted Englishman that admirable perseverance, that conquering zeal, which enabled the Athenian to turn these very impediments to his own advantage. He did, indeed, prepare his speeches, and at times had fits of that same diligence which he had displayed in the preparation of 'The School for Scandal;' but his indolent, self-indulgent mode of life left him no time for such steady devotion to oratory as might have made him the finest speaker of his age, for perhaps his natural abilities were greater than those of Pitt, Fox, or even Burke, though his education was inferior to that of those two statesmen.

From this time Sheridan's life had two phases—that of a politician, and that of a man of the world. With the former, we have nothing to do in such a memoir as this, and indeed it is difficult to say whether it was in oratory, the drama, or wit that he gained the greatest celebrity. There is, however, some difference between the three capacities. On the mimic stage, and on the stage of the country, his fame rested on a very few grand outbursts—some matured, prepared, deliberated—others spontaneous. He left only three great comedies, and perhaps we may say only one really grand. In the same way he made only two great speeches, or perhaps we may say only one. His wit on the other hand—though that too is said to have been studied—was the constant accompaniment of his daily life, and Sheridan has not left two or three celebrated bon-mots, but a hundred.

But even in his political career his wit, which must then have been spontaneous, won him almost as much fame as his eloquence, which he seems to have reserved for great occasions. He was the wit of the House. Wit, ridicule, satire, quiet, cool, and easy sneers, always made in good temper, and always therefore the more bitter, were his weapons, and they struck with unerring accuracy. At that time—nor at that time only—the 'Den of Thieves,' as Cobbett called our senate, was a cockpit as vulgar and personal as the present Congress of the United States. Party-spirit meant more than it has ever done since, and scarcely less than it had meant when the throne itself was the stake for which parties played some forty years before. There was, in fact a substantial personal centre for each side. The one party rallied round a respectable but maniac monarch, whose mental afflictions took the most distressing form, the other round his gay, handsome, dissolute—nay disgusting—son, at once his rival and his heir. The spirit of each party was therefore personal, and their attacks on one another were more personal than anything we can imagine in the present day in so respectably ridiculous a conclave as the House of Commons. It was little for one honourable gentleman to give another honourable gentleman the lie direct before the eyes of the country. The honourable gentlemen descended—or, as they thought, ascended—to the most vehement invective, and such was at times the torrent of personal abuse which parties heaped on one another, while good-natured John Bull looked on and smiled at his rulers, that, as in the United States of to-day, a debate was often the prelude to a duel. Pitt and Fox, Tierney, Adam, Fullarton, Lord George Germain, Lord Shelburne, and Governor Johnstone, all 'vindicated their honour,' as the phrase went, by 'coffee and pistols for four.' If Sheridan had not to repeat the Bob Acres scene with Captain Matthews, it was only because his wonderful good humour could put up with a great deal that others thought could only be expiated by a hole in the waistcoat.

In the administration of the Marquis of Rockingham the dramatist enjoyed the pleasures of office for less than a year as one of the Under Secretaries of State in 1782. In the next year we find him making a happy retort on Pitt, who had somewhat vulgarly alluded to his being a dramatic author. It was on the American question, perhaps the bitterest that ever called forth the acrimony of parties in the House. Sheridan, from boyhood, had been taunted with being the son of an actor. One can hardly credit this fact, just after Garrick had raised the profession of an actor to so great an eminence in the social scale. He had been called 'the player boy' at school, and his election at Brookes' had been opposed on the same grounds. It was evidently his bitterest point, and Pitt probably knew this when, in replying to a speech of the ex-dramatist's he said that 'no man admired more than he did the abilities of that right honourable gentleman, the elegant sallies of his thought, the gay effusions of his fancy, his dramatic turns, and his epigrammatic point; and if they were reserved for the proper stage, they would, no doubt, receive what the hon. gentleman's abilities always did receive, the plaudits of the audience; and it would be his fortune sui plausu gaudere theatri. But this was not the proper scene for the exhibition of those elegancies.' This was vulgar in Pitt, and probably every one felt so. But Sheridan rose, cool and collected, and quietly replied:—

'On the particular sort of personality which the right hon. gentleman has thought proper to make use of, I need not make any comment. The propriety, the taste, the gentlemanly point of it, must have been obvious to the House. But let me assure the right hon. gentleman that I do now, and will at any time he chooses to repeat this sort of allusion, meet it with the most sincere good humour. Nay, I will say more: flattered and encouraged by the right hon. gentleman's panegyric on my talents, if ever I again engage in the compositions he alludes to, I may be tempted to an act of presumption—to attempt an improvement on one of Ben Jonson's best characters, the character of the Angry Boy, in the "Alchemist."'

The fury of Pitt, contrasted with the coolness of the man he had so shamefully attacked, made this sally irresistible, and from that time neither 'the angry boy' himself, nor any of his colleagues, were anxious to twit Sheridan on his dramatic pursuits.

Pitt wanted to lay a tax on every horse that started in a race. Lord Surry, a turfish individual of the day, proposed one of five pounds on the winner. Sheridan, rising, told his lordship that the next time he visited Newmarket he would probably be greeted with the line:—

'Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold—.'

Lord Rolie, 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 '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 Hindostan, and who ignorant 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' 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, but their charges had been received with little attention, till on this day Sheridan rose to denounce the cruel extortioner. He spoke for five hours and a half, and surpassed all he had ever said in eloquence. The subject was one to find sympathy in the hearts of Englishmen, who, though they beat their own wives, are always indignant at a man who dares to lay a little finger on those of anybody else. Then, too, the subject was Oriental: it might even be invested with something of romance and poetry; the zenanah, sacred in the eyes of the oppressed natives, had been ruthlessly insulted, under a glaring Indian sun, amid the luxuriance of Indian foliage, these acts had been committed, &c. &c. It was a fertile theme for a poet; and how little soever Sheridan cared for the Begums and their wrongs—and that he did care little appears from what he afterwards said of Hastings himself—he could evidently make a telling speech out of the theme, and he did so. Walpole says that he turned everybody's head. 'One heard everybody in the street raving on the wonders of that speech; for my part, I cannot believe it was so supernatural as they say.' He affirms that there must be a witchery in Mr. Sheridan, who had no diamonds—as Hastings had—to win favour with, and says that the Opposition may be fairly charged with sorcery. Burke declared the speech to be 'the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition.' Fox affirmed that 'all he had ever heard, all he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapour before the sun.' But these were partizans. Even Pitt acknowledged 'that it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the human mind.' One member confessed himself so unhinged by it, that he moved an adjournment, because he could not, in his then state of mind, give an unbiassed vote. But the highest testimony was that of Logan, the defender of Hastings. At the end of the first hour of the speech, he said to a friend, 'All this is declamatory assertion without proof.' Another hour's speaking, and he muttered, 'This is a most wonderful oration!' A third, and he confessed 'Mr. Hastings has acted very unjustifiably.' At the end of the fourth, he exclaimed, 'Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal.' And before the speaker had sat down, he vehemently protested that 'Of all monsters of iniquity, the most enormous is Warren Hastings.'

Such in those days was the effect of eloquence; an art which has been eschewed in the present House of Commons, and which our newspapers affect to think is much out of place in an assembly met for calm deliberation. Perhaps they are right; but oh! for the golden words of a Sheridan, a Fox, even a Pitt and Burke.

It is said, though not proved, that on this same night of Sheridan's glory in the House of Commons, his 'School for Scandal' was acted with 'rapturous applause' at Covent Garden, and his 'Duenna' no less successfully at Drury Lane. What a pitch of glory for the dunce who had been shamed into learning Greek verbs at Harrow! Surely Dr. Parr must then have confessed that a man can be great without the classics—nay, without even a decent English education, for Sheridan knew comparatively little of history and literature, certainly less than the men against whom he was pitted or whose powers he emulated. He has been known to say to his friends, when asked to take part with them on some important question, 'You know I'm an ignoramus—instruct me and I'll do my best.' He had even to rub up his arithmetic when he thought he had some chance of being made Chancellor of the Exchequer; but, perhaps, many a statesman before and after him has done as much as that.

No wonder that after such a speech in the House, the celebrated trial which commenced in the beginning of the following year should have roused the attention of the whole nation. The proceedings opened in Westminster Hall, the noblest room in England, on the 13th of February, 1788. The Queen and four of her daughters were seated in the Duke of Newcastle's box; the Prince of Wales walked in at the head of a hundred and fifty peers of the realm. The spectacle was imposing enough. But the trial proceeded slowly for some months, and it was not till the 3rd of June that Sheridan rose to make his second great speech on this subject.

The excitement was then at its highest. Two-thirds of the peers with the peeresses and their daughters were present, and the whole of the vast hall was crowded to excess. The sun shone in brightly to light up the gloomy building, and the whole scene was splendid. Such was the enthusiasm that people paid fifty guineas for a ticket to hear the first orator of his day, for such he then was. The actor's son felt the enlivening influence of a full audience. He had been long preparing for this moment, and he threw into his speech all the theatrical effect of which he had studied much and inherited more. He spoke for many hours on the 3rd, 5th, and 6th, and concluded with these words:

'They (the House of Commons) exhort you by everything that calls sublimely upon the heart of man, by the majesty of that justice which this bold man has libelled, by the wide fame of your own tribunal, by the sacred pledges by which you swear in the solemn hour of decision, knowing that that decision will then bring you the highest reward that ever blessed the heart of man, the consciousness of having done the greatest act of mercy for the world that the earth has ever yet received from any hand but heaven!—My Lords, I have done.'

Sheridan's valet was very proud of his master's success, and as he had been to hear the speech, was asked what part he considered the finest. Plush replied by putting himself into his master's attitude, and imitating his voice admirably, solemnly uttering, 'My Lords, I have done!' He should have added the word 'nothing.' Sheridan's eloquence had no more effect than the clear proof of Hastings' guilt, and the impeachment, as usual, was but a troublesome subterfuge, to satisfy the Opposition and dust the eyeballs of the country.

Sheridan's great speech was made. The orator has concluded his oration; fame was complete, and no more was wanted, Adieu, then, blue-books and parties, and come on the last grand profession of this man of many talents—that of the wit. That it was a profession there can be no doubt, for he lived on it, it was all his capital. He paid his bills in that coin alone: he paid his workmen, his actors, carpenters, builders with no more sterling metal; with that ready tool he extracted loans from the very men who came to be paid; that brilliant ornament maintained his reputation in the senate, and his character in society. But wit without wisdom—the froth without the fluid—the capital without the pillar—is but a poor fortune, a wretched substitute for real worth and honest utility. For a time men forgave to Mr. Sheridan—extravagant and reckless as he was—what would long before have brought an honester, better, but less amusing man to a debtor's prison and the contempt of society; but only for a time was this career possible.

Sheridan has now reached the pinnacle of his fame, and from this point we have to trace that decline which ended so awfully.

Whilst we call him a dishonest man, we must not be supposed to imply that he was so in heart. It is pleaded for him that he tricked his creditors 'for the fun of the thing,' like a modern Robin Hood, and like that forester bold, he was mightily generous with other men's money. Deception is deception whether in sport or earnest, and Sheridan, no doubt, made it a very profitable employment. He had always a taste for the art of duping, and he had begun early in life—soon after leaving Harrow. He was spending a few days at Bristol, and wanted a pair of new boots, but could not afford to pay for them. Shortly before he left, he called on two bootmakers, and ordered of each a pair, promising payment on delivery. He fixed the morning of his departure for the tradesmen to send in their goods. When the first arrived he tried on the boots, complaining that that for the right foot pinched a little, and ordered Crispin to take it back, stretch it, and bring it again at nine the next morning. The second arrived soon after, and this time it was the boot for the left foot which pinched. Same complaint; same order given; each had taken away only the pinching boot, and left the other behind. The same afternoon Sheridan left in his new boots for town, and when the two shoemakers called at nine the next day, each with a boot in his hand, we can imagine their disgust at finding how neatly they had been duped.

Anecdotes of this kind swarm in every account of Richard Sheridan—many of them, perhaps, quite apocryphal, others exaggerated, or attributed to this noted trickster, but all tending to show how completely he was master of this high art. His ways of eluding creditors used to delight me, I remember, when an Oxford boy, and they are only paralleled by Oxford stories. One of these may not be generally known, and was worthy of Sheridan. Every Oxonian knows Hall, the boat-builder at Folly Bridge. Mrs. Hall was, in my time, proprietress of those dangerous skiffs and nutshell canoes which we young harebrains delighted to launch on the Isis. Some youthful Sheridanian had a long account with this elderly and bashful personage, who had applied in vain for her money, till, coming one day to his rooms, she announced her intention not to leave till the money was paid. 'Very well, Mrs. Hall, then you must sit down and make yourself comfortable while I dress, for I am going out directly.' Mrs. H. sat down composedly, and with equal composure the youth took off his coat. Mrs. H. was not abashed, but in another moment the debtor removed his waistcoat also. Mrs. H. was still immoveable. Sundry other articles of dress followed, and the good lady began to be nervous. 'Now, Mrs. Hall, you can stay if you like, but I assure you that I am going to change all my dress.' Suiting the action to the word, he began to remove his lower garments, when Mrs. Hall, shocked and furious, rushed from the room.

This reminds us of Sheridan's treatment of a female creditor. He had for some years hired his carriage-horses from Edbrooke in Clarges Street, and his bill was a heavy one. Mrs. Edbrooke wanted a new bonnet, and blew up her mate for not insisting on payment. The curtain lecture was followed next day by a refusal to allow Mr. Sheridan to have the horses till the account was settled. Mr. Sheridan sent the politest possible message in reply, begging that Mrs. Edbrooke would allow his coachman to drive her in his own carriage to his door, and promising that the matter should be satisfactorily arranged. The good woman was delighted, dressed in her best, and, bill in hand, entered the M.P.'s chariot. Sheridan meanwhile had given orders to his servants. Mrs. Edbrooke was shown up into the back drawing-room, where a slight luncheon, of which she was begged to partake, was laid out; and she was assured that her debtor would not keep her waiting long, though for the moment engaged. The horse-dealer's wife sat down and discussed a wing of chicken and glass of wine, and in the meantime her victimizer had been watching his opportunity, slipped down stairs, jumped into the vehicle, and drove off. Mrs. Edbrooke finished her lunch and waited in vain; ten minutes, twenty, thirty, passed, and then she rang the bell: 'Very sorry, ma'am, but Mr. Sheridan went out on important business half an hour ago.' 'And the carriage?'—'Oh, ma'am, Mr. Sheridan never walks.'

He procured his wine in the same style. Chalier, the wine-merchant, was his creditor to a large amount, and had stopped supplies. Sheridan was to give a grand dinner to the leaders of the Opposition, and had no port or sherry to offer them. On the morning of the day fixed he sent for Chalier, and told him he wanted to settle his account. The importer, much pleased, said he would go home and bring it at once. 'Stay,' cried the debtor, 'will you dine with me to-day; Lord——, Sir——, and So-and-so are coming.' Chalier was flattered and readily accepted. Returning to his office, he told his clerk that he should dine with Mr. Sheridan, and therefore leave early. At the proper hour he arrived in full dress, and was no sooner in the house., than his host despatched a message to the clerk at the office, saying that Mr. Chalier wished him to send up at once three dozen of Burgundy, two of claret, two of port, &c., &c. Nothing seemed more natural, and the wine was forwarded, just in time for the dinner. It was highly praised by the guests, who asked Sheridan who was his wine-merchant. The host bowed towards Chalier, gave him a high recommendation, and impressed him with the belief that he was telling a polite falsehood in order to secure him other customers. Little did he think that he was drinking his own wine, and that it was not, and probably never would be, paid for!

In like manner, when he wanted a particular Burgundy an innkeeper at Richmond, who declined to supply it till his bill was paid, he sent for the man, and had no sooner seen him safe in the house than he drove off to Richmond, saw his wife, told her he had just had a conversation with mine host, settled everything, and would, to save them trouble, take the wine with him in his carriage. The condescension overpowered the good woman, who ordered it at once to be produced, and Sheridan drove home about the time that her husband was returning to Richmond, weary of waiting for his absent debtor. But this kind of trickery could not always succeed without some knowledge of his creditor's character. In the case of Holloway, the lawyer, Sheridan took advantage of his well-known vanity of his judgment of horse-flesh. Kelly gives the anecdote as authentic. He was walking one day with Sheridan, close to the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, when, as ill-luck would have it, up comes Holloway on horseback, and in a furious rage, complains that he has called on Mr. Sheridan time and again in Hertford Street, and can never gain admittance. He proceeds to violent threats, and slangs his debtor roundly. Sheridan, cool as a whole bed of cucumbers, takes no notice of these attacks, but quietly exclaims: 'What a beautiful creature you're riding, Holloway!' The lawyer's weak point was touched.

'You were speaking to me the other day about a horse for Mrs. Sheridan; now this would be a treasure for a lady.'

'Does he canter well?' asks Sheridan, with a look of business.

'Like Pegasus himself.'

'If that's the case, I shouldn't mind, Holloway, stretching a point for him. Do you mind showing me his paces?'

'Not at all,' replies the lawyer, only too happy to show off his own: and touching up the horse, put him to a quiet canter. The moment is not to be lost; the churchyard gate is at hand; Sheridan slips in, knowing that his mounted tormentor cannot follow him, and there bursts into a roar of laughter, which is joined in by Kelly, but not by the returning Holloway.

"A TREASURE FOR A LADY"—SHERIDAN AND THE LAWYER.

But if he escaped an importunate lawyer once in a way like this, he Required more ingenuity to get rid of the limbs of the law, when they came, as they did frequently in his later years. It was the fashionable thing in bygone novels of the 'Pelham' school, and Even in more recent comedies, to introduce a well-dressed sheriff's officer at a dinner party or ball, and take him through a variety of predicaments, ending, at length, in the revelation of his real character; and probably some such scene is still enacted from time to time in the houses of the extravagant: but Sheridan's adventures with bailiffs seem to have excited more attention. In the midst of his difficulties he never ceased to entertain his friends, and 'why should he not do so, since he had not to pay?' 'Pay your bills, sir? what a shameful waste of money!' he once said. Thus, one day a young friend was met by him and taken back to dinner, 'quite in a quiet way, just to meet a very old friend of mine, a man of great talent, and most charming companion.' When they arrived they found 'the old friend' already installed, and presenting a somewhat unpolished appearance, which the young man explained to himself by supposing him to be a genius of somewhat low extraction. His habits at dinner, the eager look, the free use of his knife, and so forth, were all accounted for in the same way, but that he was a genius of no slight distinction was clear from the deep respect and attention with which Sheridan listened to his slightest remarks, and asked his opinion on English poetry. Meanwhile Sheridan and the servant between them plied the genius very liberally with wine: and the former, rising, made him a complimentary speech on his critical powers, while the young guest, who had heard nothing from his lips but the commonest platitudes in very bad English, grew more and more amused. The wine told in time, the 'genius' sang songs which were more Saxon than delicate, talked loud, clapped his host on the shoulder, and at last rolled fairly under the table. 'Now,' said Sheridan, quite calmly to his young friend, 'we will go up stairs: and, Jack,' (to his servant) 'take that man's hat and give him to the watch.' He then explained in the same calm tone, that this was a bailiff of whose company he was growing rather tired, and wanted to be freed.

But his finest tricks were undoubtedly those by which he turned, harlequin-like, a creditor into a lender This was done by sheer force of persuasion, by assuming a lofty indignation, or by putting forth his claims to mercy with the most touching eloquence over which he would laugh heartily when his point was gained. He was often compelled to do this during his theatrical management, when a troublesome creditor might have interfered with the success of the establishment. He talked over an upholsterer who came with a writ for £350 till the latter handed him, instead, a cheque for £200. He once, when the actors struck for arrears of wages to the amount of £3,000, 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 how, 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 forwards 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 Honourable 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 honourable 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.' Sheridan was wise enough to keep his own counsel for the time, but 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 Sheridan's depravity must be attributed to his intimacy with a man whom it was a great honour 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 favour was to be won by proficiency in vice, and audacity in follies, to truckle to his tastes, to win his smiles by the invention of a new pleasure and his approbation by the plotting of a new villany, 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 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 Duchess of Devonshire, the partizan 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 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 apparently 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 quarrelled 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 overlooked.

Sheridan's breach with the prince was honourable 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 honours me, but I will never take part against a woman, 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 cannot 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 Sheridan 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 for the sharpers who fleeced both, and was kept by a certain Mother Butler, who favoured 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 future 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, Greystock 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 Lais from his grasp. On one occasion they seem to have hit on a '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 practised seducer. The main peculiarity lay in the fact of her respectable birth, and his position, she being the daughter of a solicitor, he the son of a nobleman. Marriage was promised, of course, as it has been promised a million times with the same intent, and for the millionth time was not performed. The seducer took her from her home, kept her quiet for a time, and when the novelty was gone, abandoned her. The old story went on; poverty—a child—a mother's love struggling with a sense of shame—a visit to her father's house at the last moment, as a forlorn hope. There she had crawled on her knees to one of those relentless parents on whose heads lie the utter loss of their children's souls. The false pride, that spoke of the blot on his name, the disgrace of his house—when a Saviour's example should have bid him forgive and raise the penitent in her misery from the dust—whispered him to turn her from his door. He ordered the footman to put her out. The man, a nobleman in plush, moved by his young mistress's utter misery, would not obey though it cost him his place, and the harder-hearted father himself thrust his starving child into the cold street, into the drizzling rain, and slammed the door upon her cries of agony. The footman slipped out after her, and five shillings—a large sum for him—found its way from his kind hand to hers. Now the common ending might have come; now starvation, the slow, unwilling, recourse to more shame and deeper vice; then the forced hilarity, the unreal smile, which in so many of these poor creatures hides a canker at the heart; the gradual degradation—lower still and lower—oblivion for a moment sought in the bottle—a life of sin and death ended in a hospital. The will of Providence turned the frolic of three voluptuaries to good account; the prince gave his purse-full, Sheridan his one last guinea for her present needs: the name of the good-hearted Plush was discovered, and he was taken into Carlton House, where he soon became known as Roberts, the prince's confidential servant: and Sheridan bestirred himself to rescue for ever the poor lady, whose beauty still remained as a temptation. He procured her a situation, where she studied for the stage, on which she eventually appeared. 'All's well that ends well:' her secret was kept, till one admirer came honourably forward. To him it was confided, and he was noble enough to forgive the one false step of youth. She was well married, and the boy for whom she had suffered so much fell at Trafalgar, a lieutenant in the navy.

To better men such an adventure would have been a solemn warning; such a tale, told by the ruined one herself, a sermon, every word of which would have clung to their memories. What effect, if any, it may have had on Blackstock and his companions must have been very fleeting.

It is not so very long since the Seven Dials and St. Giles' were haunts of wickedness and dens of thieves, into which the police scarcely dared to penetrate. Probably their mysteries would have afforded more amusement to the artist and the student of character than to the mere seeker of adventure, but it was still, I remember, in my early days, a great feat to visit by night one of the noted 'cribs' to which 'the profession' which fills Newgate was wont to resort. The 'Brown Bear,' in Broad Street, St. Giles', was one of these pleasant haunts, and thither the three adventurers determined to go. This style of adventure is out of date, and no longer amusing. Of course a fight ensued, in which the prince and his companions showed immense pluck against terrible odds, and in which, as one reads in the novels of the 'London Journal' or 'Family Herald,' the natural superiority of the well-born of course displayed itself to great advantage. Surely Bulwer has described such scenes too graphically in some of his earlier novels to make a minute description here at all necessary; but the reader who is curious in the matter may be referred to a work which has recently appeared under the title of 'Sheridan and his Times,' professing to be written by an Octogenarian, intimate with the hero. The fray ended with the arrival of the watch, who rescued Blackstock, Greystock, and Thinstock, and with Dogberryan stupidity carried them off to a neighbouring lock-up. The examination which took place was just the occasion for Sheridan's fun to display itself on, and pretending to turn informer, he succeeded in bewildering the unfortunate parochial constable, who conducted it, till the arrival of the magistrate, whose duty was to deliver his friends from durance vile. The whole scene is well described in the book just referred to, with, we presume, a certain amount of idealizing; but the 'Octogenarian' had probably heard the story from Sheridan himself, and the main points must be accepted as correct. The affair ended, as usual, with a supper at the 'Salutation.'

We must now follow Sheridan in his gradual downfall.

One of the causes of this—as far as money was concerned—was his extreme indolence and utter negligence. He trusted far too much to his ready wit and rapid genius. Thus when 'Pizarro' was to appear, day after day went by, and nothing was done. On the night of representation, only four acts out of five were written, and even these had not been rehearsed, the principal performers, Siddons, Charles Kemble and Barrymore, having only just received their parts. Sheridan was up in the prompter's room actually writing the fifth act while the first was being performed, and every now and then appeared in the green-room with a fresh relay of dialogue, and setting all in good humour by his merry abuse of his own negligence. In spite of this, 'Pizarro' succeeded. He seldom wrote except at night, and surrounded by a profusion of lights. Wine was his great stimulant in composition, as it has been to better and worse authors. 'If the thought is slow to come,' he would say, 'a glass of good wine encourages it; and when it does come, a glass of good wine rewards it.' Those glasses of good wine, were, unfortunately, even more frequent than the good thoughts, many and merry as they were.

His neglect of letters was a standing joke against him. He never took the trouble to open any that he did not expect, and often left sealed many that he was most anxious to read. He once appeared with his begging face at the Bank, humbly asking an advance of twenty pounds. 'Certainly, sir; would you like any more?—fifty or a hundred?' said the smiling clerk. Sheridan was overpowered. He would like a hundred. 'Two or three?' asked the scribe. Sheridan thought he was joking, but was ready for two or even three—he was always ready for more. But he could not conceal his surprise. 'Have you not received our letter?' the clerk asked, perceiving it. Certainly he had received the epistle, which informed him that his salary as Receiver-General of Cornwall had been paid in, but he had never opened it.

This neglect of letters once brought him into a troublesome lawsuit about the theatre. It was necessary to pay certain demands, and he had applied to the Duke of Bedford to be his security. The duke had consented, and for a whole year his letter of consent remained unopened. In the meantime Sheridan had believed that the duke had neglected him, and allowed the demands to be brought into court.

In the same way he had long before committed himself in the affair with Captain Matthews. In order to give a public denial of certain reports circulated in Bath, he had called upon an editor, requesting him to insert the said reports in his paper in order that he might write him a letter to refute them. The editor at once complied, the calumny was printed and published, but Sheridan forgot all about his own refutation, which was applied for in vain till too late.

Other causes were his extravagance and intemperance. There was an utter want of even common moderation in everything he did. Whenever his boyish spirit suggested any freak, whenever a craving of any kind possessed him, no matter what the consequences here or hereafter, he rushed heedlessly into the indulgence of it. Perhaps the enemy had never an easier subject to deal with. Any sin in which there was a show of present mirth, or easy pleasure, was as easily taken up by Sheridan as if he had not a single particle of conscience or religious feeling, and yet we are not at all prepared to say that he lacked either; he had only deadened both by excessive indulgence of his fancies. The temptation of wealth and fame had been too much for the poor and obscure young man who rose to them so suddenly, and, as so often happens, those very talents which should have been his glory, were, in fact, his ruin.

His extravagance was unbounded. At a time when misfortune lay thick upon him, and bailiffs were hourly expected, he would invite a large party to a dinner, which a prince might have given, and to which one prince sometimes sat down. On one occasion, having no plate left from the pawnbroker's, he had to prevail on 'my uncle' to lend him some for a banquet he was to give. The spoons and forks were sent, and with them two of his men, who, dressed in livery, waited, no doubt with the most vigilant attention, on the party. Such at that period was the host's reputation, when he could not even be trusted not to pledge another man's property. At one time his income was reckoned at £15,000 a year, when the theatre was prosperous. Of this he is said to have spent not more than £5,000 on his household, while the balance went to pay for his former follies, debts, and the interest, lawsuits often arising from mere carelessness and judgments against the theatre! Probably a great deal of it was betted away, drank away, thrown away in one way or another. As for betting, he generally lost all the wagers he made: as he said himself—'I never made a bet upon my own judgment that I did not lose; and I never won but one, which I had made against my judgment.' His bets were generally laid in hundreds; and though he did not gamble, he could of course run through a good deal of money in this way. He betted on every possible trifle, but chiefly, it would seem, on political possibilities; the state of the Funds, the result of an election, or the downfall of a ministry. Horse-races do not seem to have possessed any interest for him, and, in fact, he scarcely knew one kind of horse from another. He was never an adept at field-sports, though very ambitious of being thought a sportsman. Once, when staying in the country, he went out with a friend's gamekeeper to shoot pheasants, and after wasting a vast amount of powder and shot upon the air, he was only rescued from ignominy by the sagacity of his companion, who, going a little behind him when a bird rose, brought it down so neatly that Sheridan, believing he had killed it himself, snatched it up, and rushed bellowing with glee back to the house to show that he could shoot. In the same way, he tried his hand at fishing in a wretched little stream behind the Deanery at Winchester, using, however, a net, as easier to handle than a rod. Some boys, who had watched his want of success a long time, at last bought a few pennyworth of pickled herrings, and throwing them on the stream, allowed them to float down towards the eager disciple of old Izaak. Sheridan saw them coming, rushed in regardless of his clothes, cast his net and in great triumph secured them. When he had landed his prize, however, there were the boys bursting with laughter, and Piscator saw he was their dupe. 'Ah!' cried he, laughing in concert, as he looked at his dripping clothes, 'this is a pretty pickle indeed!'

His extravagance was well known to his friends, as well as to his creditors. Lord Guildford met him one day. 'Well, Sherry, so you've taken a new house, I hear.'—'Yes, and you'll see now that everything will go on like clockwork.'—'Ay,' said my lord, with a knowing leer, 'tick, tick.' Even his son Tom used to laugh at him for it. 'Tom, if you marry that girl, I'll cut you off with a shilling,'—'Then you must borrow it,' replied the ingenuous youth.[⁸] Tom sometimes disconcerted his father with his inherited wit—his only inheritance. He pressed urgently for money on one, as on many an occasion. 'I have none,' was the reply, as usual; 'there is a pair of pistols up stairs, a horse in the enable, the night is dark, and Hounslow Heath at hand.'

'I understand what you mean,' replied young Tom; 'but I tried that last night, and unluckily stopped your treasurer, Peake, who told me you had been beforehand with him, and robbed him of every sixpence he had in the world.'

So much for the respect of son to father!

Papa had his revenge on the young wit, when Tom, talking of Parliament, announced his intention of entering it on an independent basis, ready to be bought by the highest bidder 'I shall write on my forehead,' said he, "To let."'

'And under that, Tom, "Unfurnished,"' rejoined Sherry the elder. The joke is now stale enough.

But Sheridan was more truly witty in putting down a young braggart whom he met at dinner at a country-house. There are still to be found, like the bones of dead asses in a field newly ploughed, in some parts of the country, youths, who are so hopelessly behind their age, and indeed every age, as to look upon authorship as degrading, all knowledge, save Latin and Greek, as 'a bore,' and all entertainment but hunting, shooting, fishing, and badger-drawing, as unworthy of a man. In the last century these young animals, who unite the modesty of the puppy with the clear-sightedness of the pig, not to mention the progressiveness of another quadruped, were more numerous than in the present day, and in consequence more forward in their remarks. It was one of these charming youths, who was staying in the same house as Sheridan, and who, quite unprovoked, began at dinner to talk of 'actors and authors, and those low sort of people, you know.' Sheridan said nought, but patiently bided his time. The next day there was a large dinner-party, and Sheridan and the youth happened to sit opposite to one another in the most conspicuous part of the table. Young Nimrod was kindly obliging his side of the table with extraordinary leaps of his hunter, the perfect working of his new double-barrelled Manton, &c., bringing of course number one in as the hero in each case. In a moment of silence, Sheridan, with an air of great politeness, addressed his unhappy victim. 'He had not,' he said, 'been able to catch the whole of the very interesting account he had heard Mr. —— relating.' All eyes were turned upon the two. 'Would Mr. —— permit him to ask who it was who made the extraordinary leap he had mentioned?—'I, sir,' replied the youth with some pride. 'Then who was it killed the wild duck at that distance?'—'I, sir.' 'Was it your setter who behaved so well?'—'Yes, mine, sir,' replied the youth, getting rather red over this examination. 'And who caught the huge salmon so neatly?'—'I, sir.' And so the questioning went on through a dozen more items, till the young man, weary of answering 'I, sir,' and growing redder and redder every moment, would gladly have hid his head under the table-cloth, in spite of his sporting prowess. But Sheridan had to give him the coup de grace.

'So, sir,' said he, very politely, 'you were the chief actor in every anecdote, and the author of them all; surely it is impolitic to despise your own professions.'

Sheridan's intemperance was as great and as incurable as his extravagance, and we think his mind, if not his body, lived only on stimulants. He could neither write nor speak without them One day, before one of his finest speeches in the House, he was seen to enter a coffee-house, call for a pint of brandy, and swallow it 'neat,' and almost at one gulp. His friends occasionally interfered. This drinking, they told him, would destroy the coat of his stomach. 'Then my stomach must digest in its waistcoat,' laughed Sheridan.

Where are the topers of yore? Jovial I will not call them, for every one knows that

'Mirth and laughter.'

worked up with a corkscrew, are followed by

'Headaches and hot coppers the day after.'

But where are those Anakim of the bottle, who could floor their two of port and one of Madeira, though the said two and one floored them in turn? The race, I believe, has died out. Our heads have got weaker, as our cellars grew emptier. The arrangement was convenient. The daughters of Eve have nobly undertaken to atone for the naughty conduct of their primeval mamma, by reclaiming men, and dragging them from the Hades of the mahogany to that seventh heaven of muffins and English ballads prepared for them in the drawing-room.

We are certainly astounded, even to incredulity, when we read of the deeds of a David or a Samson; but such wonderment can be nothing compared to that which a generation or two hence will feel, when sipping, as a great extravagance and unpardonable luxury, two thimblefuls of 'African Sherry,' the young demirep of the day reads that three English gentlemen, Sheridan, Richardson, and Ward, sat down one day to dinner, and before they rose again—if they ever rose, which seems doubtful—or, at least, were raised, had emptied five bottles of port, two of Madeira, and one of brandy! Yet this was but one instance in a thousand; there was nothing extraordinary in it, and it is only mentioned because the amount drunk is accurately given by the unhappy owner of the wine, Kelly, the composer, who, unfortunately, or fortunately, was not present, and did not even imagine that the three honourable gentlemen were discussing his little store. Yet Sheridan does not seem to have believed much in his friend's vintages, for he advised him to alter his brass plate to 'Michael Kelly, Composer of Wine and Importer of Music.' He made a better joke, when, dining with Lord Thurlow, he tried in vain to induce him to produce a second bottle of some extremely choice Constantia from the Cape of Good Hope. 'Ah,' he muttered to his neighbour, 'pass me that decanter, if you please, for I must return to Madeira, as I see I cannot double the Cape'

But as long as Richard Brinsley was a leader of political and fashionable circles, as long as he had a position to keep up, an ambition to satisfy, a labour to complete, his drinking was, if not moderate, not extraordinary for his time and his associates. But when a man's ambition is limited to mere success—when fame and a flash for himself are all he cares for, and there is no truer, grander motive for his sustaining the position he has climbed to—when, in short, it is his own glory, not mankind's good, he has ever striven for—woe, woe, woe when the hour of success is come! I cannot stop to name and examine instances, but let me be allowed to refer to that bugbear who is called up whenever greatness of any kind has to be illustrated—Napoleon the Great; or let me take any of the lesser Napoleons in lesser grades in any nation, any age—the men who have had no star but self and self-glory before them—and let me ask if any one can be named who, if he has survived the attainment of his ambition, has not gone down the other side of the hill somewhat faster than he came up it? Then let me select men whose guiding-star has been the good of their fellow-creatures, or the glory of God, and watch their peaceful useful end on that calm summit that they toiled so honestly to reach. The difference comes home to us. The moral is read only at the end of the story. Remorse rings it for ever in the ears of the dying—often too long a-dying—man who has laboured for himself. Peace reads it smilingly to him whose generous toil for others has brought its own reward.

Sheridan had climbed with the stride of a giant, laughing at rocks, at precipices, at slippery watercourses. He had spread the wings of genius to poise himself withal, and gained one peak after another, while homelier worth was struggling midway, clutching the bramble and clinging to the ferns. He had, as Byron said in Sheridan's days of decay, done the best in all he undertook, written the best comedy, best opera, best farce; spoken the best parody, and made the best speech. Sheridan, when those words of the young poet were told him, shed tears.

Perhaps the bitter thought struck him, that he had not led the best, but the worst life; that comedy, farce, opera, monody, and oration were nothing, nothing to a pure conscience and a peaceful old age; that they could not save him from shame and poverty—from debt, disgrace, drunkenness—from grasping, but long-cheated creditors, who dragged his bed from under the feeble, nervous, ruined old man. Poor Sheridan! his end was too bitter for us to cast one stone more upon him. Let it be noted that it was in the beginning of his decline, when, having reached the climax of all his ambition and completed his fame as a dramatist, orator, and wit, that the hand of Providence mercifully interposed to rescue this reckless man from his downfall. It smote him with that common but powerful weapon—death. Those he best loved were torn from him, one after another, rapidly, and with little warning. The Linleys, the 'nest of nightingales,' were all delicate as nightingales should be; and it seemed as if this very time was chosen for their deaths, that the one erring soul—more precious, remember, than many just lives—might be called back. Almost within one year he lost his dear sister-in-law, the wife of his most intimate friend Tickell; Maria Linley, the last of the family; his own wife, and his little daughter. One grief succeeded another so rapidly that Sheridan was utterly unnerved, utterly brought low by them; but it was his wife's death that told most upon him. With that wife he had always been the lover rather than the husband. She had married him in the days of his poverty, when her beauty was so celebrated that she might have wed whom she would. She had risen with him and shared his later anxieties. Yet she had seen him forget, neglect her, and seek other society. In spite of his tender affection for her and for his children, he had never made a home of their home. Vanity Fair had kept him ever flitting, and it is little to be wondered at that Mrs. Sheridan was the object of much, though ever respectful admiration.[⁹] Yet, in spite of calumny, she died with a fair fame. Decline had long pressed upon her, yet her last illness was too brief. In 1792 she was taken away, still in the summer of her days, and with her last breath uttering her love for the man who had never duly prized her. His grief was terrible; yet it passed, and wrought no change. He found solace in his beloved son, and yet more beloved daughter. A few months—and the little girl followed her mother. Again his grief was terrible: again passed and wrought no change. Yes, it did work some change, but not for the better; it drove him to the goblet; and from that time we may date the confirmation of his habit of drinking. The solemn warnings had been unheeded: they were to be repeated by a long-suffering God in a yet more solemn manner, which should touch him yet more nearly. His beautiful wife had been the one restraint upon his folly and his lavishness. Now she was gone, they burst out afresh, wilder than ever.

For a while after these afflictions, which were soon completed in the death of his most intimate friend and boyish companion, Tickell, Sheridan threw himself again into the commotion of the political world. But in this we shall not follow him. Three years after the death of his first wife he married again. He was again fortunate in his choice. Though now forty-four, he succeeded in winning the heart of a most estimable and charming young lady with a fortune of £5,000. She must indeed have loved or admired the widower very much to consent to be the wife of a man so notoriously irregular, to use a mild term, in his life. But Sheridan fascinated wherever he went, and young ladies like 'a little wildness.' His heart was always good, and where he gave it, he gave it warmly, richly, fully. His second wife was Miss Esther Jane Ogle, daughter of the Dean of Winchester. She was given to him on condition of his settling in all £20,000, upon her—a wise proviso with such a spendthrift—and he had to raise the money, as usual.

His political career was sufficiently brilliant, though his real fame as a speaker rests on his great oration at Hastings' trial. In 1806 he satisfied another point of his ambition, long desired, and was elected for the city of Westminster, which he had ardently coveted when Fox represented it. But a dissolution threw him again on the mercy of the popular party; and again he offered himself for Westminster: but, in spite of all the efforts made for him, without success. He was returned, instead, for Ilchester.

Meanwhile his difficulties increased; extravagance, debt, want of energy to meet both, brought him speedily into that position when a man accepts without hesitation the slightest offer of aid. The man who had had an income of £15,000 a year, and settled £20,000 on his wife, allowed a poor friend to pay a bill for £5 for him, and clutched eagerly at a £50 note when displayed to him by another. Extravagance is the father of meanness, and Sheridan was often mean in the readiness with which he accepted offers, and the anxiety with which he implored assistance. It is amusing in the present day to hear a man talk of 'a debt of honour,' as if all debts did not demand honour to pay them—as if all debts incurred without hope of repayment were not dishonourable. A story is told relative to the old-fashioned idea of a 'debt of honour.' A tradesman, to whom he had given a bill for £200, called on him for the amount. A heap of gold was lying on the table. 'Don't look that way,' cried Sheridan, after protesting that he had not a penny in the world, 'that is to pay a debt of honour.' The applicant, with some wit, tore up the bill he held. 'Now, Mr. Sheridan,' quoth he, 'mine is a debt of honour too.' It is to be hoped that Sheridan handed him the money.

The story of Gunter's bill is not so much to his credit, Hanson, an ironmonger, called upon him and pressed for payment. A bill sent in by the famous confectioner was lying on the table. A thought struck the debtor, who had no means of getting rid of his importunate applicant. 'You know Gunter?' he asked. 'One of the safest men in London,' replied the ironmonger. 'Then will you be satisfied if I give you his bill for the amount?'—'Certainly.' Thereupon Sheridan handed him the neatly folded account and rushed from the room, leaving the creditor to discover the point of Mr. Sheridan's little fun.

Still Sheridan might have weathered through the storm. Drury Lane was a mine of wealth to him, and with a little care might have been really profitable. The lawsuits, the debts, the engagements upon it, all rose from his negligence and extravagance. But Old Drury was doomed. On the 24th February, 1809, soon after the conclusion of the performances, it was announced to be in flames. Rather it announced itself. In a few moments it was blazing—a royal bonfire. Sheridan was in the House of Commons at the time. The reddened clouds above London threw the glare back even to the windows of the House. The members rushed from their seats to see the unwonted light, and in consideration for Sheridan, an adjournment was moved. But he rose calmly, though sadly, and begged that no misfortune of his should interrupt the public business. His independence, he said—witty in the midst of his troubles—had often been questioned, but was now confirmed, for he had nothing more to depend upon. He then left the House, and repaired to the scene of conflagration.

Not long after, Kelly found him sitting quite composed in 'The Bedford,' sipping his wine, as if nothing had happened. The musician expressed his astonishment at Mr. Sheridan's sang froid. 'Surely,' replied the wit, 'you'll admit that a man has a right to take his wine by his own fireside.' But Sheridan was only drowning care, not disregarding it. The event was really too much for him, though perhaps he did not realize the extent of its effect at the time. In a word, all he had in the world went with the theatre. Nothing was left either for him or the principal shareholders. Yet he bore it all with fortitude, till he heard that the harpsichord, on which his first wife was wont to play, was gone too. Then he burst into tears.

This fire was the opening of the shaft down which the great man sank rapidly. While his fortunes kept up, his spirits were not completely exhausted. He drank much, but as an indulgence rather than as a relief. Now it was by wine alone that he could even raise himself to the common requirements of conversation. He is described, before dinner, as depressed, nervous, and dull; after dinner only did the old fire break out, the old wit blaze up, and Dick Sheridan was Dick Sheridan once more. He was, in fact, fearfully oppressed by the long-accumulated and never-to-be-wiped-off debts, for which he was now daily pressed. In quitting Parliament he resigned his sanctuary, and left himself an easy prey to the Jews and Gentiles, whom he had so long dodged and deluded with his ready ingenuity. Drury Lane, as we all know, was rebuilt, and the birth of the new house heralded with a prologue by Byron, about as good as the one in 'Rejected Addresses,' the cleverest parodies ever written, and suggested by this very occasion. The building-committee having advertised for a prize prologue Samuel Whitbread sent in his own attempt, in which, as probably in a hundred others, the new theatre was compared to a Phoenix rising out of the ashes of the old one. Sheridan said Whitbread's description of a Phoenix was excellent, for it was quite a poulterer's description.

This same Sam Whitbread was now to figure conspicuously in the life of Mr. Richard B. Sheridan. The ex-proprietor was found to have an interest in the theatre to the amount of £150,000—not a trifle to be despised; but he was now past sixty, and it need excite no astonishment that, even with all his liabilities, he was unwilling to begin again the cares of management, or mismanagement which he had endured so many years. He sold his interest, in which his son Tom was joined, for £60,000. This sum would have cleared off his debts and left him a balance sufficient to secure comfort for his old age. But it was out of the question that any money matters should go right with Dick Sheridan. Of the rights and wrongs of the quarrel between him and Whitbread, who was the chairman of the committee for building the new theatre, I do not pretend to form an opinion. Sheridan was not naturally mean, though he descended to meanness when hard pressed—what man of his stamp does not? Whitbread was truly friendly to him for a time. Sheridan was always complaining that he was sued for debts he did not owe, and kept out of many that were due to him. Whitbread knew his man well, and if he withheld what was owing to him, may be excused on the ground of real friendship. All I know is, that Sheridan and Whitbread quarrelled; that the former did not, or affirmed that he did not, receive the full amount of his claim on the property, and that, when what he had received was paid over to his principal creditors, there was little or nothing left for my lord to spend in banquets to parliamentary friends and jorums of brandy in small coffee-houses.

Because a man is a genius, he is not of necessity an upright, honest, ill-used, oppressed, and cruelly-entreated man. Genius plays the fool wittingly, and often enough quite knowingly, with its own interests. It is its privilege to do so, and no one has a right to complain. But then Genius ought to hold its tongue, and not make itself out a martyr, when it has had the dubious glory of defying common-sense. If Genius despises gold, well and good, but when he has spurned it, he should not whine out that he is wrongfully kept from it. Poor Sheridan may or may not have been right in the Whitbread quarrel; he has had his defenders, and I am not ambitious of being numbered among them; but whatever were now his troubles were brought on by his own disregard of all that was right and beautiful in conduct. If he went down to the grave a pauper and a debtor, he had made his own bed, and in it he was to lie.

Lie he did, wretchedly, on the most unhappy bed that old age ever lay in. There is little more of importance to chronicle of his latter days. The retribution came on slowly but terribly. The career of a ruined man is not a pleasant topic to dwell upon, and I leave Sheridan's misery for Mr. J. B. Gough to whine and roar over when he wants a shocking example. Sheridan might have earned many a crown in that capacity, if temperance-oratory had been the passion of the day. Debt, disease, depravity—these words describe enough the downward career of his old age. To eat, still more to drink, was now the troublesome enigma of the quondam genius. I say quondam, for all the marks of that genius were now gone. One after another his choicest properties made their way to 'my uncle's.' The books went first, as if they could be most easily dispensed with; the remnants of his plate followed; then his pictures were sold; and at last even the portrait of his first wife, by Reynolds, was left in pledge for a 'further remittance.'

The last humiliation arrived in time, and the associate of a prince, the eloquent organ of a party, the man who had enjoyed £15,000, a year, was carried off to a low sponging-house. His pride forsook him in that dismal and disgusting imprisonment, and he wrote to Whitbread a letter which his defenders ought not to have published. He had his friends—stanch ones too—and they aided him. Peter Moore, ironmonger, and even Canning, lent him money and released him from time to time. For six years after the burning of the old theatre, he continued to go down and down. Disease now attacked him fiercely. In the spring of 1816 he was fast waning towards extinction. His day was past; he had outlived his fame as a wit and social light; he was forgotten by many, if not by most, of his old associates. He wrote to Rogers, 'I am absolutely undone and broken-hearted.' Poor Sheridan! in spite of all thy faults, who is he whose morality is so stern that he cannot shed one tear over thy latter days! God forgive us, we are all sinners; and if we weep not for this man's deficiency, how shall we ask tears when our day comes? Even as I write, I feel my hand tremble and my eyes moisten over the sad end of one whom I love, though he died before I was born. 'They are going to put the carpets out of window,' he wrote to Rogers, 'and break into Mrs. S.'s room and take me. For God's sake let me see you!' See him!—see one friend who could and would help him in his misery! Oh! happy may that man count himself who has never wanted that one friend, and felt the utter helplessness of that want! Poor Sheridan! had he ever asked, or hoped, or looked for that Friend out of this world it had been better; for 'the Lord thy God is a jealous God,' and we go on seeking human friendship and neglecting the divine till it is too late. He found one hearty friend in his physician, Dr. Bain, when all others had forsaken him. The spirit of White's and Brookes', the companion of a prince and a score of noblemen, the enlivener of every 'fashionable' table, was forgotten by all but this one doctor. Let us read Moore's description: 'A sheriff's officer at length arrested the dying man in his bed, and was about to carry him off, in his blankets, to a sponging-house, when Dr. Bain interfered.' Who would live the life of revelry that Sheridan lived to have such an end? A few days after, on the 7th of July, 1816, in his sixty-fifth year, he died. Of his last hours the late Professor Smythe wrote an admirable and most touching account, a copy of which was circulated in manuscript. The Professor, hearing of Sheridan's condition, asked to see him, with a view, not only of alleviating present distress, but of calling the dying man to repentance. From his hands the unhappy Sheridan received the Holy Communion; his face, during that solemn rite,—doubly solemn when it is performed in the chamber of death, 'expressed,' Smythe relates, 'the deepest awe' That phrase conveys to the mind impressions not easy to be defined, not soon to be forgotten.

Peace! there was not peace even in death, and the creditor pursued him even into the 'waste wide,'—even to the coffin. He was lying in state, when a gentleman in the deepest mourning called, it is said, at the house, and introducing himself as an old and much-attached friend of the deceased, begged to be allowed to look upon his face. The tears which rose in his eyes, the tremulousness of his quiet voice, the pallor of his mournful face, deceived the unsuspecting servant, who accompanied him to the chamber of death, removed the lid of the coffin, turned down the shrowd, and revealed features which had once been handsome, but long since rendered almost hideous by drinking. The stranger gazed with profound emotion, while he quietly drew from his pocket a bailiff's wand, and touching the corpse's face with it, suddenly altered his manner to one of considerable glee, and informed the servant that he had arrested the corpse in the king's name for a debt of £500. It was the morning of the funeral, which was to be attended by half the grandees of England, and in a few minutes the mourners began to arrive. But the corpse was the bailiff's property, till his claim was paid, and nought but the money would soften the iron capturer. Canning and Lord Sidmouth agreed to settle the matter, and over the coffin the debt was paid.

Poor corpse! was it worth £500—diseased, rotting as it was, and about to be given for nothing to mother earth? Was it worth the pomp of the splendid funeral and the grand hypocrisy of grief with which it was borne to Westminster Abbey? Was not rather the wretched old man, while he yet struggled on in life, worth this outlay, worth this show of sympathy? Folly; not folly only—but a lie! What recked the dead of the four noble pall-bearers—the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, Earl Mulgrave, and the Bishop of London? What good was it to him to be followed by two royal highnesses—the Dukes of York and Sussex—by two marquises, seven earls, three viscounts, five lords, a Canning, a lord mayor, and a whole regiment of honourables and right honourables, who now wore the livery of grief, when they had let him die in debt, in want, and in misery? Far more, if the dead could feel, must he have been grateful for the honester tears of those two untitled men, who had really befriended him to the last hour and never abandoned him, Mr. Rogers and Dr. Bain. But peace; let him pass with nodding plumes and well-dyed horses to the great Walhalla, and amid the dust of many a poet let the poet's dust find rest and honour, secure at last from the hand of the bailiff. There was but one nook unoccupied in Poet's Corner, and there they laid him. A simple marble was afforded by another friend without a title—Peter Moore.

To a life like Sheridan's it is almost impossible to do justice in so narrow a space as I have here. He is one of those men who, not to be made out a whit better or worse than they are, demand a careful investigation of all their actions, or reported actions—a careful sifting of all the evidence for or against them, and a careful weeding of all the anecdotes told of them. This requires a separate biography. To give a general idea of the man, we must be content to give that which he inspired in a general acquaintance. Many of his 'mots,' and more of the stories about him, may have been invented for him, but they would scarcely have been fixed on Sheridan, if they had not fitted more or less his character: I have therefore given them. I might have given a hundred more, but I have let alone those anecdotes which did not seem to illustrate the character of the man. Many another good story is told of him, and we must content ourselves with one or two. Take one that is characteristic of his love of fun.

Sheridan is accosted by an elderly gentleman, who has forgotten the name of a street to which he wants to go, and who informs him precisely that it is an out-of-the-way name.

'Perhaps, sir, you mean John Street?' says Sherry, all innocence.

'No, an unusual name.'

'It can't be Charles Street?'

Impatience on the part of the old gentleman.

'King Street?' suggests the cruel wit.

'I tell you, sir, it is a street with a very odd name!'

'Bless me, is it Queen Street?'

Irritation on the part of the old gentleman.

'It must be Oxford Street?' cries Sheridan as if inspired.

'Sir, I repeat,' very testily, 'that it is a very odd name. Every one knows Oxford Street!'

Sheridan appears to be thinking.

'An odd name! Oh! ah! just so; Piccadilly, of course?'

Old gentleman bounces away in disgust.

'Well, sir,' Sheridan calls after him, 'I envy you your admirable memory!'

His wit was said to have been prepared, like his speeches, and he is even reported to have carried his book of mots in his pocket, as a young lady of the middle class might, but seldom does, carry her book of etiquette into a party. But some of his wit was no doubt extempore.

When arrested for non-attendance to a call in the House, soon after the change of ministry, he exclaimed, 'How hard to be no sooner out of office than into custody!'

He was not an inveterate talker, like Macaulay, Sydney Smith, or Jeffrey: he seems rather to have aimed at a striking effect in all that he said. When found tripping he had a clever knack of getting out of the difficulty. In the Hastings speech he complimented Gibbon as a 'luminous' writer; questioned on this, he replied archly, 'I said vo-luminous.'

I cannot afford to be voluminous on Sheridan, and so I quit him.

[BEAU BRUMMELL]

Two popular Sciences.—'Buck Brummell' at Eton.—Investing his Capital.— Young Cornet Brummell.—The Beau's Studio.—The Toilet.—'Creasing Down.'—Devotion to Dress.—A Great Gentleman.—Anecdotes of Brummell.— 'Don't forget, Brum: Goose at Four!'—Offers of Intimacy resented.—Never in love.—Brummell out Hunting.—Anecdote of Sheridan and Brummell.—The Beau's Poetical Efforts.—The Value of a Crooked Sixpence.—The Breach with the Prince of Wales.—'Who's your Fat Friend?'—The Climax is reached.—The Black-mail of Calais.—George the Greater and George the Less.—An Extraordinary Step.—Down the Hill of Life.—A Miserable Old Age.—In the Hospice Du Bon Sauveur.—O Young Men of this Age, be warned!

It is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things high art has been applied, and with what success. It is the vice of high civilization to look for it and reverence it, where a ruder age would only laugh at its employment. Crime and cookery, especially, have been raised into sciences of late, and the professors of both received the amount of honour due to their acquirements. Who would be so naïve as to sneer at the author of 'The Art of Dining?' or who so ungentlemanly as not to pity the sorrows of a pious baronet, whose devotion to the noble art of appropriation was shamefully rewarded with accommodation gratis on board one of Her Majesty's transport-ships? The disciples of Ude have left us the literary results of their studies, and one at least, the graceful Alexis Soyer, is numbered among our public benefactors. We have little doubt that as the art, vulgarly called 'embezzlement,' becomes more and more fashionable, as it does every day, we shall have a work on the 'Art of Appropriation.' It is a pity that Brummell looked down upon literature: poor literature! it had a hard struggle to recover the slight, for we are convinced there is not a work more wanted than the 'Art of Dressing,' and 'George the Less' was almost the last professor of that elaborate science.

If the maxim, that 'whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well,' hold good, Beau Brummell must be regarded in the light of a great man. That dressing is worth doing at all, everybody but a Fiji Islander seems to admit, for everybody does it. If, then, a man succeeds in dressing better than anybody else, it follows that he is entitled to the most universal admiration.

But there was another object to which this great man condescended to apply the principles of high art—I mean affectation. How admirably he succeeded in this his life will show. But can we doubt that he is entitled to our greatest esteem and heartiest gratitude for the studies he pursued with unremitting patience in these two useful branches, when we find that a prince of the blood delighted to honour, and the richest, noblest, and most distinguished men of half a century ago were proud to know him? We are writing, then, of no common man, no mere beau, but of the greatest professor of two of the most popular sciences—Dress and Affectation. Let us speak with reverence of this wonderful genius.

George Brummell was 'a self-made man.' That is, all that nature, the tailors, stags, and padding had not made of him, he made for himself—his name, his fame, his fortune, and his friends—and all these were great. The author of 'Self-help' has most unaccountably omitted all mention of him, and most erroneously, for if there ever was a man who helped himself, and no one else, it was, 'very sincerely yours, George Brummell.'

The founder of the noble house of Brummell, the grandfather of our hero, was either a treasury porter, or a confectioner, or something else.[¹⁰] At any rate he let lodgings in Bury Street, and whether from the fact that his wife did not purloin her lodgers' tea and sugar, or from some other cause, he managed to ingratiate himself with one of them—who afterwards became Lord Liverpool—so thoroughly, that through his influence he obtained for his son the post of Private Secretary to Lord North. Nothing could have been more fortunate, except, perhaps, the son's next move, which was to take in marriage the daughter of Richardson, the owner of a well-known lottery-office. Between the lottery of office and the lottery of love, Brummell père managed to make a very good fortune. At his death he left as much as £65,000 to be divided among his three children—Raikes says as much as £30,000 a-piece—so that the Beau, if not a fool, ought never to have been a pauper.

George Bryan Brummell, the second son of this worthy man, honoured by his birth the 7th of June, 1778. No anecdotes of his childhood are preserved, except that he once cried because he could not eat any more damson tart. In later years he would probably have thought damson tart 'very vulgar.' He first turns up at Eton at the age of twelve, and even there commences his distinguished career, and is known as 'Buck Brummell.' The boy showed himself decidedly father to the man here. Master George was not vulgar enough, nor so imprudent, it may be added, as to fight, row, or play cricket, but he distinguished himself by the introduction of a gold buckle in the white stock, by never being flogged, and by his ability in toasting cheese. We do not hear much of his classical attainments.

The very gentlemanly youth was in due time passed on to Oriel College, Oxford. Here he distinguished himself by a studied indifference to college discipline and an equal dislike to studies. He condescended to try for the Newdigate Prize poem, but his genius leaned far more to the turn of a coat-collar than that of a verse, and, unhappily for the British poets, their ranks were not to be dignified by the addition of this illustrious man. The Newdigate was given to another; and so, to punish Oxford, the competitor left it and poetry together, after having adorned the old quadrangle of Oriel for less than a year.

He was now a boy of seventeen, and a very fine boy, too. To judge from a portrait taken in later life, he was not strictly handsome; but he is described as tall, well built, and of a slight and graceful figure. Added to this, he had got from Eton and Oxford, if not much learning, many a well-born friend, and he was toady enough to cultivate those of better, and to dismiss those of less distinction. He was, through life, a celebrated 'cutter,' and Brummell's cut was as much admired—by all but the cuttee—as Brummel's coat. Then he had some £25,000 as capital and how could he best invest it? He consulted no stockbroker on this weighty point; he did not even buy a shilling book of advice such as we have seen advertised for those who do not know what to do with their money. The question was answered in a moment by the young worldling of sixteen: he would enter a crack regiment and invest his guineas in the thousand per cents. of fashionable life.

His namesake, the Regent, was now thirty-two, and had spent those years of his life in acquiring the honorary title of the 'first gentleman of Europe' by every act of folly, debauch, dissipation, and degradation which a prince can conveniently perpetrate. He was the hero of London society, which adored and backbit him alternately, and he was precisely the man whom the boy Brummell would worship. The Regent was colonel of a famous regiment of fops—the 10th Hussars. It was the most expensive, the most impertinent, the best-dressed, the worst-moralled regiment in the British army. Its officers, many of them titled, all more or less distinguished in the trying campaigns of London seasons, were the intimates of the Prince-Colonel. Brummell aspired to a cornetcy in this brilliant regiment, and obtained it; nor that alone; he secured, by his manners, o his dress, or his impudence, the favour and companionship— friendship we cannot say—of the prince who commanded it.

By this step his reputation was made, and it was only necessary to keep it up. He had an immense fund of good nature, and, as long as his money lasted, of good spirits, too. Good sayings—that is, witty if not wise— are recorded of him, and his friends pronounce him a charming companion. Introduced, therefore, into the highest circles in England, he could scarcely fail to succeed. Young Cornet Brummell became a great favourite with the fair.

His rise in the regiment was of course rapid: in three years he was at the head of a troop. The onerous duties of a military life, which vacillated between Brighton and London, and consisted chiefly in making oneself agreeable in the mess-room, were too much for our hero. He neglected parade, or arrived too late: it was such a bore to have to dress in a hurry. It is said that he knew the troop he commanded only by the peculiar nose of one of the men, and that when a transfer of men had once been made, rode up to the wrong troop, and supported his mistake by pointing to the nose in question. No fault, however, was found with the Regent's favourite, and Brummell might have risen to any rank if he could have supported the terrific labour of dressing for parade. Then, too, there came wars and rumours of wars, and our gallant captain shuddered at the vulgarity of shedding blood: the supply of smelling-salts would never have been liberal enough to keep him from fainting on the battle-field. It is said, too, that the regiment was ordered to Manchester. Could anything be more gross or more ill-bred? The idea of figuring before the wives and daughters of cotton-spinners was too fearful; and from one cause or another our brave young captain determined to retire, which he did in 1798.

It was now, therefore, that he commenced the profession of a beau, and as he is the Prince of Beaux, as his patron was the Beau of Princes, and as his fame has spread to France and Germany, if only as the inventor of the trouser; and as there is no man who on getting up in the morning does not put on his clothes with more or less reflection as to whether they are the right ones to put on, and as beaux have existed since the days of the emperor of beaux, Alexander the Macedonian, and will probably exist to all time, let us rejoice in the high honour of being permitted to describe how this illustrious genius clothed his poor flesh, and made the most of what God had given him—a body and legs.

The private life of Brummell would in itself serve as a book of manners and habits. The two were his profoundest study; but, alas! his impudence marred the former, and the latter can scarcely be imitated in the present day. Still as a great example he is yet invaluable, and must be described in all detail.

His morning toilette was a most elaborate affair. Never was Brummell guilty of déshabille. Like a true man of business, he devoted the best and earliest hours—and many of them too—to his profession, namely— dressing. His dressing-room was a studio, in which he daily prepared that elaborate portrait of George Brummell which was to be exhibited for a few hours in the club-rooms and drawing-rooms of town, only to be taken to pieces again, and again made up for the evening. Charles I. delighted to resort of a morning to the studio of Vandyck, and to watch his favourite artist's progress. The Regent George was no less devoted to art, for we are assured by Mr. Raikes that he often visited his favourite beau in the morning to watch his toilet, and would sometimes stay so late that he would send his horses away, insisting on Brummell giving him a quiet dinner, 'which generally ended in a deep potation.'

There are, no doubt, many fabulous myths floating about concerning this illustrious man; and his biographer, Captain Jesse, seems anxious to defend him from the absurd stories of French writers, who asserted that he employed two glovers to covers his hands, to one of whom were intrusted the thumbs, to the other the fingers and hand, and three barbers to dress his hair, while his boots were polished with champagne, his cravats designed by a celebrated portrait painter, and so forth. These may be pleasant inventions, but Captain Jesse's own account of his toilet, even when the Beau was broken, and living in elegant poverty abroad, is quite absurd enough to render excusable the ingenious exaggerations of the foreign writer.

The batterie de toilette, we are told, was of silver, and included a spitting-dish, for its owner said 'he could not spit into clay.' Napoleon shaved himself, but Brummell was not quite great enough to do that, just as my Lord So-and-so walks to church on Sunday, while his neighbour, the Birmingham millionaire, can only arrive there in a chariot and pair.

His ablutions took no less than two whole hours! What knowledge might have been gained, what good done in the time he devoted to rubbing his lovely person with a hair-glove! Cleanliness was, in fact, Brummell's religion; perhaps because it is generally set down as 'next to godliness,' a proximity with which the Beau was quite satisfied, for he never attempted to pass on to that next stage. Poor fool, he might rub every particle of moisture off the skin of his body—he might be clean as a kitten—but he could not and did not purify his mind with all this friction; and the man who would have fainted to see a black speck upon his shirt, was not at all shocked at the indecent conversation in which he and his companions occasionally indulged.

The body cleansed, the face had next to be brought up as near perfection as nature would allow. With a small looking-glass in one hand, and tweezers in the other, he carefully removed the tiniest hairs that he could discover on his cheeks or chin, enduring the pain like a martyr.

Then came the shirt, which was in his palmy days changed three times a day, and then in due course the great business of the cravat. Captain Jesse's minute account of the process of tying this can surely be relied on, and presents one of the most ludicrous pictures of folly and vanity that can be imagined. Had Brummell never lived, and a novelist or play-writer described the toilet which Captain Jesse affirms to have been his daily achievement, he would have had the critics about him with the now common phrase—'This book is a tissue, not only of improbabilities, but of actual impossibilities.' The collar, then, was so large, that in its natural condition it rose high above the wearer's head, and some ingenuity was required to reduce it by delicate folds to exactly that height which the Beau judged to be correct. Then came the all-majestic white neck-tie, a foot in breadth. It is not to be supposed that Brummell had the neck of a swan or a camel—far from it. The worthy fool had now to undergo, with admirable patience, the mysterious process known to our papas as 'creasing down.' The head was thrown back, as if ready for a dentist; the stiff white tie applied to the throat, and gradually wrinkled into half its actual breadth by the slow downward movement of the chin. When all was done, we can imagine that comfort was sacrificed to elegance, as it was then considered, and that the sudden appearance of Venus herself could not have induced the deluded individual to turn his head in a hurry.

It is scarcely profitable to follow this lesser deity into all the details of his self-adornment. It must suffice to say that he affected an extreme neatness and simplicity of dress, every item of which was studied and discussed for many an hour. In the mornings he was still guilty of hessians and pantaloons, or 'tops' and buckskins, with a blue coat and buff waistcoat. The costume is not so ancient, but that one may tumble now and then on a country squire who glories in it and denounces us juveniles as 'bears' for want of a similar precision. Poor Brummell, he cordially hated the country squires, and would have wanted rouge for a week if he could have dreamed that his pet attire would, some fifty years later, be represented only by one of that class which he was so anxious to exclude from Watier's.

But it was in the evening that he displayed his happy invention of the trouser, or rather its introduction from Germany. This article he wore very tight to the leg, and buttoned over the ankle, exactly as we see it in old prints of 'the fashion.' Then came the wig, and on that the hat. It is a vain and thankless task to defend Brummell from the charge of being a dandy. If one proof of his devotion to dress were wanted, it would be the fact that this hat, once stuck jauntily on one side of the wig, was never removed in the street even to salute a lady—so that, inasmuch as he sacrificed his manners to his appearance, he may be fairly set down as a fop.

The perfect artist could not be expected to be charitable to the less successful. Dukes and princes consulted him on the make of their coats, and discussed tailors with him with as much solemnity as divines might dispute on a mystery of religion. Brummell did not spare them. 'Bedford,' said he, to the duke of that name, fingering a new garment which his grace had submitted to his inspection, 'do you call this thing a coat?' Again, meeting a noble acquaintance who wore shoes in the morning, he stopped and asked him what he had got upon his feet. 'Oh! shoes are they,' quoth he, with a well bred sneer, 'I thought they were slippers.' He was even ashamed of his own brother, and when the latter came to town, begged him to keep to the back streets till his new clothes were sent home. Well might his friend the Regent say, that he was 'a mere tailor's dummy to hang clothes upon.'

But in reality Brummell was more. He had some sharpness and some taste. But the former was all brought out in sneers, and the latter in snuff-boxes. His whole mind could have been put into one of these. He had a splendid collection of them, and was famous for the grace with which he opened the lid of his box with the thumb of the hand that carried it, while he delicately took his pinch with two fingers of the other. This and his bow were his chief acquirements, and his reputation for manners was based on the distinction of his manner. He could not drive in a public conveyance, but he could be rude to a well-meaning lady; he never ate vegetables—one pea he confessed to—but he did not mind borrowing from his friends money which he knew he could never return. He was a great gentleman, a gentleman of his patron's school—in short, a well-dressed snob. But one thing is due to Brummell: he made the assumption of being 'a gentleman' so thoroughly ridiculous that few men of keen sense care now for the title: at least, not as a class-distinction. Nor is it to be wondered at; when your tailor's assistant is a 'gentleman,' and would be mightily disgusted at being called anything else, you, with your indomitable pride of caste, can scarcely care for the patent.

Brummell's claim to the title was based on his walk, his coat, his cravat, and the grace with which he indulged, as Captain Jesse delightfully calls it, 'the nasal pastime' of taking snuff, all the rest was impudence; and many are the anecdotes—most of them familiar as household words—which are told of his impertinence. The story of Mrs. Johnson-Thompson is one of those oft-told tales, which, from having become Joe Millers, have gradually passed out of date and been almost forgotten. Two rival party-givers rejoiced in the aristocratic names of Johnson and Thompson. The former lived near Finsbury, the latter near Grosvenor Square, and Mrs. Thompson was somehow sufficiently fashionable to expect the Regent himself at her assemblies. Brummell among other impertinences, was fond of going where he was not invited or wanted. The two rivals gave a ball on the same evening, and a card was sent to the Beau by her of Finsbury. He chose to go to the Grosvenor Square house, in hopes of meeting the Regent, then his foe. Mrs. Thompson was justly disgusted, and with a vulgarity quite deserved by the intruder, told him he was not invited. The Beau made a thousand apologies, hummed, hawed, and drew a card from his pocket. It was the rival's invitation, and was indignantly denounced. 'Dear me, how very unfortunate,' said the Beau, 'but you know Johnson and Thompson—I mean Thompson and Johnson are so very much alike. Mrs. Johnson-Thompson, I wish you a very good evening.'

Perhaps there is no vulgarity greater than that of rallying people on their surnames, but our exquisite gentleman had not wit enough to invent one superior to such a puerile amusement. Thus, on one occasion, he woke up at three in the morning a certain Mr. Snodgrass, and when the worthy put his head out of the window in alarm, said quietly, 'Pray, sir, is your name Snodgrass?'—'Yes, sir, it is Snodgrass.' 'Snodgrass— Snodgrass—it is a very singular name. Good-bye, Mr. Snodgrass.' There was more wit in his remark to Poodle Byng, a well-known puppy, whom he met one day driving in the Park with a French dog in his curricle. 'Ah,' cried the Beau, 'how d'ye do, Byng? a family vehicle, I see.'

It seems incredulous to modern gentlemen that such a man should have been tolerated even at a club. Take, for instance, his vulgar treatment of Lord Mayor Combe, whose name we still see with others over many a public-house in London, and who was then a most prosperous brewer and thriving gambler. At Brookes' one evening the Beau and the Brewer were playing at the same table, 'Come, Mash-tub', cried the 'gentleman,' 'what do you set?' Mash-tub unresentingly set a pony, and the Beau won twelve of him in succession. Pocketing his cash, he made him a bow, and exclaimed, 'Thank you, Alderman, in future I shall drink no porter but yours.' But Combe was worthy of his namesake, Shakspere's friend, and answered very aptly, 'I wish, sir, that every other blackguard in London would tell me the same.'

Then again, after ruining a young fool of fortune at the tables, and being reproached by the youth's father for leading his son astray, he replied with charming affectation, 'Why, sir, I did all I could for him. I once gave him my arm all the way from White's to Brookes'!'

When Brummell really wanted a dinner, while at Calais, he could not give up his impertinence for the sake of it. Lord Westmoreland called on him, and, perhaps out of compassion, asked him to dine at three o'clock with him. 'Your Lordship is very kind,' said the Beau, 'but really I could not feed at such an hour.' Sooner or later he was glad to feed with any one who was toady enough to ask him. He was once placed in a delightfully awkward position from having accepted the invitation of a charitable but vulgar-looking Britisher at Calais. He was walking with Lord Sefton, when the individual passed and nodded familiarly. 'Who's your friend, Brummell?'—'Not mine, he must be bowing to you.' But presently the man passed again, and this time was cruel enough to exclaim, 'Don't forget, Brum, don't forget—goose at four!' The poor Beau must have wished the earth to open under him. He was equally imprudent in the way in which he treated an old acquaintance who arrived at the town to which he had retreated, and of whom he was fool enough to be ashamed. He generally took away their characters summarily, but on one occasion was frightened almost out of his wits by being called to account for this conduct. An officer who had lost his nose in an engagement in the Peninsula, called on him, and in very strong terms requested to know why the Beau had reported that he was a retired hatter. His manner alarmed the rascal, who apologized, and protested that there must be a mistake; he had never said so. The officer retired, and as he was going, Brummell added: 'Yes, it must be a mistake, for now I think of it, I never dealt with a hatter without a nose.'

So much for the good breeding of this friend of George IV. and the Duke of York.

His affectation was quite as great as his impudence: and he won the reputation of fastidiousness—nothing gives more prestige—by dint of being openly rude. No hospitality or kindness melted him, when he thought he could gain a march. At one dinner, not liking the champagne, he called to the servant to give him 'some more of that cider:' at another, to which he was invited in days when a dinner was a charity to him, after helping himself to a wing of capon, and trying a morsel of it, he took it up in his napkin, called to his dog—he was generally accompanied by a puppy, even to parties, as if one at a time were not enough—and presenting it to him, said aloud, 'Here, Atons, try if you can get your teeth through that, for I'm d—d if I can!'

To the last he resented offers of intimacy from those whom he considered his inferiors, and as there are ladies enough everywhere, he had ample opportunity for administering rebuke to those who pressed into his society. On one occasion he was sauntering with a friend at Caen under the window of a lady who longed for nothing more than to have the great arbiter elegantiarum at her house. When seeing him beneath, she put her head out, and called out to him, 'Good evening, Mr. Brummell, won't you come up and take tea?' The Beau looked up with extreme severity expressed on his face, and replied, 'Madam, you take medicine—you take a walk—you take a liberty—but you drink tea,' and walked on, having, it may be hoped, cured the lady of her admiration.

In the life of such a man there could not of course be much striking incident. He lived for 'society,' and the whole of his story consists in his rise and fall in that narrow world. Though admired and sought after by the women—so much so that at his death his chief assets were locks of hair, the only things he could not have turned into money—he never married. Wedlock might have sobered him, and made him a more sensible, if not more respectable member of society, but his advances towards matrimony never brought him to the crisis. He accounted for one rejection in his usual way. 'What could I do, my dear fellar,' he lisped, 'when I actually saw Lady Mary eat cabbage?' At another time he is said to have induced some deluded young creature to elope with him from a ball-room, but managed the affair so ill, that the lovers (?) were caught in the next street, and the affair came to an end. He wrote rather ecstatic love-letters to Lady Marys and Miss ——s, gave married ladies advice on the treatment of their spouses and was tender to various widows, but though he went on in this way through life, he was never, it would seem, in love, from the mere fact that he was incapable of passion.

Perhaps he was too much of a woman to care much for women. He was certainly egregiously effeminate. About the only creatures he could love were poodles. When one of his dogs, from over-feeding, was taken ill, he sent for two dog-doctors, and consulted very gravely with them on the remedies to be applied. The canine physicians came to the conclusion that she must be bled. 'Bled!' said Brummell, in horror; 'I shall leave the room: inform me when the operation is over.' When the dog died, he shed tears—probably the only ones he had shed since childhood: and though at that time receiving money from many an old friend in England, complained, with touching melancholy, 'that he had lost the only friend he had!' His grief lasted three whole days, during which he shut himself up, and would see no one; but we are not told that he ever thus mourned over any human being.

His effeminacy was also shown in his dislike to field-sports. His shooting exploits were confined to the murder of a pair of pet pigeons perched on a roof, while he confessed, as regards hunting, that it was a bore to get up so early in the morning only to have one's boots and leathers splashed by galloping farmers. However, hunting was a fashion, and Brummell must needs appear to hunt. He therefore kept a stud of hunters in his better days, near Belvoir, the Duke of Rutland's, where he was a frequent visitor, and if there was a near meet, would ride out in pink and tops to see the hounds break cover, follow through a few gates, and return to the more congenial atmosphere of the drawing-room. He, however, condescended to bring his taste to bear on the hunting-dress; and, it is said, introduced white tops instead of the ancient mahoganies. That he could ride there seems reason to believe, but it is equally probable that he was afraid to do so. His valour was certainly composed almost entirely of its 'better part,' and indeed had so much prudence in it that it may be doubted if there was any of the original stock left. Once when he had been taking away somebody's character, the 'friend' of the maligned gentleman entered his apartment, and very menacingly demanded satisfaction for his principal, unless an apology were tendered 'in five minutes.' 'Five minutes!' answered the exquisite, as pale as death, 'five seconds, or sooner if you like.'

Brummell was no fool, in spite of his follies. He had talents of a mediocre kind, if he had chosen to make a better use of them. Yet the general opinion was not in favour of his wisdom. He quite deserved Sheridan's cool satire for his affectation, if not for his want of mind.

The Wit and the Beau met one day at Charing Cross, and it can well be imagined that the latter was rather disgusted at being seen so far east of St. James's Street, and drawled out to Sheridan,—'Sherry, my dear boy, don't mention that you saw me in this filthy part of the town, though, perhaps, I am rather severe, for his Grace of Northumberland resides somewhere about this spot, if I don't mistake. The fact is, my dear boy, I have been in the d——d City, to the Bank: I wish they would remove it to the West End, for re-all-y it is quite a bore to go to such a place; more particularly as one cannot be seen in one's own equipage beyond Somerset House,' etc. etc. etc. in the Brummellian style.

'Nay, my good fellow,' was the answer to this peroration, 'travelling from the East? impossible!'

'Why, my dear boy, why?'

'Because the wise men came from the East,'

'So, then, sa-ar—you think me a fool?'

'By no means; I know you to be one,' quoth Sherry, and turned away. It is due to both the parties to this anecdote to state that it is quite apocryphal, and rests on the slenderest authority. However, whether fool or not, Brummell has one certain, though small, claim upon certain small readers. Were you born in a modern generation, when scraps of poetry were forbidden in your nursery, and no other pabulum was offered to your infant stomach, but the rather dull biographies of rather dull, though very upright men?—if so, I pity you. Old airs of a jaunty jig-like kind are still haunting the echoes of my brain. Among them is—

'The butterfly was a gentleman,

Which nobody can refute:

He left his lady-love at home,

And roamed in a velvet suit.'

I remember often to have ruminated over this character of an innocent, and, I believe, calumniated, insect. He was a gentleman, and the consequences thereof were twofold: he abandoned the young woman who had trusted her affections to him, and attired his person in a complete costume of the best Lyons silk-velvet, not the proctor's velvet, which Theodore felt with thumb and finger, impudently asking 'how much a yard?' I secretly resolved to do the same thing as Mr. Butterfly when I came of age. But the said Mr. Butterfly had a varied and somewhat awful history, all of which was narrated in various ditties chanted by my nurse. I could not quite join in her vivid assertion that she would

'——be a butterfly,

Born in a bower,

Christened in a tea-pot,

And dead in an hour.'

Aetat four, life is dear, and the idea of that early demise was far from welcome to me. I privily agreed that I would not be a butterfly. But there was no end to the history of this very inconstant insect in our nursery lore. We didn't care a drop of honey for Dr. Watts's 'Busy Bee;' we infinitely preferred the account—not in the 'Morning Post'—of the 'Butterfly's Ball' and the 'Grasshopper's Feast; and few, perhaps, have ever given children more pleasures of imagination than William Roscoe, its author. There were some amongst us, however, who were already being weaned to a knowledge of life's mysterious changes, and we sought the third volume of the romance of the flitting gaudy thing in a little poem called 'The Butterfly's Funeral.'

Little dreamed we, when in our prettly little song-books we saw the initial 'B.' at the bottom of these verses, that a real human butterfly had written them, and that they conveyed a solemn prognostication of a fate that was not his. Little we dreamed, as we lisped out the verses, that the 'gentleman who roamed in a' not velvet but 'plum-coloured suit,' according to Lady Hester Stanhope, was the illustrious George Brummell, The Beau wrote these trashy little rhymes—pretty in their way—and, since I was once a child, and learnt them off by heart, I will not cast a stone at them. Brummell indulged in such trifling poetizing, but never went further. It is a pity he did not write his memoirs; they would have added a valuable page to the history of 'Vanity Fair.'

Brummell's London glory lasted from 1798 to 1816. His chief club was Watier's. It was a superb assemblage of gamesters and fops—knaves and fools; and it is difficult to say which, element predominated. For a time Brummell was monarch there; but his day of reckoning came at last. Byron and Moore, Sir Henry Mildmay and Mr. Pierrepoint, were among the members. Play ran high there, and Brummell once won nearly as much as his squandered patrimony, £26.000. Of course he not only lost it again, but much more—indeed his whole capital. It was after some heavy loss that he was walking home through Berkeley Street with Mr. Raikes, when he saw something glittering in the gutter, picked it up, and found it to be a crooked sixpence. Like all small-minded men, he had a great fund of superstition, and he wore the talisman of good luck for some time. For two years, we are told, after this finding of treasure-trove, success attended him in play—macao, the very pith of hazard, was the chief game at Watier's—and he attributed it all to the sixpence. At last he lost it, and luck turned against him. So goes the story. It is probably much more easily accountable. Few men played honestly in those days without losing to the dishonest, and we have no reason to charge the Beau with mal-practice. However this may be, his losses at play first brought about his ruin. The Jews were, of course, resorted to; and if Brummell did not, like Charles Fox, keep a Jerusalem Chamber, it was only because the sum total of his fortune was pretty well known to the money-lenders.

'Then came the change, the check, the fall;

Pain rises up, old pleasures pall.

There is one remedy for all.'

This remedy was the crossing of the Channel, a crossing kept by beggars, who levy a heavy toll on those who pass over it.

The decline of the Beau was rapid, but not without its éclat. A breach with his royal patron led the way. It is presumed that every reader of these volumes has heard the famous story of 'Wales, ring the bell!' but not all may know its particulars.

A deep impenetrable mystery hangs over this story. Perhaps some German of the twenty-first century—some future Giffard, or who not—will put his wits to work to solve the riddle. In very sooth il ne vaut pas la chandelle. A quarrel did take place between George the Prince and George the Less, but of its causes no living mortal is cognizant: we can only give the received versions. It appears, then, that dining with H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, Master Brummell asked him to ring the bell. Considering the intimacy between them, and that the Regent often sacrificed his dignity to his amusement, there was nothing extraordinary in this. But it is added that the Prince did ring the bell in question—unhappy bell to jar so between two such illustrious friends!—and when the servant came, ordered 'Mr. Brummell's carriage!' Another version palms off the impertinence on a drunken midshipman, who, being related to the Comptroller of the Household, had been invited to dinner by the Regent. Another yet states that Brummell, being asked to ring the said bell, replied, 'Your Royal Highness is close to it.' No one knows the truth of the legend, any more than whether Homer was a man or a myth. It surely does not matter. The friends quarrelled, and perhaps it was time they should do so, for they had never improved one another's morals; but it is only fair to the Beau to add that he always denied the whole affair, and that he himself gave as the cause of the quarrel his own sarcasms on the Prince's increasing corpulency, and his resemblance to Mrs. Fitzherbert's porter, 'Big Ben.' Certainly some praise is due to the Beau for the sans, froid with which he appeared to treat the matter, though in reality dreadfully cut up about it. He lounged about, made amusing remarks on his late friend and patron, swore he would 'cut' him, and in short behaved with his usual aplomb. The 'Wales, ring the bell,' was sufficient proof of his impudence, but 'Who's your fat friend?' was really good.

It is well known, in all probability, that George IV. contemplated with as much disgust and horror the increasing rotundity of his 'presence' as ever a maiden lady of a certain age did her first grey hair. Soon after the bell affair, the royal beau met his former friend in St. James's Street, and resolved to cut him. This was attacking Brummell with his own pet weapon, but not with success. Each antagonist was leaning on the arm of a friend. 'Jack Lee,' who was thus supporting the Beau, was intimate with the Prince, who, to make the cut the more marked, stopped and talked to him without taking the slightest notice of Brummell. After a time both parties moved on, and then came the moment of triumph and revenge. It was sublime! Turning round half way, so that his words could not fail to be heard by the retreating Regent, the Beau asked of his companion in his usual drawl, 'Well, Jack, who's your fat friend?' The coolness, presumption, and impertinence of the question perhaps made it the best thing the Beau ever said, and from that time the Prince took care not to risk another encounter with him.[¹¹]

"WHO'S YOUR FAT FRIEND?"

Brummell was scotched rather than killed by the Prince's indifference. He at once resolved to patronise his brother, the Duke of York, and found in him a truer friend. The duchess, who had a particular fondness for dogs, of which she is said to have kept no fewer, at one time, than a hundred, added the puppy Brummell to the list, and treated him with a kindness in which little condescension was mixed. But neither impudence nor the blood-royal can keep a man out of debt, especially when he plays. The Beau got deeper and deeper into the difficulty, and at last some mysterious quarrel about money with a gentleman who thenceforward went by the name of Dick the Dandy-killer, obliged him to think of place and poverty in another land. He looked in vain for aid, and among others Scrope Davies was written to to lend him 'two hundred,' 'because his money was all in the three per cents.' Scrope replied laconically—

'MY DEAR GEORGE,
'It is very unfortunate, but my money is all in the three per cents. Yours,
'S. DAVIES,'

It was the last attempt. The Beau went to the opera, as usual, and drove away from it clear off to Dover, whence the packet took him to safety and slovenliness in the ancient town of Calais. His few effects were sold after his departure. Porcelaine, buhl, a drawing or two, double-barrelled Mantons (probably never used), plenty of old wine, linen, furniture, and a few well-bound books, were the Beau's assets. His debts were with half the chief tradesmen of the West End and a large number of his personal friends.

The climax is reached: henceforth Master George Bryan Brummell goes rapidly and gracefully down the hill of life.

The position of a Calais beggar was by no means a bad one, if the reduced individual had any claim whatever to distinction. A black-mail was sedulously levied by the outcasts and exiles of that town on every Englishman who passed through it; and in those days it was customary to pass some short time in this entrance of France. The English 'residents' were always on the look-out, generally crowding round the packet-boat, and the new arrival was sure to be accosted by some old and attached friend, who had not seen him for years. Just as Buttons, who is always breaking the plates and tumblers, has the invariable mode of accounting for his carelessness, 'they fell apart, sir, in my 'ands!' so these expatriated Britons had always a tale of confidence misplaced—security for a bond—bail for a delinquent, or in short any hard case, which compelled them, much against their wills, to remain 'for a period' on the shores of France. To such men, whom you had known in seven-guinea waistcoats at White's and Watier's, and found in seven-shilling coats on the Calais pier, it was impossible to refuse your five-pound note, and in time the black-mail of Calais came to be reckoned among the established expenses of a Continental tour.

Brummell was a distinguished beggar of this description, and managed so adroitly that the new arrivals thought themselves obliged by Mr. Brummell's acceptance of their donations. The man who could not eat cabbages, drive in a hackney-coach, or wear less than three shirts a day, was now supported by voluntary contributions, and did not see anything derogatory to a gentleman in their acceptance. If Brummell had now turned his talents to account; if he had practised his painting, in which he was not altogether despicable; or his poetry, in which he had already had some trifling success: if he had even engaged himself as a waiter at Quillacq's, or given lessons in the art of deportment, his fine friends from town might have cut him, but posterity would have withheld its blame. He was a beggar of the merriest kind. While he wrote letters to friends in England, asking for remittances, and describing his wretched condition on a bed of straw and eating bran bread, he had a good barrel of Dorchester ale in his lodgings, his usual glass of maraschino, and his bottle of claret after dinner; and though living on charity, could order new snuff-boxes to add to his collection, and new knick-knacks to adorn his room. There can be no pity for such a man, and we have no pity for him, whatever the rest of the world may feel.

Nothing can be more contemptible than the gradual downfall of the broken beau. Yet, if it were doubted that his soul ever rose above the collar of a coat or the brim of a hat, his letters to Mr. Raikes in the time of his poverty would settle the question. 'I heard of you the other day in a waistcoat that does you considerable credit, spick-and-span from Paris, a broad stripe, salmon-colour, and cramoisé. Don't let them laugh you into a relapse—into the Gothic—as that of your former English simplicity.' He speaks of the army of occupation as 'rascals in red coats waiting for embarkation.' 'English education,' he says in another letter, 'may be all very well to instruct the hemming of handkerchiefs, and the ungainly romps of a country-dance, but nothing else; and it would be a poor consolation to your declining years to see your daughters come into the room upon their elbows, and to find their accomplishments limited to broad native phraseology in conversation, or thumping the "Woodpecker" upon a discordant spinet.' And he proceeds to recommend a 'good French formation of manners,' and so forth.

Nor did he display any of that dignity and self-respect which are generally supposed to mark the 'gentleman.' When his late friend and foe, by this time a king, passed through Calais, the Beau, broken in every sense, had not pride enough to keep out of his way. Many stories are told of the manner in which he pressed himself into George IV.'s notice, but the various legends mostly turn upon a certain snuff-box. According to one quite as reliable as any other, the Prince and the Beau had in their days of amity intended to exchange snuff-boxes, and George the Greater had given George the Less an order on his jeweller for a tabatière with his portrait on the top. On their quarrel this order was, with very bad taste, rescinded, although Brummell's snuff-box had already passed into the Prince's hands and had not been returned. It is said that the Beau employed a friend to remind the king of this agreement, and ask for his box; to whom the latter said that the story was all nonsense, and that he supposed 'the poor devil,' meaning his late intimate friend, wanted £100 and should have it. However, it is doubtful if the money ever reached the 'poor devil.' The story does not tell over well, for whatever were the failings and faults of George IV., he seems to have had a certain amount of good nature, if not absolutely of good heart, and possessed, at least, sufficient sense of what became a prince, to prevent his doing so shabby an act, though he may have defrauded a hundred tradesmen. In these days there were such things as 'debts of honour,' and they were punctiliously attended to. There are, as we have said, various versions of this story, but all tend to show that Brummell courted the notice of his late master and patron on his way through the place of his exile; and it is not remarkable in a man who borrowed so freely from all his acquaintances, and who was, in fact, in such a state of dependence on their liberality.

Brummell made one grand mistake in his career as a Beau: he outlived himself. For some twenty-four years he survived his flight from England, to which country he never returned. For a time he was an assiduous writer of begging-letters and the plague of his friends. At length he obtained the appointment of consul at the good old Norman town of Caen. This was almost a sinecure, and the Beau took care to keep it so. But no one can account for the extraordinary step he took soon after entering on his consular duties. He wrote to Lord Palmerston, stating that there were no duties attached to the post, and recommending its abolition. This act of suicide is partly explained by a supposed desire to be appointed to some more lively and more lucrative consulate; but in this the Beau was mistaken. The consulate at Caen was vacated in accordance with his suggestion, and Brummell was left penniless, in debt, and to shift for himself. With the aid of an English tradesman, half grocer, half banker, he managed to get through a period of his poverty, but could not long subsist in this way, and the punishment of his vanity and extravagance came at last in his old age. A term of existence in prison did not cure him, and when he was liberated he again resumed his primrose gloves, his Eau de Cologne, and his patent vernis for his boots, though at that time literally supported by his friends with an allowance of £120 per annum. In the old days of Caen life this would have been equal to £300 a year in England, and certainly quite enough for any bachelor; but the Beau was really a fool. For whom, for what should he dress and polish his boots at such a quiet place as Caen? Yet he continued to do so, and to run into debt for the polish. When he confessed to having, 'so help him Heaven,' not four francs in the world, he was ordering this vernis de Guiton, at five francs a bottle, from Paris, and calling the provider of it a 'scoundrel,' because he ventured to ask for his money. What foppery, what folly was all this! How truly worthy of the man who built his fame on the reputation of a coat! Terrible indeed was the hardship that followed his extravagance; he was actually compelled to exchange his white for a black cravat. Poor martyr! after such a trial it is impossible to be hard upon him. So, too, the man who sent repeated begging-letters to the English grocer, Armstrong, threw out of window a new dressing-gown because it was not of the pattern he wished to have.

Retribution for all this folly came in time. His mind went even before his health. Though only some sixty years of age, almost the bloom of some men's life, he lost his memory and his powers of attention, His old ill-manners became positively bad manners. When feasted and feted, he could find nothing better to say than 'What a half-starved turkey.' At last the Beau was reduced to the level of that slovenliness which he had considered as the next step to perdition. Reduced to one pair of trousers, he had to remain in bed till they were mended. He grew indifferent to his personal appearance, the surest sign of decay. Drivelling, wretched, in debt, an object of contempt to all honest men, he dragged on a miserable existence. Still with his boots in holes, and all the honour of beau-dom gone for ever, he clung to the last to his Eau de Cologne, and some few other luxuries, and went down, a fool and a fop, to the grave. To indulge his silly tastes he had to part with one piece of property after another; and at length he was left with little else than the locks of hair of which he had once boasted.

I remember a story of a labourer and his dying wife. The poor woman was breathing her last wishes. 'And, I say, William, you'll see the old sow don't kill her young uns?'—'Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.' 'And, I say, William, you'll see Lizzy goes to schule reg'lar?'—'Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.' 'And, I say, William, you'll see Tommy's breeches is mended against he goes to schule again?'—'Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.'—'And, I say, William, you'll see I'm laid proper in the yard?' William grew impatient. 'Now never thee mind them things, wife, I'll see to 'em all, you just go on with your dying.' No doubt Brummell's friends heartily wished that he would go on with his dying, for he had already lived too long; but he would live on. He is described in his last days as a miserable, slovenly, half-witted old creature, creeping about to the houses of a few friends he retained or who were kind enough to notice him still, jeered at by the gamins, and remarkable now, not for the cleanliness, but the filthiness and raggedness of his attire.

Poor old fool! one cannot but pity him, when wretched, friendless, and miserable as he was, we find him, still graceful, in a poor café near the Place Royale, taking his cup of coffee, and when asked for the amount of his bill, answering very vaguely, 'Oui, Madame, à la pleine lune, à la pleine lune.'

The drivellings of old age are no fit subject for ridicule, yet in the case of a man who had sneered so freely at his fellow-creatures, they may afford a useful lesson. One of his fancies was to give imaginary parties, when his tallow dips were all set alight and his servant announced with proper decorum, 'The Duchess of Devonshire,' 'Lord Alvanley, 'Mr. Sheridan,' or whom not. The poor old idiot received the imaginary visitors with the old bow, and talked to them in the old strain, till his servant announced their imaginary carriages, and he was put drivelling to bed. At last the idiocy became mania. He burnt his books, his relics, his tokens. He ate enormously, and the man who had looked upon beer as the ne plus ultra of vulgarity, was glad to imagine it champagne. Let us not follow the poor maniac through his wanderings. Rather let us throw a veil over all his drivelling wretchedness, and find him at his last gasp, when coat and collar, hat and brim, were all forgotten, when the man who had worn three shirts a day was content to change his linen once a month. What a lesson, what a warning! If Brummell had come to this pass in England, it is hard to say how and where he would have died. He was now utterly penniless, and had no prospect of receiving any remittances. It was determined to remove him to the Hospice du Bon Sauveur, a Maison de Charité, where he would be well cared for at no expense. The mania of the poor creature took, as ever, the turn of external preparation. When the landlord of his inn entered to try and induce him to go, he found him with his wig on his knee, his shaving apparatus by his side, and the quondam beau deeply interested in lathering the peruke as a preliminary to shearing it. He resisted every proposal to move, and was carried down stairs, kicking and shrieking. Once lodged in the Hospice, he was treated by the soeurs de charité with the greatest kindness and consideration. An attempt was made to recall him to a sense of his future peril, that he might at least die in a more religious mood than he had lived; but in vain. It is not for us, erring and sinful as we are, to judge any fellow-creature; but perhaps poor Brummell was the last man to whom religion had a meaning. His heart was good; his sins were more those of vanity than those of hate; it may be that they are regarded mercifully where the fund of mercy is unbounded. God grant that they may be so; or who of us would escape? None but fiends will triumph over the death of any man in sin. Men are not fiends; they must and will always feel for their fellow-men, let them die as they will. No doubt Brummell was a fool—a fool of the first water, but that he was equally a knave was not so certain. Let it never be certain to blind man, who cannot read the heart, that any man is a knave. He died on the 30th of March, 1840, and so the last of the Beaux passed away. People have claimed, indeed for D'Orsay, the honour of Brummell's descending mantle, but D'Orsay was not strictly a beau, for he had other and higher tastes than mere dress. It has never been advanced that Brummell's heart was bad, in spite of his many faults. Vanity did all. Vanitas vanitatem. O young men of this age, be warned by a Beau, and flee his doubtful reputation! Peace then to the coat-thinker. Peace to all—to the worst. Let us look within and not judge. It is enough that we are not tried in the same balance.

[THEODORE EDWARD HOOK.]

The Greatest of Modern Wits.—-What Coleridge said of Hook.—Hook's Family.—Redeeming Points.—Versatility.—Varieties of Hoaxing.—The Black-wafered Horse.—The Berners Street Hoax.—Success of the Scheme.— The Strop of Hunger.—Kitchen Examinations.—The Wrong House.—Angling for an Invitation.—The Hackney-coach Device.—The Plots of Hook and Mathews.—Hook's Talents as an Improvisatore.—The Gift becomes his Bane.—Hook's Novels.—College Fun.—Baiting a Proctor.—The Punning Faculty.—Official Life Opens.—Troublesome Pleasantry.—Charge of Embezzlement.—Misfortune.—Doubly Disgraced.—No Effort to remove the Stain.—Attacks on the Queen.—An Incongruous Mixture.—Specimen of the Ramsbottom Letters.—Hook's Scurrility.—Fortune and Popularity.—The End.

If it be difficult to say what wit is, it is well nigh as hard to pronounce what is not wit. In a sad world, mirth hath its full honour, let it come in rags or in purple raiment. The age that patronises a 'Punch' every Saturday? and a pantomime every Christmas, has no right to complain, if it finds itself barren of wits, while a rival age has brought forth her dozens. Mirth is, no doubt, very good. We would see more, not less, of it in this unmirthful land. We would fain imagine the shrunken-cheeked factory-girl singing to herself a happy burthen, as she shifts the loom,—the burthen of her life, and fain believe that the voice was innocent as the sky-lark's. But if it be not so—and we know it is not so—shall we quarrel with any one who tries to give the poor care-worn, money-singing public a little laughter for a few pence? No, truly, but it does not follow that the man who raises a titter is, of necessity, a wit. The next age, perchance, will write a book of 'Wits and Beaux,' in which Mr. Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Mark Lemon, and so on, will represent the wit of this passing day; and that future age will not ask so nicely what wit is, and not look for that last solved of riddles, its definition. Hook has been, by common consent, placed at the head of modern wits. When kings were kings, they bullied, beat, and and brow-beat their jesters. Now and then they treated them to a few years in the Tower for a little extra impudence. Now that the people are sovereign, the jester fares better—nay, too well. His books or his bon-mots are read with zest and grins; he is invited to his Grace's and implored to my Lord's; he is waited for, watched, pampered like a small Grand Lama, and, in one sentence, the greater the fool, the more fools he makes.

If Theodore Hook had lived in the stirring days of King Henry VIII., he would have sent Messrs. Patch and Co. sharply to the right-about, and been presented with the caps and bells after his first comic song. No doubt he was a jester, a fool in many senses, though he did not, like Solomon's fool, 'say in his heart' very much. He jested away even the practicals of life, jested himself into disgrace, into prison, into contempt, into the basest employment—that of a libeller tacked on to a party. He was a mimic, too, to whom none could send a challenge; an improvisatore, who beat Italians, Tyroleans, and Styrians hollow, sir, hollow. And lastly—oh! shame of the shuffle-tongued—he was, too, a punster. Yes, one who gloried in puns, a maker of pun upon pun, a man whose whole wit ran into a pun as readily as water rushes into a hollow, who could not keep out of a pun, let him loathe it or not, and who made some of the best and some of the worst on record, but still—puns.

If he was a wit withal, it was malgré soi, for fun, not for wit, was his 'aspiration.' Yet the world calls him a wit, and he has a claim to his niche. There were, it is true, many a man in his own set who had more real wit. There were James Smith, Thomas Ingoldsby, Tom Hill, and others. Out of his set, but of his time, there was Sydney Smith, ten times more a wit: but Theodore could amuse, Theodore could astonish, Theodore could be at home anywhere; he had all the impudence, all the readiness, all the indifference of a jester, and a jester he was.

Let any one look at his portrait, and he will doubt if this be the king's jester, painted by Holbein, or Mr. Theodore Hook, painted by Eddis. The short, thick nose, the long upper lip, the sensual, whimsical mouth, the twinkling eyes, all belong to the regular maker of fun. Hook was a certificated jester, with a lenient society to hear and applaud him, instead of an irritable tyrant to keep him in order: and he filled his post well. Whether he was more than a jester may well be doubted; yet Coleridge, when he heard him, said: 'I have before in my time met with men of admirable promptitude of intellectual power and play of wit, which, as Stillingfleet says:

"The rays of wit gild wheresoe'er they strike,"

but I never could have conceived such readiness of mind and resources of genius to be poured out on the mere subject and impulse of the moment.' The poet was wrong in one respect. Genius can in no sense be applied to Hook, though readiness was his chief charm.

The famous Theodore was born in the same year as Byron, 1788, the one on the 22nd of January, the other on the 22nd of September; so the poet was only nine months his senior. Hook, like many other wits, was a second son. Ladies of sixty or seventy well remember the name of Hook as that which accompanied their earliest miseries. It was in learning Hook's exercises, or primers, or whatever they were called, that they first had their fingers slapped over the piano-forte. The father of Theodore, no doubt, was the unwitting cause of much unhappiness to many a young lady in her teens. Hook père was an organist at Norwich. He came up to town, and was engaged at Marylebone Gardens and at Vauxhall; so that Theodore had no excuse for being of decidedly plebeian origin, and, Tory as he was, he was not fool enough to aspire to patricianism.

Theodore's family was, in real fact, Theodore himself. He made the name what it is, and raised himself to the position he at one time held. Yet he had a brother whose claims to celebrity are not altogether ancillary. James Hook was fifteen years older than Theodore. After leaving Westminster School he was sent to immortal Skimmery (St. Mary's Hall), Oxford, which has fostered so many great men—and spoiled them. He was advanced in the church from one preferment to another, and ultimately became Dean of Worcester. The character of the reverend gentleman is pretty well known, but it is unnecessary here to go into it farther. He is only mentioned as Theodore's brother in this sketch.[¹²] dabbler in literature, like his brother, but scarcely to the same extent a dabbler in wit.

The younger son of 'Hook's Exercises' developed early enough a taste for ingenious lying—so much admired in his predecessor—Sheridan, He 'fancied himself' a genius, and therefore, from school-age, not amenable to the common laws of ordinary men. Frequenters of the now fashionable prize-ring—thanks to two brutes who have brought that degraded pastime into prominent notice—will hear a great deal about a man 'fancying himself.' It is common slang and heeds little explanation. Hook 'fancied himself' from an early period, and continued to 'fancy himself,' in spite of repeated disgraces, till a very mature age. At Harrow, he was the contemporary, but scarcely the friend, of Lord Byron. No two characters could have been more unlike. Every one knows, more or less, what Byron's was; it need only be said that Hook's was the reverse of it in every respect. Byron felt where Hook laughed. Byron was morbid where Hook was gay. Byron abjured with disgust the social vices to which he was introduced; Hook fell in with them. Byron indulged in vice in a romantic way; Hook in the coarsest. There is some excuse for Byron, much as he has been blamed. There is little or no excuse for Hook, much as his faults have been palliated. The fact is that goodness of heart will soften, in men's minds, any or all misdemeanours. Hook, in spite of many vulgar witticisms and cruel jokes, seems to have had a really good heart.

I have it on the authority of one of Hook's most intimate friends, that he was capable of any act of kindness, and by way of instance of his goodness of heart, I am told by the same person that he on one occasion quitted all his town amusements to solace the spirit of a friend in the country who was in serious trouble. I, of course, refrain from giving names: but the same person informs me that much of his time was devoted in a like manner, to relieving, as far as possible, the anxiety of his friends, often, indeed, arising from his own carelessness. It is due to Hook to make this impartial statement before entering on a sketch of his 'Sayings and Doings,' which must necessarily leave the impression that he was a heartless man.

Old Hook, the father, soon perceived the value of his son's talents; and, determined to turn them to account, encouraged his natural inclination to song-writing. At the age of sixteen Theodore wrote a kind of comic opera, to which his father supplied the music. This was called 'The Soldier's Return.' It was followed by others, and young Hook, not yet out of his teens, managed to keep a Drury Lane audience alive, as well as himself and family. It must be remembered, however, that Liston and Matthews could make almost any piece amusing. The young author was introduced behind the scenes through his father's connection with the theatre, and often played the fool under the stage while others were playing it for him above it, practical jokes being a passion with him which he developed thus early. These tricks were not always very good-natured, which may be said of many of his jokes out of the theatre.

He soon showed evidence of another talent, that of acting as well as writing pieces. Assurance was one of the main features of his character, and to it he owed his success in society; but it is a remarkable fact, that on his first appearance before an audience he entirely lost all his nerve, turned pale, and could scarcely utter a syllable. He rapidly recovered, however, and from this time became a favourite performer in private theatricals, in which he was supported by Mathews and Mrs. Mathews, and some amateurs who were almost equal to any professional actors. His attempts were, of course, chiefly in broad farce and roaring burlesque, in which his comic face, with its look of mock gravity, and the twinkle of the eyes, itself excited roars of laughter. Whether he would have succeeded as well in sober comedy or upon public boards may well be doubted. Probably he would not have given to the profession that careful attention and entire devotion that are necessary to bring forward properly the highest natural talents. It is said that for a long time he was anxious to take to the stage as, a profession, but, perhaps—as the event seems to show—unfortunately for him, he was dissuaded from what his friends must have thought a very rash step, and in after years he took a violent dislike to the profession. Certainly the stage could not have offered more temptations than did the society in which he afterwards mixed; and perhaps under any circumstances Hook, whose moral education had been neglected, and whose principles were never very good, would have lived a life more or less vicious, though he might not have died as he did.

Hook, however, was not long in coming very prominently before the public in another capacity. Of all stories told about him, none are more common or more popular than those which relate to his practical jokes and hoaxes. Thank heaven, the world no longer sees amusement in the misery of others, and the fashion of such clever performance is gone out. It is fair, however, to premise, that while the cleverest of Hook's hoaxes were of a victimizing character, a large number were just the reverse, and his admirers affirm, not without some reason, that when he had got a dinner out of a person whom he did not know, by an ingenious lie, admirably supported, he fully paid for it in the amusement he afforded his host and the ringing metal of his wit. As we have all been boys—except those that were girls—and not all of us very good boys, we can appreciate that passion for robbery which began with orchards and passed on to knockers. It is difficult to sober middle-age to imagine what entertainment there can be in that breach of the eighth commandment, which is generally regarded as innocent. As Sheridan swindled in fun, so Hook, as a young man, robbed in fun, as hundreds of medical students and others have done before and since. Hook, however, was a proficient in the art, and would have made a successful 'cracksman' had he been born in the Seven Dials. He collected a complete museum of knockers, bell-pulls, wooden Highlanders, barbers' poles, and shop signs of all sorts. On one occasion he devoted a whole fortnight to the abstraction of a golden eagle over a shop window, by means of a lasso. A fellow dilettante in the art had confidentially informed him of its whereabouts, adding that he himself despaired of ever obtaining it. At length Hook invited his friend to dinner, and on the removal of the cover of what was supposed to be the joint, the work of art appeared served up and appropriately garnished. Theodore was radiant with triumph; but the friend, probably thinking that there ought to be honour among thieves, was highly indignant at being thus surpassed.

Another achievement of this kind was the robbery of a life-sized Highlander, who graced the door of some unsuspecting tobacconist. There was little difficulty in the mere displacement of the figure; the troublesome part of the business was to get the bare legged Celt home to the museum, where probably many a Lilliputian of his race was already awaiting him. A cloak, a hat, and Hook's ready wit effected the transfer. The first was thrown over him, the second set upon his bonneted head, and a passing hackney coach hailed by his captor, who before the unsuspecting driver could descend, had opened the door, pushed in the prize, and whispered to Jehu, 'My friend—very respectable man but rather tipsy.' How he managed to get him out again at the end of the journey we are not told.

Hook was soon a successful and valuable writer of light pieces for the stage. But farces do not live, and few of Hook's are now favourites with a public which is always athirst for something new. The incidents of most of the pieces—many of them borrowed from the French—excited laughter by their very improbability; but the wit which enlivened them was not of a high order, and Hook, though so much more recent than Sheridan, has disappeared before him.

But his hoaxes were far more famous than his collection of curiosities, and quite as much to the purpose; and the imprudence he displayed in them was only equalled by the quaintness of the humour which suggested them. Who else would have ever thought, for instance, of covering a white horse with black wafers, and driving it in a gig along a Welsh high-road, merely for the satisfaction of being stared at? It was almost worthy of Barnum. Or who, with less assurance, could have played so admirably on the credulity of a lady and daughters fresh from the country as he did, at the trial of Lord Melville? The lady, who stood next to him, was, naturally, anxious to understand the proceedings, and betrayed her ignorance at once by a remark which she made to her daughter about the procession of the Lords into the House. When the bishops entered in full episcopal costume, she applied to Hook to know who were 'those gentlemen?' 'Gentlemen,' quoth Hook, with charming simplicity; 'ladies, I think you mean; at any rate, those are the dowager peeresses in their own right.' Question followed question as the procession came on, and Theodore indulged his fancy more and more. At length the Speaker, in full robes, became the subject of inquiry. 'And pray, sir, who is that fine looking person?'—'That, ma'am, is Cardinal Wolsey,' was the calm and audacious reply. This was too much even for Sussex; and the lady drew herself up in majestic indignation. 'We know better than that, sir,' she replied: 'Cardinal Wolsey has been dead many a good year.' Theodore was unmoved. 'No such thing, my dear madam,' he answered, without the slightest sign of perturbation: 'I know it has been generally reported so in the country, but without the slightest foundation; the newspapers, you know, will say anything.'

But the hoax of hoaxes, the one which filled the papers of the time for several days, and which, eventually, made its author the very prince of hoaxsters, if such a term can be admitted, was that of Berners Street. Never, perhaps, was so much trouble expended, or so much attention devoted, to so frivolous an object. In Berners Street there lived an elderly lady, who, for no reason that can be ascertained, had excited the animosity of the young Theodore Hook, who was then just of age. Six weeks were spent in preparation, and three persons engaged in the affair. Letters were sent off in every direction, and Theodore Hook's autograph, if it could have any value, must have been somewhat low in the market at that period, from the number of applications which he wrote. On the day in question he and his accomplices seated themselves at a window in Berners Street, opposite to that unfortunate Mrs. Tottenham, of No 54, and there enjoyed the fun. Advertisements, announcements, letters, circulars, and what not, had been most freely issued, and were as freely responded to. A score of sweeps, all 'invited to attend professionally,' opened the ball at a very early hour, and claimed admittance, in virtue of the notice they had received. The maid-servant had only just time to assure them that all the chimneys were clean, and their services were not required, when some dozen of coal-carts drew up as near as possible to the ill-fated house. New protestations, new indignation. The grimy and irate coalheavers were still being discoursed with, when a bevy of neat and polite individuals arrived from different quarters, bearing each under his arm a splendid ten-guinea wedding-cake. The maid grew distracted; her mistress was single, and had no intention of doubling herself; there must be some mistake; the confectioners were dismissed, in a very different humour to that with which they had come. But they were scarcely gone when crowds began to storm the house, all 'on business.' Rival doctors met in astonishment and disgust, prepared for an accouchement; undertakers stared one another mutely in the face, as they deposited at the door coffins made to order—elm or oak—so many feet and so many inches; the clergymen of all the neighbouring parishes, high church or low church, were ready to minister to the spiritual wants of the unfortunate moribund, but retired in disgust when they found that some forty fishmongers had been engaged to purvey 'cod's head and lobsters' for a person professing to be on the brink of the grave.

The street now became the scene of fearful distraction. Furious tradesmen of every kind were ringing the house-bell, and rapping the knocker for admittance—such, at least, as could press through the crowd as far as the house. Bootmakers arrived with Hessians and Wellingtons—'as per order'—or the most delicate of dancing-shoes for the sober old lady; haberdashers had brought the last new thing in evening dress, 'quite the fashion,' and 'very chaste:' hat-makers from Lincoln and Bennett down to the Hebrew vendor in Marylebone Lane, arrived with their crown-pieces; butchers' boys, on stout little nags, could not get near enough to deliver the legs of mutton which had been ordered; the lumbering coal-carts 'still stopped the way.' A crowd—the easiest curiosity in the world to collect—soon gathered round the motley mob of butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, and makers and sellers of everything else that mortal can want; the mob thronged the pavement, the carts filled the road, and soon the carriages of the noble of the land dashed up in all the panoply of state, and a demand was made to clear the way for the Duke of Gloucester, for the Governor of the Bank, the Chairman of the East India Company, and last, but, oh! not least, the grandee whose successor the originator of the plot afterwards so admirably satirized—the great Lord Mayor himself. The consternation, disgust, and terror of the elderly female, the delight and chuckling of Theodore and his accomplices, seated at a window on the opposite side of the road, 'can be more easily imagined than described;' but what were the feelings of tradesmen, professional men, gentlemen, noblemen, and grand officials, who had been summoned from distant spots by artful lures to No. 54, and there battled with a crowd in vain only to find that there were hoaxed; people who had thus lost both time and money, can be neither described nor imagined. It was not the idea of the hoax—simple enough in itself—which was entitled to the admiration accorded to ingenuity, but its extent and success, and the clever means taken by the conspirators to insure the attendance of every one who ought not to have been there. It was only late at night that the police succeeded in clearing the street, and the dupes retired, murmuring and vowing vengeance. Hook, however, gloried in the exploit, which he thought 'perfect.'

But the hoaxing dearest to Theodore—for there was something to be gained by it—-was that by which he managed to obtain a dinner when either too hard-up to pay for one, or in the humour for a little amusement. No one who has not lived as a bachelor in London and been reduced—-in respect of coin—to the sum of twopence-halfpenny, can tell how excellent a strop is hunger to sharpen wit upon. We all know that

'Mortals with stomachs can't live without dinner;'

and in Hook's day the substitute of 'heavy teas' was not invented. Necessity is very soon brought to bed, when a man puts his fingers into his pockets, finds them untenanted, and remembers that the only friend who would consent to lend him five shillings is gone out of town; and the infant, Invention, presently smiles into the nurse's face. But it was no uncommon thing in those days for gentlemen to invite themselves where they listed, and stay as long as they liked. It was only necessary for them to make themselves really agreeable, and deceive their host in some way or other. Hook's friend, little Tom Hill, of whom it was said that he knew everybody's affairs far better than they did themselves, was famous for examining kitchens about the hour of dinner, and quietly selecting his host according to the odour of the viands. It is of him that the old 'Joe Miller' is told of the 'haunch of venison.' Invited to dinner at one house, he happens to glance down into the kitchen of the next, and seeing a tempting haunch of venison on the spit, throws over the inviter, and ingratiates himself with his neighbour, who ends by asking him to stay to dinner. The fare, however, consisted of nothing more luxurious than an Irish stew, and the disappointed guest was informed that he had been 'too cunning by half,' inasmuch as the venison belonged to his original inviter, and had been cooked in the house he was in by kind permission, because the chimney of the owner's kitchen smoked.

The same principle often actuated Theodore; and, indeed, there are few stories which can be told of this characteristic of the great frolicker, which have not been told a century of times.

For instance: two young men are strolling, towards 5 P.M., in the then fashionable neighbourhood of Soho; the one is Terry, the actor—the other, Hook, the actor, for surely he deserves the title. They pass a house, and sniff the viands cooking underground. Hook quietly announces his intention of dining there. He enters, is admitted and announced by the servant, mingles with the company, and is quite at home before he is perceived by the host. At last the dénouement came; the dinner-giver approached the stranger, and with great politeness asked his name. 'Smith' was, of course, the reply, and reverting to mistakes made by servants in announcing, &c., 'Smith' hurried off into an amusing story, to put his host in good humour. The conversation that followed is taken from 'Ingoldsby':—

'But, really, my dear sir,' the host put in, 'I think the mistake on the present occasion does not originate in the source you allude to; I certainly did not anticipate the honour of Mr. Smith's company to-day.'

'No, I dare say not. You said four in your note, I know, and it is now, I see, a quarter past five; but the fact is, I have been detained in the City, as I was going to explain—'

'Pray,' said the host, 'whom do you suppose you are addressing?'

'Whom? why Mr. Thompson, of course, old friend of my father. I have not the pleasure, indeed, of being personally known to you, but having received your kind invitation yesterday,' &c. &c.

'No, sir, my name is not Thompson, but Jones,' in highly indignant accents.

'Jones!' was the well-acted answer: 'why, surely, I cannot have—yes I must—good heaven! I see it all. My dear sir, what an unfortunate blunder; wrong house—what must you think of such an intrusion? I am really at a loss for words in which to apologize; you will permit me to retire at present, and to-morrow—'

'Pray, don't think of retiring,' rejoined the host, taken with the appearance and manner of the young man. 'Your friend's table must have been cleared long ago, if, as you say, four was the hour named, and I am too happy to be able to offer you a seat at mine.'

It may be easily conceived that the invitation had not to be very often repeated, and Hook kept the risible muscles of the company upon the constant stretch, and paid for the entertainment in the only coin with which he was well supplied.

There was more wit, however, in his visit to a retired watchmaker, who had got from government a premium of £10,000 for the best chronometer. Hook was very partial to journeys in search of adventure; a gig, a lively companion, and sixpence for the first turnpike being generally all that was requisite; ingenuity supplied the rest. It was on one of these excursions, that Hook and his friend found themselves in the neighbourhood of Uxbridge, with a horse and a gig, and not a sixpence to be found in any pocket. Now a horse and gig are property, but of what use is a valuable of which you cannot dispose or deposit at a pawnbroker's, while you are prevented proceeding on your way by that neat white gate with the neat white box of a house at its side? The only alternative left to the young men was to drive home again, dinnerless, a distance of twenty miles, with a jaded horse, or to find gratuitous accommodation for man and beast. In such a case Sheridan would simply have driven to the first inn, and by persuasion or stratagem contrived to elude payment, after having drunk the best wine and eaten the best dinner the house could afford. Hook was really more refined, as well as bolder in his pillaging.

The villa of the retired tradesman was perceived, and the gig soon drew up before the door. The strangers were ushered in to the watchmaker, and Hook, with great politeness and a serious respectful look, addressed him. He said that he felt he was taking a great liberty—so he was—but that he could not pass the door of a man who had done the country so much service by the invention of what must prove the most useful and valuable instrument, without expressing to him the gratitude which he, as a British subject devoted to his country's good, could not but feel towards the inventor, &c. &c. The flattery was so delicately and so seriously insinuated, that the worthy citizen could only receive it as an honest expression of sincere admiration. The Rubicon was passed; a little lively conversation, artfully made attractive by Hook, followed, and the watchmaker was more and more gratified. He felt, too, what an honour it would be to entertain two real gentlemen, and remarking that they were far from town, brought out at last the longed-for invitation, which was, of course, declined as out of the question. Thereupon the old gentleman became pressing: the young strangers were at last prevailed upon to accept it, and very full justice they did to the larder and cellar of the successful chronometer-maker.

There is nothing very original in the act of hoaxing, and Hook's way of getting a hackney-coach without paying for it, was, perhaps, suggested by Sheridan's, but was more laughable. Finding himself in the vehicle, and knowing that there was nothing either in his purse or at home to pay the fare, he cast about for expedients, and at last remembered the address of an eminent surgeon in the neighbourhood. He ordered the coachman to drive to his house and knock violently at the door, which was no sooner opened than Hook rushed in, terribly agitated, demanded to see the doctor, to whom in a few incoherent and agitated sentences, he gave to understand that his wife needed his services, immediately, being on the point of becoming a mother.

'I will start directly,' replied the surgeon; 'I will order my carriage at once.'

'But, my dear sir, there is not a moment to spare. I have a coach at the door, jump into that.'

The surgeon obeyed. The name and address given were those of a middle-aged spinster of the most rigid virtue. We can imagine her indignation, and how sharply she rung the bell, when the surgeon had delicately explained the object of his visit, and how eagerly he took refuge in the coach. Hook had, of course, walked quietly away in the meantime, and the Galenite had to pay the demand of Jehu.

The hoaxing stories of Theodore Hook are numberless. Hoaxing was the fashion of the day, and a childish fashion too. Charles Mathews, whose face possessed the flexibility of an acrobat's body, and who could assume any character or disguise on the shortest notice, was his great confederate in these plots. The banks of the Thames were their great resort. At one point there was Mathews talking gibberish in a disguise intended to represent the Spanish Ambassador, and actually deceiving the Woolwich authorities by his clever impersonation. At another, there was Hook landing uninvited with his friends upon the well-known, sleek-looking lawn of a testy little gentleman, drawing out a note-book and talking so authoritatively about the survey for a canal, to be undertaken by Government, that the owner of the lawn becomes frightened, and in his anxiety attempts to conciliate the mighty self-made official by the offer of dinner—of course accepted.

THEODORE HOOK'S ENGINEERING FROLIC

Then the Arcades ambo show off their jesting tricks at Croydon fair, a most suitable place for them. On one occasion Hook personates a madman, accusing Mathews, 'his brother,' of keeping him out of his rights and in his custody. The whole fair collects around them, and begins to sympathise with Hook, who begs them to aid in his escape from his 'brother.' A sham escape and sham capture take place, and the party adjourn to the inn, where Mathews, who had been taken by surprise by the new part suddenly played by his confederate, seized upon a hearse, which drew up before the inn, on its return from a funeral, persuaded the company to bind the 'madman,' who was now becoming furious, and who would have deposited him in the gloomy vehicle, if he had not succeeded in snapping his fetters, and so escaped. In short, they were two boys, with the sole difference, that they had sufficient talent and experience of the world to maintain admirably the parts they assumed.

But a far more famous and more admirable talent in Theodore than that of deception was that of improvising. The art of improvising belongs to Italy and the Tyrol. The wonderful gift of ready verse to express satire, and ridicule, seems, as a rule, to be confined to the inhabitants of those two lands. Others are, indeed, scattered over the world, who possess this gift, but very sparsely. Theodore Hook stands almost alone in this country as an improviser. Yet to judge of such of his verses as have been preserved, taken down from memory or what not, the grand effect of them—and no doubt it was grand—must have been owing more to his manner and his acting, than to any intrinsic value in the verses themselves, which are, for the most part, slight, and devoid of actual wit, though abounding in puns. Sheridan's testimony to the wonderful powers of the man is, perhaps, more valuable than that of any one else, for he was a good judge both of verse and of wit. One of Hook's earliest displays of his talent was at a dinner given by the Drury Lane actors to Sheridan at the Piazza Coffee House in 1808. Here, as usual, Hook sat down to the piano, and touching off a few chords, gave verse after verse on all the events of the entertainment, on each person present, though he now saw many of them for the first time, and on anything connected with the matters of interest before them. Sheridan was delighted, and declared that he could not have believed such a faculty possible if he had not witnessed its effects: that no description 'could have convinced him of so peculiar an instance of genius,' and so forth.

One of his most extraordinary efforts in this line is related by Mr. Jerdan. A dinner was given by Mansell Reynolds to Lockhart, Luttrell, Coleridge, Hook, Tom Hill, and others. The grown-up schoolboys, pretty far gone in Falernian, of a home-made, and very homely vintage, amused themselves by breaking the wine-glasses, till Coleridge was set to demolish the last of them with a fork thrown at it from the side of the table. Let it not be supposed that any teetotal spirit suggested this inconoclasm, far from it—the glasses were too small, and the poets, the wits, the punsters, the jesters, preferred to drink their port out of tumblers. After dinner Hook gave one of his songs which satirized successively, and successfully, each person present. He was then challenged to improvise on any given subject, and by way of one as far distant from poetry as could be, cocoa-nut oil was fixed upon. Theodore accepted the challenge; and after a moment's consideration began his lay with a description of the Mauritius, which he knew so well, the negroes dancing round the cocoa-nut tree, the process of extracting the oil, and so forth, all in excellent rhyme and rhythm, if not actual poetry. Then came the voyage to England, hits at the Italian warehousemen, and so on, till the oil is brought into the very lamp before them in that very room, to show them with the light it feeds and make them able to break wine-glasses and get drunk from tumblers. This we may be sure Hook himself did, for one, and the rest were probably not much behind him.

In late life this gift of Hook's—improvising I mean, not getting intoxicated—was his highest recommendation in society, and at the same time his bane. Like Sheridan, he was ruined by his wonderful natural powers. It can well be imagined that to improvise in the manner in which Hook did it, and at a moment's notice, required some effort of the intellect. This effort became greater as circumstances depressed his spirits more and more and yet with every care upon his mind, he was expected, wherever he went, to amuse the guests with a display of his talent. He could not do so without stimulants, and rather than give up society, fell into habits of drinking, which hastened his death.

We have thrown together the foregoing anecdotes of Hook, irrespective of time, in order to show what the man's gifts were, and what his title to be considered a wit. We must proceed more steadily to a review of his life. Successful as Hook had proved as a writer for the stage, he suddenly and without any sufficient cause rushed off into another branch of literature, that of novel-writing. His first attempt in this kind of fiction was 'The Man of Sorrow,' published under the nom de plume of Alfred Allendale. This was not, as its name would seem to imply, a novel of pathetic cast, but the history of a gentleman whose life from beginning to end is rendered wretched by a succession of mishaps of the most ludicrous but improbable kind. Indeed Theodore's novels, like his stage-pieces, are gone out of date in an age so practical that even in romance it will not allow of the slightest departure from reality. Their very style was ephemeral, and their interest could not outlast the generation to amuse which they were penned. This first novel was written when Hook was one-and-twenty. Soon after he was sent to Oxford, where he had been entered at St. Mary's Hall, more affectionately known by the nickname of 'Skimmery.' No selection could have been worse. Skimmery was, at that day, and, until quite recently, a den of thieves, where young men of fortune and folly submitted to be pillaged in return for being allowed perfect licence, as much to eat as they could possibly swallow, and far more to drink than was at all good for them. It has required all the enterprise of the present excellent Principal to convert it into a place of sober study. It was then the most 'gentlemanly' residence in Oxford; for a gentleman in those days meant a man who did nothing, spent his own or his father's guineas with a brilliant indifference to consequences, and who applied his mind solely to the art of frolic. It was the very place where Hook would be encouraged instead of restrained in his natural propensities, and had he remained there he would probably have ruined himself and his father long before he had put on the sleeves.

At the matriculation itself he gave a specimen of his 'fun.'

When asked, according to the usual form, 'if he was willing to sign the Thirty-nine Articles,' he replied, 'Certainly, sir, forty if you please.' The gravity of the stern Vice-Chancellor was upset, but as no Oxford Don can ever pardon a joke, however good, Master Theodore was very nearly being dismissed, had not his brother, by this time a Prebendary of Winchester, and 'an honour to his college, sir,' interceded in his favour.

The night before, he had given a still better specimen of his effrontery. He had picked up a number of old Harrovians, with whom he had repaired to a tavern for song, supper, and sociability, and as usual in such cases, in the lap of Alma Mater, the babes became sufficiently intoxicated, and not a little uproarious. Drinking in a tavern is forbidden by Oxonian statutes, and one of the proctors happening to pass in the street outside, was attracted into the house by the sound of somewhat unscholastic merriment. The effect can be imagined. All the youths were in absolute terror, except Theodore, and looked in vain for some way to escape. The wary and faithful 'bulldogs' guarded the doorway; the marshal, predecessor of the modern omniscient Brown, advanced respectfully behind the proctor into the room, and passing a penetrating glance from one youth to the other, all of whom—except Theodore again—he knew by sight—for that is the pride and pleasure of a marshal—mentally registered their names in secret hopes of getting half-a-crown a-piece to forget them again.

No mortal is more respectful in his manner of accosting you than an Oxford proctor, for he may make a mistake, and a mistake may make him very miserable. When, for instance, a highly respectable lady was the other day lodged, in spite of protestations, in the 'Procuratorial Rooms,' and there locked up on suspicion of being somebody very different, the over-zealous proctor who had ordered her incarceration was sued for damages for £300, and had to pay them too! Therefore the gentleman in question most graciously and suavely inquired of Mr. Theodore Hook—

'I beg your pardon, sir, but are you a member of this university?'—the usual form.

'No, sir, I am not. Are you?'

The suavity at once changed to grave dignity. The proctor lifted up the hem of his garment, which being of broad velvet, with the selvage on it, was one of the insignia of his office, and sternly said,—'You see this, sir.'

'Ah!' said Hook, cool as ever, and quietly feeling the material, which he examined with apparent interest, 'I see; Manchester velvet: and may I take the liberty, sir, of inquiring how much you have paid per yard for the article?'

A roar of laughter from all present burst forth with such vehemence that it shot the poor official, red with suppressed anger, into the street again, and the merrymakers continued their bout till the approach of midnight, when they were obliged to return to their respective colleges.

Had Theodore proceeded in this way for several terms, no doubt the outraged authorities would have added his name to the list of the great men whom they have expelled from time to time most unprophetically. As it was, he soon left the groves of Academus, and sought those of Fashion in town. His matriculation into this new university was much more auspicious; he was hailed in society as already fit to take a degree of bachelor of his particular arts, and ere long his improvising, his fun, his mirth—as yet natural and over-boiling—his wicked punning, and his tender wickedness, induced the same institution to offer him the grade of 'Master' of those arts. In after years he rose to be even 'Doctor,' and many, perhaps, were the minds diseased to which his well-known mirth ministered.

It was during this period that some of his talents were displayed in the manner we have described, though his great fame as an improvisatore was established more completely in later days. Yet he had already made himself a name in that species of wit—not a very high one—which found favour with the society of that period. We allude to imitation, 'taking off,' and punning. The last contemptible branch of wit-making, now happily confined to 'Punch,' is as old as variety of language. It is not possible with simple vocabularies, and accordingly is seldom met with in purely-derived languages. Yet we have Roman and Greek puns; and English is peculiarly adapted to this childish exercise, because, being made up of several languages, it necessarily contains many words which are like in sound and unlike in meaning. Punning is, in fact, the vice of English wit, the temptation of English mirth-makers, and, at last, we trust, the scorn of English good sense. But in Theodore's day it held a high place, and men who had no real wit about them could twist and turn words and combinations of words with great ingenuity and much readiness, to the delight of their listeners. Pun-making was a fashion among the conversationists of that day, and took the place of better wit. Hook was a disgraceful punster, and a successful one. He strung puns together by the score—nothing more easy—in his improvised songs and conversation. Take an instance from his quiz on the march of intellect:—

'Hackney-coachmen from Swift shall reply, if you feel

Annoyed at being needlessly shaken;

And butchers, of course, be flippant from Steele,

And pig-drivers well versed in Bacon.

From Locke shall the blacksmiths authority brave,

And gas-men cite Coke at discretion;

Undertakers talk Gay as they go to the grave,

And watermen Rowe by profession.'

I have known a party of naturally stupid people produce a whole century of puns one after another, on any subject that presented itself, and I am inclined to think that nothing can, at the same time, be more nauseous, or more destructive to real wit. Yet Theodore's strength lay in puns, and when shorn of them, the Philistines might well laugh at his want of strength. Surely his title to wit does not lie in that direction.

However, he amused, and that gratis; and an amusing man makes his way anywhere if he have only sufficient tact not to abuse his privileges. Hook grew great in London society for a time, and might have grown greater if a change had not come.

He had supported himself, up to 1812, almost entirely by his pen: and the goose-quill is rarely a staff, though it may sometimes be a walking-stick. It was clear that he needed—what so many of us need and cannot get—a certainty. Happy fellow! he might have begged for an appointment for years in vain, as many another does, but it fell into his lap, no one knows how, and at four-and-twenty Mr. Theodore Edward Hook was made treasurer to the Island of Mauritius, with a salary of £2,000 per annum. This was not to be, and was not, despised. In spite of climate, mosquitoes, and so forth, Hook took the money and sailed.

We have no intention of entering minutely upon his conduct in this office, which has nothing to do with his character as a wit. There are a thousand and one reasons for believing him guilty of the charges brought against him, and a thousand and one for supposing him guiltless. Here was a young man, gay, jovial, given to society entirely, and not at all to arithmetic, put into a very trying and awkward position—native clerks who would cheat if they could, English governors who would find fault if they could, a disturbed treasury, an awkward currency, liars for witnesses, and undeniable evidence of defalcation. In a word, an examination was made into the state of the treasury of the island, and a large deficit found. It remained to trace it home to its original author.

Hook had not acquired the best character in the island. Those who know the official dignity of a small British colony can well understand how his pleasantries must have shocked those worthy big-wigs who, exalted from Pump Court, Temple, or Paradise Row, Old Brompton, to places of honour and high salaries, rode their high horses with twice the exclusiveness of those 'to the manner born.' For instance, Hook was once, by a mere chance, obliged to take the chair at an official dinner, on which occasion the toasts proposed by the chairman were to be accompanied by a salute from guns without. Hook went through the list, and seemed to enjoy toast-drinking so much that he was quite sorry to have come to the end of it, and continued, as if still from the list, to propose successively the health of each officer present. The gunners were growing quite weary, but having their orders, dared not complain. Hook was delighted, and went on to the amazement and amusement of all who were not tired of the noise, each youthful sub, taken by surprise, being quite gratified at the honour done him. At last there was no one left to toast; but the wine had taken effect, and Hook, amid roars of laughter inside, and roars of savage artillery without, proposed the health of the waiter who had so ably officiated. This done, he bethought him of the cook, who was sent for to return thanks; but the artillery officer had by this time got wind of the affair, and feeling that more than enough powder had been wasted on the health of gentlemen who were determined to destroy it by the number of their potations, took on himself the responsibility of ordering the gunners to stop.

On another occasion he incurred the displeasure of the governor, General Hall, by fighting a duel—fortunately as harmless as that of Moore and Jeffrey—

'When Little's leadless pistol met his eye,

And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by,'

as Byron says. The governor was sensible enough to wish to put down the 'Gothic appeal to arms,' and was therefore the more irate.

These circumstances must be taken into consideration in Hook's favour in examining the charge of embezzlement. It must also be stated that the information of the deficit was sent in a letter to the governor by a man named Allan, chief clerk in the Treasury, who had, for irregular conduct, been already threatened with dismissal. Allan had admitted that he had known of the deficit for fifteen months, and yet he had not, till he was himself in trouble, thought of making it known to the proper authorities. Before his examination, which of course followed, could be concluded, Allan committed suicide. Now, does it not, on the face of it, seem of the highest probability that this man was the real delinquent, and that knowing that Hook had all the responsibility, and having taken fair precautions against his own detection, he had anticipated a discovery of the affair by a revelation, incriminating the treasurer? Quien sabe;—dead men tell no tales.

The chest, however, was examined, and the deficit found far greater yet than had been reported. Hook could not explain, could not understand it at all; but if not criminal, he had necessarily been careless. He was arrested, thrown into prison, and by the first vessel despatched to England to take his trial, his property of every kind having been sold for the Government. Hook, in utter destitution, might be supposed to have lost his usual spirits, but he could not resist a joke. At St. Helena he met an old friend going out to the Cape, who, surprised at seeing him on his return voyage after a residence of only five years, said: 'I hope you are not going home for your health.'—'Why,' said Theodore, 'I am sorry to say they think there is something wrong in the chest. Something wrong in the chest' became henceforward the ordinary phrase in London society in referring to Hook's scrape.

Arrived in England, he was set free, the Government here having decided that he could not be criminally tried; and thus Hook, guilty or not, had been ruined and disgraced for life for simple carelessness. True, the custody of a nation's property makes negligence almost criminal; but that does not excuse the punishment of a man before he is tried.

He was summoned, however, to the Colonial Audit Board, where he underwent a trying examination; after which he was declared to be in the debt of Government: a writ of extent was issued against him; nine months were passed in that delightful place of residence—a Sponging-house, which he then exchanged for the 'Rules of the Bench'—the only rules which have no exception. From these he was at last liberated, in 1825, on the understanding that he was to repay the money to Government if at any time he should be in a position to do so.

His liberation was a tacit acknowledgment of his innocence of the charge of robbery; his encumberment with a debt caused by another's delinquencies was, we presume, a signification of his responsibility and some kind of punishment for his carelessness. Certainly it was hard upon Hook, that, if innocent, he should not have gone forth without a stain on his character for honesty; and it was unjust, that, if guilty, he should not have been punished. The judgment was one of those compromises with stern justice which are seldom satisfactory to either party.

The fact was that, guilty or not guilty, Hook had been both incompetent and inconsiderate. Doubtless he congratulated himself highly on receiving, at the age of twenty-five, an appointment worth £2,000 a year in the paradise of the world; but how short-sighted his satisfaction, since this very appointment left him some ten years later a pauper to begin life anew with an indelible stain on his character. It was absurd to give so young a man such a post; but it was absolutely wrong in Hook not to do his utmost to carry out his duties properly. Nay, he had trifled with the public money in the same liberal—perhaps a more liberal—spirit as if it had been his own—made advances and loans here and there injudiciously, and taken little heed of the consequences. Probably, at this day, the common opinion acquits Hook of a designed and complicated fraud; but common opinion never did acquit him of misconduct, and even by his friends this affair was looked upon with a suspicion that preferred silence to examination.

But why take such pains to exonerate Hook from a charge of robbery, when he was avowedly guilty of as bad a sin, of which the law took no cognizance, and which society forgave far more easily than it could have done for robbing the State? Soon after his return from the Mauritius, he took lodgings in the cheap, but unfashionable neighbourhood of Somers Town. Here, in the moment of his misfortune, when doubting whether disgrace, imprisonment, or what not awaited him, he sought solace in the affection of a young woman, of a class certainly much beneath his, and of a character unfit to make her a valuable companion to him. Hook had received little moral training, and had he done so, his impulses were sufficiently strong to overcome any amount of principle. With this person—to use the modern slang which seems to convert a glaring sin into a social misdemeanour—'he formed a connection.' In other words, he destroyed her virtue. Hateful as such an act is, we must, before we can condemn a man for it without any recommendation to mercy, consider a score of circumstances which have rendered the temptation stronger, and the result almost involuntary. Hook was not a man of high moral character—very far from it—but we need not therefore suppose that he sat down coolly and deliberately, like a villain in a novel, to effect the girl's ruin. But the Rubicon once passed, how difficult is the retreat! There are but two paths open to a man, who would avoid living a life of sin: the one, to marry his victim; the other, to break off the connection before it is too late. The first is, of course, the more proper course; but there are cases where marriage is impossible. From the latter a man of any heart must shrink with horror. Yet there are cases, even, where the one sin will prove the least—where she who has loved too well may grieve bitterly at parting, yet will be no more open to temptation than if she had never fallen. Such cases are rare, and it is not probable that the young person with whom Hook had become connected would have retrieved the fatal error. She became a mother, and there was no retreat. It is clear that Hook ought to have married her. It is evident that he was selfish and wrong not to do so;—yet he shrank from it, weakly, wickedly, and he was punished for his shrinking. He had sufficient feeling not to throw his victim over, yet he was content to live a life of sin, and to keep her in such a life. This is perhaps the blackest stain on Hook's character. When Fox married, in consequence of a similar connection, he 'settled down,' retrieved his early errors, and became a better man, morally, than he had ever been. Hook ought to have married. It was the cowardly dread of public opinion that deterred him from doing so, and, in consequence, he was never happy, and felt that this connection was a perpetual burden to him.

Wrecked and ruined, Hook had no resource but his literary talents, and it is to be deplored that he should have prostituted these to serve an ungentlemanly and dishonourable party in their onslaught upon an unfortunate woman. Whatever may be now thought of the queen of 'the greatest gentleman'—or roue—of Europe, those who hunted her down will never be pardoned, and Hook was one of those. We have cried out against an Austrian general for condemning a Hungarian lady to the lash, and we have seen, with delight, a mob chase him through the streets of London and threaten his very life. But we have not only pardoned, but even praised, our favourite wit for far worse conduct than this. Even if we allow, which we do not, chat the queen was one half as bad as her enemies, or rather her husband's parasites, would make her out, we cannot forgive the men who, shielded by their incognito, and perfectly free from danger of any kind, set upon a woman with libels, invectives, ballads, epigrams, and lampoons, which a lady could scarcely read, and of which a royal lady, and many an English gentlewoman, too, were the butts.

The vilest of all the vile papers of that day was the 'John Bull,' now settled down to a quiet periodical. Perhaps the real John Bull, heavy, good-natured lumberer as he is, was never worse represented than in this journal which bore his name, but had little of his kindly spirit. Hook was its originator, and for a long time its main supporter. Scurrility, scandal, libel, baseness of all kinds formed the fuel with which it blazed, and the wit, bitter, unflinching, unsparing, which puffed the flame up, was its chief recommendation.

No more disgraceful climax was ever reached by a disgraceful dynasty of profligates than that which found a King of England—long, as Regent, the leader of the profligate and degraded—at war with his injured Queen. None have deserved better the honest gratitude of their country than those who, like Henry Brougham, defended the oppressed woman in spite of opposition, obloquy, and ridicule.

But we need not go deeply into a history so fresh in the minds of all, as that blot which shows John Bull himself upholding a wretched dissipated monarch against a wife, who, whatever her faults, was still a woman, and whatever her spirit—for she had much of it, and showed it grandly at need—was still a lady. Suffice it to say that 'John Bull' was the most violent of the periodicals that attacked her, and that Theodore Hook, no Puritan himself, was the principal writer in that paper.

If you can imagine 'Punch' turned Conservative, incorporated in one paper with the 'Morning Herald,' so that a column of news was printed side by side with one of a jocular character, and these two together devoted without principle to the support of a party, the attack of Whiggism, and an unblushing detraction of the character of one of our princesses, you can form some idea of what 'John Bull' was in those days. There is, however, a difference: 'Punch' attacks public characters, and ridicules public events; 'John Bull' dragged out the most retired from their privacy, and attacked them with calumnies for which, often, there was no foundation. Then, again, 'Punch' is not nearly so bitter as was 'John Bull:' there is not in the 'London Charivari' a determination to say everything that spite can invent against any particular set or party; there is a good nature, still, in master 'Punch.' It was quite the reverse in 'John Bull,' established for one purpose, and devoted to that. Yet the wit in Theodore's paper does not rise much higher than that of our modern laughing philosopher.

Of Hook's contributions the most remarkable was the 'Ramsbottom Letters,' in which Mrs. Lavinia Dorothea Ramsbottom describes all the memory billions of her various tours at home and abroad, always, of course, with more or less allusion to political affairs. The 'fun' of these letters is very inferior to that of 'Jeames' or of the 'Snob Papers,' and consists more in Malaprop absurdities and a wide range of bad puns, than in any real wit displayed in them. Of the style of both, we take an extract anywhere:—

'Oh! Mr. Bull, Room is raley a beautiful place. We entered it by the Point of Molly, which is just like the Point and Sally at Porchmouth, only they call Sally there Port, which is not known in Room. The Tiber is a nice river, it looks yellow, but it does the same there as the Thames does here. We hired a carry-lettz and a cocky-olly, to take us to the Church of Salt Peter, which is prodigious big; in the centre of the pizarro there is a basilisk very high, on the right and left two handsome foundlings; and the farcy, as Mr. Fulmer called it, is ornamented with collateral statutes of some of the Apostates.'

We can quite imagine that Hook wrote many of these letters when excited by wine. Some are laughable enough, but the majority are so deplorably stupid, reeking with puns and scurrility, that when the temporary interest was gone, there was nothing left to attract the reader. It is scarcely possible to laugh at the Joe-Millerish mistakes, the old world puns, and the trite stories of Hook 'remains.' Remains! indeed; they had better have remained where they were.

Besides prose of this kind, Hook contributed various jingles—there is no other name for them—arranged to popular tunes, and intended to become favourites with the country people. These like the prose effusions, served the purpose of an hour, and have no interest now. Whether they were ever really popular remains to be proved. Certes, they are forgotten now, and long since even in the most Conservative corners of the country. Many of these have the appearance of having been originally recitati, and their amusement must have depended chiefly on the face and manner of the singer—Hook himself; but in some he displayed that vice of rhyming which has often made nonsense go down, and which is tolerable only when introduced in the satire of a 'Don Juan' or the first-rate mimicry of 'Rejected Addresses.' Hook had a most wonderful facility in concocting out-of-the-way rhymes, and a few verses from his song on Clubs will suffice for a good specimen of his talent:—

'If any man loves comfort, and has little cash to buy it, he

Should get into a crowded club—a most select society;

While solitude and mutton-cutlets serve infelix uxor, he

May have his club (Like Hercules), and revel there in luxury.

Bow, wow, wow, &c.

'Yes, clubs knock houses on the head; e'en Hatchett's can't demolish them;

Joy grieves to see their magnitude, and Long longs to abolish them.

The inns are out; hotels for single men scarce keep alive on it;

While none but houses that are in the family way thrive on it.

Bow, wow, wow, &c.

'There's first the Athenaeum Club, so wise, there's not a man of it,

That has not sense enough for six (in fact, that is the plan of it);

The very waiters answer you with eloquence Socratical;

And always place the knives and forks in order mathematical.

Bow, wow, wow, &c.

---

'E'en Isis has a house in town, and Cam abandons her city.

The master now hangs out at the Trinity University.

---

'The Union Club is quite superb; its best apartment daily is,

The lounge of lawyers, doctors, merchants, beaux, cum multis aliis.

---

'The Travellers are in Pall Mall, and smoke cigars so cosily,

And dream they climb the highest Alps, or rove the plains of Moselai.

---

'These are the stages which all men propose to play their parts upon,

For clubs are what the Londoners have clearly set theirheartsupon.

Bow, wow, wow, tiddy-iddy-iddy-iddy, bow, wow, wow, &c.

This is one of the harmless ballads of 'Bull.' Some of the political ones are scarcely fit to print in the present day. We cannot wonder that ladies of a certain position gave out that they would not receive any one who took in this paper. It was scurrilous to the last degree, and Theodore Hook was the soul of it. He preserved his incognito so well, that in spite of all attempts to unearth him, it was many years before he could be certainly fixed upon as a writer in its columns. He even went to the length of writing letters and articles against himself, in order to disarm suspicion.

Hook now lived and thrived purely on literature. He published many novels—gone where the bad novels go, and unread in the present day, unless in some remote country town, which boasts only a very meagre circulating library. Improbability took the place of natural painting in them; punning supplied that of better wit; and personal portraiture was so freely used, that his most intimate friends—old Mathews, for instance—did not escape.

Meanwhile Hook, making a good fortune, returned to his convivial life, and the enjoyment—if enjoyment it be—of general society. He 'threw out his bow window' on the strength of his success with 'John Bull,' and spent much more than he had. He mingled freely in all the London circles of thirty years ago, whose glory is still fresh in the minds of most of us, and everywhere his talent as an improvisatore, and his conversational powers, made him a general favourite.

Unhappy popularity for Hook! He, who was yet deeply in debt to the nation—who had an illegitimate family to maintain, who owed in many quarters more than he could ever hope to pay—was still fool enough to entertain largely, and receive both nobles and wits in the handsomest manner. Why did he not live quietly? why not, like Fox, marry the unhappy woman whom he had made the mother of his children, and content himself with trimming vines and rearing tulips? Why, forsooth? because he was Theodore Hook, thoughtless and foolish to the last. The jester of the people must needs be a fool. Let him take it to his conscience that he was not as much a knave.

In his latter years Hook took to the two dissipations most likely to bring him into misery—play and drink. He was utterly unfitted for the former, being too gay a spirit to sit down and calculate chances. He lost considerably, and the more he lost the more he played. Drinking became almost a necessity with him. He had a reputation to keep up in society, and had not the moral courage to retire from it altogether. Writing, improvising, conviviality, play, demanded stimulants. His mind was overworked in every sense. He had recourse to the only remedy, and in drinking he found a temporary relief from anxiety, and a short-lived sustenance. There is no doubt that this man, who had amused London circles for many years, hastened his end by drinking.

It is not yet thirty years since Theodore Hook died. He left the world on August the 24th, 1841, and by this time he remains in the memory of men only as a wit that was, a punster, a hoaxer, a sorry jester, with an ample fund of fun, but not as a great man in any way. Allowing everything for his education—the times he lived in, and the unhappy error of his early life—we may admit that Hook was not, in character, the worst of the wits. He died in no odour of sanctity, but he was not a blasphemer or reviler, like others of this class. He ignored the bond of matrimony, yet he remained faithful to the woman he had betrayed; he was undoubtedly careless in the one responsible office with which he was intrusted, yet he cannot be taxed, taking all in all, with deliberate peculation. His drinking and playing were bad—very bad. His improper connection was bad—very bad; but perhaps the worst feature in his career was his connection with 'John Bull,' and his ready giving in to a system of low libel. There is no excuse for this but the necessity of living; but Hook, had he retained any principle, might have made enough to live upon in a more honest manner. His name does, certainly, not stand out well among the wits of this country, but after all, since all were so bad, Hook may be excused as not being the worst of them. Requiescat in pace.

[SYDNEY SMITH.]

The 'Wise Wit.'—Oddities of the Father.—Verse-making at Winchester.— Curate Life on Salisbury Plain.—Old Edinburgh.—Its Social and Architectural Features.—Making Love Metaphysically.—The Old Scottish Supper.—The Men of Mark passing away—-The Band of Young Spirits.— Brougham's Early Tenacity.—Fitting up Conversations.—'Old School' Ceremonies.—The Speculative Society.—A Brilliant Set.—Sydney's Opinion of his Friends.—Holland House.—Preacher at the 'Foundling.'—Sydney's 'Grammar of Life.'—The Picture Mania.—A Living Comes at Last.—The wit's Ministry.—The Parsonage House at Foston-le-Clay.—Country Quiet. The Universal Scratcher.—Country Life and Country Prejudice.—The Genial Magistrate.—Glimpse of Edinburgh Society.—Mrs. Grant of Laggan. A Pension Difficulty.—Jeffrey and Cockburn.—Craigcrook.—Sydney Smith's Cheerfulness.—His Rheumatic Armour.—No Bishopric.—Becomes Canon of St. Paul's.—Anecdotes of Lord Dudley.—A Sharp Reproof.—Sydney's Classification of Society.—Last Strokes of Humour.

Smith's reputation—to quote from Lord Cockburn's 'Memorial of Edinburgh'—'here, then, was the same as it has been throughout his life, that of a wise wit.' A wit he was, but we must deny him the reputation of being a beau. For that, nature, no less than his holy office, had disqualified him. Who that ever beheld him in a London drawing-room, when he went to so many dinners that he used to say he was a walking patty—who could ever miscall him a beau? How few years have we numbered since one perceived the large bulky form in canonical attire—the plain, heavy face, large, long, unredeemed by any expression, except that of sound hard sense—and thought, 'can this be the Wit?' How few years is it since Henry Cockburn, hating London, and coming but rarely to what he called the 'devil's drawing room,' stood near him, yet apart, for he was the most diffident of men; his wonderful luminous eyes, his clear, almost youthful, vivid complexion, contrasting brightly with the gray, pallid, prebendal complexion of Sydney? how short a time since Francis Jeffery, the smallest of great men, a beau in his old age, a wit to the last, stood hat in hand to bandy words with Sydney ere he rushed off to some still gayer scene, some more fashionable circle: yet they are all gone—gone from sight, living in memory alone.

Perhaps it was time: they might have lived, indeed, a few short years longer; we might have heard their names amongst us; listened to their voices; gazed upon the deep hazel, ever-sparkling eyes, that constituted the charm of Cockburn's handsome face, and made all other faces seem tame and dead: we might have marvelled at the ingenuity, the happy turns of expression, the polite sarcasm of Jeffrey; we might have revelled in Sydney Smith's immense natural gift of fun, and listened to the 'wise wit,' regretting with Lord Cockburn, that so much worldly wisdom seemed almost inappropriate in one who should have been in some freer sphere than within the pale of holy orders: we might have done this, but the picture might have been otherwise. Cockburn, whose intellect rose, and became almost sublime, as his spirit neared death, might have sunk into the depression of conscious weakness; Jeffery might have repeated himself, or turned hypochondriacal; Sydney Smith have grown garrulous: let us not grieve; they went in their prime of intellect, before one quality of mind had been touched by the frostbite of age.

Sydney Smith's life is a chronicle of literary society. He was born in 1771, and he died in 1845. What a succession of great men does that period comprise! Scott, Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Dugald Stewart, Homer, Brougham and Cockburn were his familiars—a constellation which has set, we fear, for ever. Our world presents nothing like it: we must look back, not around us, for strong minds, cultivated up to the nicest point. Our age is too diffused, too practical for us to hope to witness again so grand a spectacle.

From his progenitors Sydney Smith inherited one of his best gifts, great animal spirits—the only spirits one wants in this racking life of ours; and his were transmitted to him by his father. That father, Mr. Robert Smith, was odd as well as clever. His oddities seem to have been coupled with folly but that of Sydney was soberized by thought, and swayed by intense common sense. The father had a mania for buying and altering places: one need hardly say that he spoiled them. Having done so, he generally sold them; and nineteen various places were thus the source of expense to him, and of injury to the pecuniary interests of his family.

This strange spendthrift married a Miss Olier, a daughter of a French emigrant, from Languedoc. Every one may remember the charming attributes given by Miss Kavanagh, in her delicious tale, 'Nathalie,' to the French women of the South. This Miss Olier seems to have realized all one's ideas of the handsome, sweet-tempered, high-minded Southrons of la belle France. To her Sydney Smith traced his native gaiety; her beauty did not, certainly, pass to him as well as to some of her other descendants. When Talleyrand was living in England as an emigrant, on intimate terms with Robert Smith, Sydney's brother, or Bobus, as he was called by his intimates, the conversation turned one day on hereditary beauty. Bobus spoke of his mother's personal perfections: 'Ah, mon ami,' cried Talleyrand, c'était apparemment, monsieur: volre père qui n'était pas bien.'

This Bobus was the schoolfellow at Eton of Canning and Frere; and with John Smith and those two youths, wrote the 'Microcosm.' Sydney, on the other hand, was placed on the Foundation, at Winchester, which was then a stern place of instruction for a gay, spirited, hungry boy. Courtenay, his younger brother, went with him, but ran away twice. To owe one's education to charity was, in those days, to be half starved. Never was there enough, even of the coarsest food, to satisfy the boys, and the urchins, fresh from home, were left to fare as they might. 'Neglect, abuse, and vice were,' Sydney used to say, 'the pervading evils of Winchester; and the system of teaching, if one may so call it, savoured of the old monastic narrowness.... I believe, when a boy at school, I made above ten thousand Latin verses, and no man in his senses would dream of ever making another in after-life. So much for life and time wasted.' The verse-inciting process is, nevertheless, remorselessly carried on during three years more at Oxford and is much oftener the test of patient stupidity than of aspiring talent, Yet of what stupendous importance it is in the attainment of scholarships and prizes; and how zealous, how tenacious, are dons and 'coaches' in holding to that which far higher classics, the Germans, regard with contempt!

Sydney's proficiency promoted him to be captain of the school, and he left Winchester for New College, Oxford—-one of the noblest and most abused institutions then of that grand university. Having obtained a scholarship, as a matter of course, and afterwards a fellowship, he remarked that the usual bumpers of port wine at college were as much the order of the day among the Fellows as Latin verses among the undergraduates. We may not, however, picture to ourselves Sydney as partaking of the festivities of the common room; with more probability let us imagine him wandering with steady gait, even after Hall—a thing not even then or now certain in colleges—in those evergreen, leafy, varied gardens, flanked by that old St. Peter's church on the one side, and guarded by the high wall, once a fortification, on the other. He was poor, and therefore safe, for poverty is a guardian angel to an undergraduate, and work may protect even the Fellow from utter deterioration.

He was turned out into the world by his father with his hundred a year from the Fellowship, and never had a farthing from the old destroyer of country-seats afterwards. He never owed a sixpence; nay, he paid a debt of thirty pounds, which Courtenay, who had no iron in his character, had incurred at Winchester, and had not the courage to avow. The next step was to choose a profession. The bar would have been Sydney's choice; but the church was the choice of his father. It is the cheapest channel by which a man may pass into genteel poverty; 'wit and independence do not make bishops,' as Lord Cockburn remarks. We do not, however, regard, as he does, Sydney Smith as 'lost' by being a churchman. He was happy, and made others happy; he was good, and made others good. Who can say the same of a successful barrister, or of a popular orator? His first sphere was in a curacy on Salisbury Plain; one of his earliest clerical duties was to marry his brother Robert (a barrister) to Miss Vernon, aunt to Lord Lansdowne. 'All I can tell you of the marriage,' Sydney wrote to his mother, 'is that he cried, she cried, I cried.' It was celebrated in the library at Bowood, where Sydney so often enchanted the captivating circle afterwards by his wit.

Nothing could be more gloomy than the young pastor's life on Salisbury Plain: 'the first and poorest pauper of the hamlet,' as he calls a curate, he was seated down among a few scattered cottages on this vast flat; visited even by the butcher's cart only once a week from Salisbury; accosted by few human beings; shunned by all who loved social life. But the probation was not long; and after being nearly destroyed by a thunder-storm in one of his rambles, he quitted Salisbury Plain, after two years, for a more genial scene.

There was an hospitable squire, a Mr. Beach, living in Smith's parish; the village of Netherhaven, near Amesbury. Mr. Beach had a son; the quiet Sundays at the Hall were enlivened by the curate's company at dinner, and Mr. Beach found his guest both amusing and sensible, and begged him to become tutor to the young squire. Smith accepted; and went away with his pupil, intending to visit Germany. The French Revolution was, however, at its height. Germany was impracticable, and 'we were driven,' Sydney wrote to his mother, 'by stress of politics, into Edinburgh.'

This accident,—this seeming accident,—was the foundation of Sydney Smith's opportunities; not of his success, for that his own merits procured, but of the direction to which his efforts were applied. He would have been eminent, wherever destiny had led him; but he was thus made to be useful in one especial manner; 'his lines had, indeed, fallen in pleasant places.'

Edinburgh, in 1797, was not, it is almost needless to say, the Edinburgh of 1860. An ancient, picturesque, high-built looking city, with its wynds and closes, it had far more the characteristics of an old French ville de province than of a northern capital. The foundation-stone of the new College was laid in 1789, but the building was not finished until more than forty years afterwards. The edifice then stood in the midst of fields and gardens. 'Often.' writes Lord Cockburn, 'did we stand to admire the blue and yellow crocuses rising through the clean earth in the first days of spring, in the house of Doctor Monro (the second), whose house stood in a small field entering from Nicolson Street, within less than a hundred yards from the college.'

The New Town was in progress when Sydney Smith and his pupil took refuge in 'Auld Reekie.' With the rise of every street some fresh innovation in manners seemed also to begin. Lord Cockburn, wedded as he was to his beloved Reekie, yet unprejudiced and candid on all points, ascribes the change in customs to the intercourse with the English, and seems to date it from the Union. Thus the overflowing of the old town into fresh spaces, 'implied,' as he remarks, 'a general alteration of our habits.'

As the dwellers in the Faubourg St. Germain regard their neighbours across the Seine, in the Faubourg St. Honoré, with disapproving eyes, so the sojourners in the Canongate and the Cowgate considered that the inundation of modern population vulgarized their 'prescriptive gentilities.' Cockburn's description of a Scottish assembly in the olden time is most interesting.

'For example, Saint Cecilia's Hall was the only public resort of the musical; and besides being our most selectly fashionable place of amusement, was the best and most beautiful concert-room I have ever seen. And there have I myself seen most of our literary and fashionable gentlemen, predominating with their side curls and frills, and ruffles, and silver buckles; and our stately matrons stiffened in hoops, and gorgeous satin; and our beauties with high-heeled shoes, powdered and pomatumed hair, and lofty and composite head-dresses. All this was in the Cowgate; the last retreat now-a-days of destitution and disease. The building still stands, through raised and changed. When I last saw it, it seemed to be partly an old-clothesman's shop and partly a brazier's.' Balls were held in the beautiful rooms of George Square, in spite of the 'New Town piece of presumption,' that is, an attempt to force the fashionable dancers of the reel into the George Street apartments.

'And here,' writes Lord Cockburn, looking back to the days when he was that 'ne'er-do-weel' Harry Cockburn, 'were the last remains of the ball-room discipline of the preceding age. Martinet dowagers and venerable beaux acted as masters and mistresses of ceremonies, and made all the preliminary arrangements. No couple could dance unless each party was provided with a ticket prescribing the precise place, in the precise dance. If there was no ticket, the gentleman or the lady was dealt with as an intruder, and turned out of the dance. If the ticket had marked upon it—-say for a country-dance, the figures, 3, 5; this meant that the holder was to place himself in the 3rd dance, and 5th from the top; and if he was anywhere else, he was set right or excluded. And the partner's ticket must correspond. Woe on the poor girl who with ticket 2, 7, was found opposite a youth marked 5, 9! It was flirting without a licence, and looked very ill, and would probably be reported by the ticket director of that dance to the mother.'

All this had passed away; and thus the aristocracy of a few individuals was ended; and society, freed from some of its restraints, flourished in another and more enlightened way than formerly.

There were still a sufficient number of peculiarities to gratify one who had an eye to the ludicrous. Sydney Smith soon discovered that it is a work of time to impart a humorous idea to a true Scot. 'It requires,' he used to say, 'a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding.' 'They are so embued with metaphysics, that they even make love metaphysically. I overheard a young lady of my acquaintance, at a dance in Edinburgh, exclaim in a sudden pause of the music, "What you say, my Lord, is very true of love in the abstract, but,—" here the fiddlers began fiddling furiously, and the rest was lost.' He was, however, most deeply touched by the noble attribute of that nation which retains what is so rare—the attribute of being true friends. He did ample justice to their kindliness of heart. 'If you meet with an accident,' he said, 'half Edinburgh immediately flocks to your doors to inquire after your pure hand, or your pure foot.' 'Their temper,' he observed, 'stands anything but an attack on their climate; even Jeffrey cannot shake off the illusion that myrtles flourish at Craig Crook.' The sharp reviewer stuck to his myrtle allusions, and treated Smith's attempts with as much contempt as if he had been a 'wild visionary, who had never breathed his caller air,' nor suffered under the rigours of his climate, nor spent five years in 'discussing metaphysics and medicine in that garret end of the earth,—that knuckle end of England—that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur,' as Smith termed Scotland.

During two years he braved the winters, in which he declared hackney-coaches were drawn by four horses on account of the snow; where men were blown flat down on the face by the winds; and where even 'experienced Scotch fowls did not dare to cross the streets, but sidled along, tails aloft, without venturing to encounter the gale.' He luxuriated, nevertheless, in the true Scotch supper, than which nothing more pleasant and more unwholesome has ever been known in Christendom. Edinburgh is said to have been the only place where people dined twice a day. The writer of this memoir is old enough to remember the true Scottish Attic supper before its final 'fading into wine and water,' as Lord Cockburn describes its decline. 'Suppers,' Cockburn truly says, 'are cheaper than dinners,' and Edinburgh, at that time, was the cheapest place in Great Britain. Port and sherry were the staple wines: claret, duty free in Scotland until 1780, was indeed beginning to be a luxury; it was no longer the ordinary beverage, as it was when as Mackenzie, the author of the 'Man of Feeling,' described—it used, upon the arrival of a cargo, to be sent through the town on a cart with a horse before it, so that every one might have a sample, by carrying a jug to be filled for sixpence: still even at the end of the eighteenth century it was in frequent use. Whisky toddy and plotty (red wine mulled with spices) came into the supper-room in ancient flagons or stoups after a lengthy repast of broiled chickens, roasted moorfowl, pickled mussels, flummery, and numerous other good things had been discussed by a party who ate as if they had not dined that day. 'We will eat,' Lord Cockburn used to say after a long walk, 'a profligate supper,'—a supper without regard to discretion, or digestion; and he usually kept his word.

In Edinburgh, Sydney Smith formed the intimate acquaintance of Lord Jeffrey, and that acquaintance ripened into a friendship only closed by death. The friendship of worthy, sensible men he looked upon as one of the greatest pleasures in life.

The 'old suns,' Lord Cockburn tells us, 'were setting when the band of great thinkers and great writers who afterwards concocted the "Edinburgh Review," were rising into celebrity.' Principal Robertson, the historian, had departed this life in 1793, a kindly old man. With beaming eyes underneath his frizzed and curled wig, and a trumpet tied with a black ribbon to the button-hole of his coat, for he was deaf, this most excellent of writers showed how he could be also the most zealous of diners. Old Adam Ferguson, the historian of Rome, had 'set,' also: one of the finest specimens of humanity had gone from among his people in him. Old people, not thirty years ago, delighted to tell you how 'Adam,' when chaplain to the Black Watch, that glorious 42nd, refused to retire to his proper place, the rear, during an action, but persisted in being engaged in front. He was also gone; and Dugald Stewart filled his vacant place in the professorship of moral philosophy. Dr. Henry, the historian, was also at rest; after a long laborious life, and the compilation of a dull, though admirable History of England, the design of which, in making a chapter on arts, manners, and literature separate from the narrative, appears to have suggested to Macaulay his inimitable disquisition on the same topics. Dr. Henry showed to a friend a pile of books which he had gone through, merely to satisfy himself and the world as to what description of trousers was worn by the Saxons. His death was calm as his life. 'Come out to me directly,' he wrote to his friend, Sir Harry Moncrieff: 'I have got something to do this week; I have got to die.'

It was in 1801, that Dugald Stewart began his course of lectures on political economy. Hitherto all public favour had been on the side of the Tories, and independence of thought was a sure way to incur discouragement from the Bench, in the Church, and from every Government functionary. Lectures on political economy were regarded as innovations; but they formed a forerunner of that event which had made several important changes in our literary and political hemisphere: the commencement of the 'Edinburgh Review.' This undertaking was the work of men who were separated from the mass of their brother-townsmen by their politics; their isolation as a class binding them the more closely together by links never broken, in a brotherhood of hope and ambition, to which the natural spirits of Sydney Smith, of Cockburn, and of Jeffrey, gave an irresistible charm.

Among those who the most early in life ended a career of promise was Francis Horner. He was the son of a linen-draper in Edinburgh; or, as the Scotch call it, following the French, a merchant. Homer's best linen for sheets, and table-cloths, and all the under garments of housekeeping, are still highly esteemed by the trade.

'My desire to know Horner,' Sydney Smith states, 'arose from my being cautioned against him by some excellent and feeble-minded people to whom I brought letters of introduction, and who represented him as a person of violent political opinions.' Sydney Smith interpreted this to mean that Horner was a man who thought for himself; who loved truth better than he loved Dundas (Lord Melville), then the tyrant of Scotland. 'It is very curious to consider,' Sydney Smith wrote, in addressing Lady Holland, in 1817, 'in what manner Horner gained, in so extraordinary a degree, the affections of such a number of persons of both sexes, all ages, parties, and ranks in society; for he was not remarkably good tempered, nor particularly lively and agreeable; and an inflexible politician on the unpopular side. The causes are, his high character for probity, honour, and talents; his fine countenance; the benevolent interest he took in the concerns of all his friends; his simple and gentlemanlike manners; his untimely death.' 'Grave, studious, honourable, kind, everything Horner did,' says Lord Cockburn, 'was marked by thoughtfulness and kindness;' a beautiful character, which was exhibited but briefly to his contemporaries, but long remembered after his death.

Henry Brougham was another of the Edinburgh band of young spirits. He was educated in the High School under Luke Fraser, the tutor who trained Walter Scott and Francis Jeffrey. Brougham used to be pointed out 'as the fellow who had beat the master.' He had dared to differ with Fraser, a hot pedant, on some piece of Latinity. Fraser, irritated, punished the rebel, and thought the matter ended. But the next day 'Harry,' as they called him, appeared, loaded with books, renewed the charge, and forced Luke to own that he was beaten. 'It was then,' says Lord Cockburn, 'that I first saw him.'

After remaining two years in Edinburgh, Sydney Smith went southwards to marry a former schoolfellow of his sister Maria's—a Miss Pybus, to whom he had been attached and engaged at a very early period of his life. The young lady, who was of West Indian descent, had some fortune; but her husband's only stock, on which to begin housekeeping, consisted of six silver tea-spoons, worn away with use. One day he rushed into the room and threw these attenuated articles into her lap—'There, Kate, I give you all my fortune, you lucky girl!'

With the small dôt, and the thin silver-spoons, the young couple set up housekeeping in the 'garret end of the earth.' Their first difficulty was to know how money could be obtained to begin with, for Mrs. Smith's small fortune was settled on herself by her husband's wish. Two rows of pearls had been given her by her thoughtful mother. These she converted into money, and obtained for them £500. Several years afterwards, when visiting the shop at which she sold them, with Miss Vernon and Miss Fox, Mrs. Smith saw her pearls, every one of which she knew. She asked what was the price. '£1,500,' was the reply.

The sum, however, was all important to the thrifty couple. It distanced the nightmare of the poor and honest,—debt. £750 was presented by Mr. Beach, in gratitude for the care of his son, to Smith. It was invested in the funds, and formed the nucleus of future savings,—'Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte' is a trite saying. 'C'est le premier pas qui gagne, might be applied to this and similar cases. A little daughter—Lady Holland, the wife of the celebrated physician, Sir Henry Holland—was sent to bless the sensible pair. Sydney had wished that she might be born with one eye, so that he might never lose her; nevertheless, though she happened to be born with two, he bore her secretly from the nursery, a few hours after her birth, to show her in triumph to the future Edinburgh Reviewers.

The birth of the 'Edinburgh Review' quickly followed that of the young lady. Jeffrey,—then an almost starving barrister, living in the eighth or ninth flat of a house in Buccleuch Place,—Brougham, and Sydney Smith were the triumvirate who propounded the scheme, Smith being the first mover. He proposed a motto: 'Tenui Musam meditanum avenir:' We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal; but this being too near the truth, they took their motto from Publius Syrus; 'of whom,' said Smith, 'none of us had, I am sure, read a single line.' To this undertaking Sydney Smith devoted his talents for more than twenty-eight years.

Meantime, during the brief remainder of his stay in Edinburgh, his circumstances improved. He had done that which most of the clergy are obliged to do—taken a pupil. He had now another, the son of Mr. Gordon, of Ellon; for each of these young men he received £400 a year. He became to them a father and a friend; he entered into all their amusements. One of them saying that he could not find conversation at the balls for his partners, 'Never mind,' cried Sydney Smith, 'I'll fit you up in five minutes.' Accordingly he wrote down conversations for them amid bursts of laughter.

Thus happily did years, which many persons would have termed a season of adversity, pass away. The chance which brought him to Edinburgh introduced him to a state of society never likely to be seen again in Scotland. Lord Cockburn's 'Memorials' afford an insight into manners, not only as regarded suppers, but on the still momentous point, of dinners. Three o'clock was the fashionable hour, so late as the commencement of the present century. That hour, 'not without groans and predictions,' became four—and four was long and conscientiously adhered to. 'Inch by inch,' people yielded, and five continued to be the standard polite hour from 1806 to 1820. 'Six has at length prevailed.'

The most punctilious ceremony existed. When dinner was announced, a file of ladies went first in strict order of precedence. 'Mrs. Colonel Such an One;' 'Mrs. Doctor Such an One,' and so on. Toasts were de rigueur: no glass of wine was to be taken by a guest without comprehending a lady, or a covey of ladies. 'I was present,' says Lord Cockburn, 'when the late Duke of Buccleuch took a glass of sherry by himself at the table of Charles Hope, then Lord Advocate, and this was noticed as a piece of ducal contempt.' Toasts, and when the ladies had retired, rounds of toasts, were drunk. 'The prandial nuisance,' Lord Cockburn wrote, 'was horrible. But it was nothing to what followed.'

At these repasts, though less at these than at boisterous suppers, a frequent visitor at the same table with Sydney Smith was the illustrious Sir James Mackintosh, a man to whose deep-thinking mind the world is every day rendering justice. The son of a brave officer, Mackintosh was born on the banks of Loch Ness: his mother, a Miss Fraser, was aunt to Mrs. Fraser Tytler, wife of Lord Woodhouselee, one of the judges of the Court of Session and mother of the late historian of that honoured name.

Mackintosh had been studying at Aberdeen, in the same classes with Robert Hall, whose conversation, he avowed, had a great influence over his mind. He arrived in Edinburgh about 1784, uncertain to what profession to belong; somewhat anxious to be a bookseller, in order to revel in 'the paradise of books;' he turned his attention, however, to medicine, and became a Brunonian, that is, a disciple of John Brown, the founder of a theory which he followed out to the extent in practice. The main feature of the now defunct system, which set scientific Europe in a blaze, seems to have been a mad indulgence of the passions; and an unbridled use of intoxicating liquors. Brown fell a victim to his vices. Years after he had been laid in his grave, his daughter, Euphemia, being in great indigence, received real kindness from Sir James and Lady Mackintosh, the former of whom used to delight in telling the story of her father's saying to her: 'Effy, bring me the mooderate stimulus of a hoonderd draps o' laudanum in a glass o' brandy.'

Mackintosh had not quitted Edinburgh when Sydney Smith reached it. Smith became a member of the famous Speculative Society. Their acquaintance was renewed years afterwards in London. Who can ever forget the small, quiet dinners given by Mackintosh when living out of Parliament, and out of office in Cadogan Place? Simple but genial were those repasts, forming a strong contrast to the Edinburgh dinners of yore. He had then long given up both the theory and practice of the Brunonians, and took nothing but light French and German wines, and these in moderation. His tall, somewhat high-shouldered, massive form; his calm brow, mild, thoughtful; his dignity of manner; his gentleness to all; his vast knowledge; his wonderful appreciation of excellence; his discrimination of faults—all combined to form one of the finest specimens ever seen, even in that illustrious period, of a philosopher and historian.

Jeffrey and Cockburn were contrasts to one whom they honoured. Jeffrey, 'the greatest of British critics,' was eight years younger than Mackintosh, having been born in 1773. He was the son of one of the depute clerks to the Supreme Court, not an elevated position, though one of great respectability. When Mackintosh and Sydney Smith first knew him in Edinburgh, he was enduring, with all the impatience of his sensitive nature, what he called 'a slow, obscure, philosophical starvation' at the Scotch bar.

'There are moments,' he wrote, 'when I think I could sell myself to the ministers or to the devil, in order to get above these necessities.' Like all men so situated, his depression came in fits. Short, spare, with regular, yet not aristocratic features;—speaking, brilliant, yet not pleasing eyes;—a voice consistent with that mignon form;—a somewhat precise and anxious manner, there was never in Jeffrey that charm, that abandon, which rendered his valued friend, Henry Cockburn, the most delightful, the most beloved of men, the very idol of his native city.

The noble head of Cockburn, bald, almost in youth, with its pliant, refined features, and its fresh tint upon a cheek always clear, generally high in colour, was a strong contrast to the rigid petitesse of Jeffrey's physiognomy; much more so to the large proportions of Mackintosh; or to the ponderous, plain, and, later in life, swarthy countenance of Sydney Smith. Lord Webb Seymour, the brother of the late Duke of Somerset, gentle, modest, intelligent,—Thomas Thomson, the antiquary,—and Charles and George Bell, the surgeon and the advocate,— Murray, afterwards Lord Murray, the generous pleader, who gave up to its rightful heirs an estate left him by a client,—and Brougham—formed the staple of that set now long since extinct.

It was partially broken up by Sydney Smith's coming, in 1803, to London. He there took a house in Doughty Street, being partial to legal society, which was chiefly to be found in that neighbourhood.

Here Sir Samuel Romilly, Mackintosh, Scarlett (Lord Abinger), the eccentric and unhappy Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, 'Conversation' Sharp, Rogers, and Luttrell, formed the circle in which Sidney delighted. He was still very poor, and obliged to sell the rest of his wife's jewels; but his brother Robert allowed him £100 a year, and lent him, when he subsequently removed into Yorkshire, £500.

He had now a life of struggling, but those struggles were the lot of his early friends also; Mackintosh talked of going to India as a lecturer; Smith recommended Jeffrey to do the same. Happily, both had the courage and the sense to await for better times at home; yet Smith's opinion of Mackintosh was, that 'he never saw so theoretical a head which contained so much practical understanding;' and to Jeffrey he wrote:

'You want nothing to be a great lawyer, and nothing to be a great speaker, but a deeper voice—slower and more simple utterance—more humility of face and neck—and a greater contempt for esprit than men who have so much in general attain to.'

The great event of Sydney Smith's first residence in London was his introduction at Holland House; in that 'gilded room which furnished,' as he said, 'the best and most agreeable society in the world,' his happiest hours were passed. John Allen, whom Smith had introduced to Lord Holland was the peer's librarian and friend. Mackintosh, who Sydney Smith thought only wanted a few bad qualities to get on in the world, Rogers, Luttrell, Sheridan, Byron, were among the 'suns' that shone, where Addison had suffered and studied.

Between Lord Holland and Sydney Smith the most cordial friendship existed; and the eccentric and fascinating Lady Holland was his constant correspondent. Of this able woman, it was said by Talleyrand: 'Elle est toute assertion; mais quand on demande la preuve c'est là son sécret' Of Lord Holland, the keen diplomatist observed: 'Cest la bienveillance même, mais la bienveillance la plus perturbatrice, qu'on ait jamais vue.'

Lord Holland did not commit the error ascribed by Rogers, in his Recollections, to Marlay, Bishop of Waterford, who when poor, with an income of only £400 a year, used to give the best dinners possible; but, when made a bishop, enlarged his table, and lost his fame-had no more good company—there was an end of his enjoyment: he had lords and ladies to his table—foolish people—foolish men—and foolish women—and there was an end of him and us. 'Lord Holland selected his lords and ladies, not for their rank, but for their peculiar merits or acquirements.' Then even Lady Holland's oddities were amusing. When she wanted to get rid of a fop, she used to say: 'I beg your pardon, but I wish you would sit a little farther off; there is something on your handkerchief which I don't quite like.' Or when a poor man happened to stand, after the fashion of the lords of creation, with his back close to the chimney-piece, she would cry out, 'Have the goodness, sir, to stir the fire.'

Lord Holland never asked any one to dinner, ('not even me,' says Rogers, 'whom he had known so long,') without asking Lady Holland. One day, shortly before his lordship's death, Rogers was coming out from Holland House when he met him. 'Well, do you return to dinner?' I answered. 'No, I have not been invited.' The precaution, in fact, was necessary, for Lord Holland was so good-natured and hospitable that he would have had a crowd daily at his table had he been left to himself.

The death of Lord Holland completely broke up the unrivalled dinners, and the subsequent evenings in the 'gilded chamber.' Lady Holland, to whom Holland House was left for her life-time, declined to live there. With Holland House, the mingling of aristocracy with talent; the blending ranks by force of intellect; the assembling not only of all the celebrity that Europe could boast, but of all that could enhance private enjoyment, had ceased. London, the most intelligent of capitals, possesses not one single great house in which pomp and wealth are made subsidiary to the true luxury of intellectual conversation.

On the morning of the day when Lord Holland's last illness began, these lines were written by him, and found after his death on his dressing-table:—

'Nephew of Fox, and Friend of Grey,

Sufficient for my fame,

If those who know me best shall say

I tarnished neither name.'

Of him his best friend, Sydney Smith, left a short but discriminative character. 'There was never (amongst other things he says) a better heart, or one more purified from all the bad passions—more abounding in charity and compassion—or which seemed to be so created as a refuge to the helpless and oppressed.'

Meantime Sydney Smith's circumstances were still limited; £50 a year as evening preacher to the Foundling Hospital was esteemed as a great help by him. The writer of this memoir remembers an amusing anecdote related of him at the table of an eminent literary character by a member of Lord Woodhouselee's family, who had been desirous to obtain for Sydney the patronage of the godly. To this end she persuaded Robert Grant and Charles Grant (afterwards Lord Glenelg) to go to the Foundling to hear him, she hoped to advantage; to her consternation he broke forth into so familiar a strain, couched in terms so bordering on the jocose,—though no one had deeper religious convictions than he had,—that the two saintly brothers listened in disgust. They forgot how South let loose the powers of his wit and sarcasm; and how the lofty-minded Jeremy Taylor applied the force of humour to lighten the prolixity of argument. Sydney Smith became, nevertheless, a most popular preacher; but the man who prevents people from sleeping once a week in their pews is sure to be criticised.

Let us turn to him, however, as a member of society. His circle of acquaintance was enlarged, not only by his visits to Holland House, but by his lectures on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution. Sir Robert Peel, not the most impressionable of men, but one whose cold shake of the hand is said—as Sydney Smith said of Sir James Mackintosh—'to have come under the genus Mortmain' was a very young man at the time when Albemarle Street was crowded with carriages from one end of the street to the other, in consequence of Sydney Smith's lectures; yet he declared that he had never forgotten the effect given to the speech of Logan, the Indian chief, by Sydney's voice and manner.

His lectures produced a sum sufficient for Sydney to furnish a house in Orchard Street. Doughty Street—raised to celebrity as having been the residence, not only of Sydney Smith, but of Charles Dickens—was too far for the habitué of Holland House and the orator of Albemarle Street long to sojourn there. In Orchard Street, Sydney enjoyed that domestic comfort which he called 'the grammar of life;' delightful suppers, to about twenty or thirty persons, who came and went as they pleased. A great part of the same amusing and gifted set used to meet once a week also at Sir James Mackintosh's, at a supper, which, though not exactly Cowper's 'radish and an egg,' was simple, but plentiful—yet most eagerly sought after. 'There are a few living,' writes Sydney Smith's daughter, 'who can look back to them, and I have always found them do so with a sigh of regret.'

One night, a country cousin of Sydney Smith's was present at a supper. 'Now, Sydney,' whispered the simple girl, 'I know all these are very remarkable people; do tell me who they are.'—'Oh, yes; there's Hannibal,' pointing to a grave, dry, stern man, Mr. Whishaw; 'he lost his leg in the Carthagenian war: there's Socrates,' pointing to Luttrell: 'that,' he added, turning to Horner, 'is Solon.'

Another evening, Mackintosh brought a raw Scotch cousin—an ensign in a Highland regiment—with him. The young man's head could carry no idea of glory except in regimentals. Suddenly, nudging Sir James, he whispered, 'Is that the great Sir Sydney Smith?'—'Yes, yes,' answered Sir James; and instantly telling Sydney who he was supposed to be, the grave evening preacher at the Foundling immediately assumed the character ascribed to him, and acted the hero of Acre to perfection, fighting his battles over again—even charging the Turks—whilst the young Scot was so enchanted by the great Sir Sydney's condescension, that he wanted to fetch the pipers of his regiment, and pipe to the great Sir Sydney, who had never enjoyed the agonizing strains of the bagpipe. Upon this the party broke up, and Sir James carried the Highlander off, lest he should find out his mistake, and cut his throat from shame and vexation. One may readily conceive Sydney Smith's enjoying this joke, for his spirits were those of a boy: his gaiety was irresistible; his ringing laugh, infectious; but it is difficult for those who knew Mackintosh in his later years—the quiet, almost pensive invalid to realize in that remembrance any trace of the Mackintosh of Doughty Street and Orchard Street days.

One day Sydney Smith came home with two hackney coaches full of pictures, which he had picked up at an auction. His daughter thus tells the story: 'Another day he came home with two hackney-coach loads of pictures, which he had met with at an auction, having found it impossible to resist so many yards of brown-looking figures and faded landscapes going for "absolutely nothing, unheard of sacrifices." "Kate" hardly knew whether to laugh or cry when she saw these horribly dingy-looking objects enter her pretty little drawing-room, and looked at him as if she thought him half mad; and half mad he was, but with delight at his purchase. He kept walking up and down the room, waving his arms, putting them in fresh lights, declaring they were exquisite specimens of art, and if not by the very best masters, merited to be so. He invited his friends, and displayed his pictures; discovered fresh beauties for each new comer; and for three or four days, under the magic influence of his wit and imagination, these gloomy old pictures were a perpetual source of amusement and fun.'

At last, finding that he was considered no authority for the fine arts, off went the pictures to another auction, but all re-christened by himself, with unheard-of names. 'One, I remember,' says Lady Holland, 'was a beautiful landscape, by Nicholas de Falda, a pupil of Valdezzio, the only painting by that eminent artist. The pictures sold, I believe, for rather less than he gave for them under their original names, which were probably as real as their assumed ones.'

Sydney Smith had long been styled by his friends the 'Bishop of Mickleham,' in allusion to his visits to, and influence in, the house of his friend, Richard Sharp, who had a cottage at that place. A piece of real preferment was now his. This was the living of Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire, given him by Lord Erskine, then Chancellor. Lady Holland never rested till she had prevailed on Erskine to give Sydney Smith a living. Smith, as Rogers relates, went to thank his lordship. 'Oh,' said Erskine, 'don't thank me, Mr. Smith; I gave you the living because Lady Holland insisted on my doing so; and if she had desired me to give it to the devil, he must have had it.'

Notwithstanding the prediction of the saints, Sydney Smith proved an excellent parish priest. Even his most admiring friends did not expect this result. The general impression was, that he was infinitely better fitted for the bar than for the church. 'Ah! Mr. Smith,' Lord Stowell used to say to him, 'you would be in a far better situation, and a far richer man, had you belonged to us.'

One jeu d'esprit more, and Smith hastened to take possession of his living, and to enter upon duties of which no one better knew the mighty importance than he did.

Among the Mackintosh set was Richard Sharp, to whom we have already referred, termed, from his great knowledge and ready memory, 'Conversation Sharp.' Many people may think that this did not imply an agreeable man, and they were, perhaps, right. Sharp was a plain, ungainly man. One evening, a literary lady, now living, being at Sir James Mackintosh's, in company with Sharp, Sismondi, and the late Lord Denman, then a man of middle age. Sir James was not only particularly partial to Denman, but admired him personally. 'Do you not think Denman handsome?' he inquired of the lady after the guests were gone. 'No? Then you must think Mr. Sharp handsome,' he rejoined; meaning that a taste so perverted as not to admire Denman must be smitten with Sharp. Sharp is said to have studied all the morning before he went out to dinner, to get up his wit and anecdote, as an actor does his part. Sydney Smith having one day received an invitation from him to dine at Fishmongers' Hall, sent the following reply:—

'Much do I love

The monsters of the deep to eat;

To see the rosy salmon lying,

By smelts encircled, born for frying;

And from the china boat to pour

On flaky cod the flavoured shower.

Thee above all, I much regard,

Flatter than Longman's flattest bard,

Much-honour'd turbot! sore I grieve

Thee and thy dainty friends to leave.

Far from ye all, in snuggest corner,

I go to dine with little Horner;

He who with philosophic eye

Sat brooding o'er his Christmas pie;

Then firm resolved, with either thumb,

Tore forth the crust-enveloped plum;

And mad with youthful dreams of deathless fame,

Proclaimed the deathless glories of his name.'

One word before we enter on the subject of Sydney Smith's ministry. In this biography of a great Wit, we touch but lightly upon the graver features of his character, yet they cannot wholly be passed over. Stanch in his devotion to the Church of England, he was liberal to others. The world in the present day is afraid of liberality. Let it not be forgotten that it has been the fanatic and the intolerant, not the mild and practical, among us who have gone from the Protestant to the Romish faith. Sydney Smith, in common with other great men, had no predilection for dealing damnation round the land. How noble, how true, are Mackintosh's reflections on religious sects! 'It is impossible, I think, to look into the interior of any religious sect, without thinking better of it. I ought, indeed, to confine myself to those of Christian Europe, but with that limitation it seems to me the remark is true; whether I look at the Jansenists of Port Royal, or the Quakers in Clarkson, or the Methodists in these journals. All these sects, which appear dangerous or ridiculous at a distance, assume a much more amicable character on nearer inspection. They all inculcate pure virtue, and practise mutual kindness; and they exert great force of reason in rescuing their doctrines from the absurd or pernicious consequences which naturally flow from them. Much of this arises from the general nature of religious principle—much also from the genius of the Gospel.'

Nothing could present a greater contrast with the comforts of Orchard Street than the place on which Sydney Smith's 'lines' had now 'fallen.' Owing to the non-residence of the clergy, one-third of the parsonage houses in England had fallen into decay, but that of Foston-le-Clay was pre-eminently wretched. A hovel represented what was still called the parsonage-house: it stood on a glebe of three hundred acres of the stiffest clay in Yorkshire: a brick-floored kitchen, with a room above it, both in a ruinous condition was the residence which, for a hundred and fifty years, had never been inhabited by an incumbent. It will not be a matter of surprise that for some time, until 1808, Sydney Smith, with the permission of the Archbishop of York, continued to reside in London, after having appointed a curate at Foston-le-Clay.

The first visit to his living was by no means promising. Picture to yourself, my reader, Sydney Smith in a carriage, in his superfine black coat, driving into the remote village, and parleying with the old parish clerk, who after some conversation, observed, emphatically, shaking his stick on the ground, 'Master Smith, it stroikes me that people as comes froe London is such fools.—'I see you are no fool,' was the prompt answer; and the parson and the clerk parted mutually satisfied.

SYDNEY SMITH'S WITTY ANSWER TO THE OLD PARISH CLERK

The profits, arising from the sale of two volumes of sermons, carried Sydney Smith, his family, and his furniture, to Foston-le-Clay in the summer of 1809, and he took up his abode in a pleasant house about two miles from York, at Heslington.

Let us now, for a time, forget the wit, the editor of the 'Edinburgh Review,' the diner out, the evening preacher at the Foundling, and glance at the peaceful and useful life of a country clergyman. His spirits, his wit, all his social qualities, never deserted Sydney Smith, even in the retreat to which he was destined. Let us see him driving in his second-hand carriage, his horse, 'Peter the Cruel,' with Mrs. Smith by his side, summer and winter, from Heslington to Foston-le-Clay. Mrs. Smith, at first, trembled at the inexperience of her charioteer; but 'she soon,' said Sydney, 'raised my wages, and considered me an excellent Jehu.' 'Mr. Brown,' said Sydney to one of the tradesmen of York, through the streets of which he found it difficult to drive, 'your streets are the narrowest, in Europe,'—'Narrow, sir? there's plenty of room for two carriages to pass each other, and an inch and a half to spare!'

Let us see him in his busy peaceful life, digging an hour or two every day in his garden to avoid sudden death, by preventing corpulency; then galloping through a book, and when his family laughed at him for so soon dismissing a quarto, saying, 'Cross-examine me, then,' and going well through the ordeal. Hear him, after finishing his morning's writing, saying to his wife, 'There, Kate, it's done: do look over it; put the dots to the i's, and cross the t's:' and off he went to his walk, surrounded by his children, who were his companions and confidants. See him in the lane, talking to an old woman whom he had taken into his gig as she was returning from market, and picking up all sorts of knowledge from her; or administering medicine to the poor, or to his horses and animals, sometimes committing mistakes next to fatal. One day he declared he found all his pigs intoxicated, grunting 'God save the King' about the sty. He nearly poisoned his red cow by an over-dose of castor-oil; and Peter the Cruel, so called because the groom once said he had a cruel face, took two boxes of opium pills (boxes and all) in his mash, without ill consequences.

See him, too, rushing out after dinner—for he had a horror of long sittings after that meal—to look at his 'scratcher.'

He used to say, Lady Holland (his daughter) relates, 'I am all for cheap luxuries, even for animals; now all animals have a passion for scratching their backbones; they break down your gates and palings to effect this. Look! there is my universal scratcher, a sharp-edged pole, resting on a high and a low post, adapted to every height, from a horse to a lamb. Even the Edinburgh Reviewer can take his turn: you have no idea how popular it is; I have not had a gate broken since I put it up; I have it in all my fields.'

Then his experiments were numerous. Mutton fat was to be burned instead of candles; and working-people were brought in and fed with broth, or with rice, or with porridge, to see which was the most satisfying diet. Economy was made amusing, benevolence almost absurd, but the humorous man, the kind man, shone forth in all things. He was one of the first, if not the first, who introduced allotment-gardens for the poor: he was one who could truly say at the last, when he had lived sixty-six years, 'I have done but very little harm in the world, and I have brought up my family.'

We have taken a glimpse—and a glimpse merely—of the 'wise Wit' in London, among congenial society, where every intellectual power was daily called forth in combative force. See him now in the provincial circles of the remote county of York. 'Did you ever,' he once asked, 'dine out in the country? What misery do human beings inflict on each other under the name of pleasure!' Then he describes driving in a broiling sun through a dusty road, to eat a haunch of venison at the house of a neighbouring parson. Assembled in a small house, 'redolent of frying,' talked of roads, weather, and turnips; began, that done, to be hungry. A stripling, caught up for the occasion, calls the master of the house out of the room, and announces that the cook has mistaken the soup for dirty water, and has thrown it away. No help for it—agreed; they must do without it; perhaps as well they should. Dinner announced; they enter the dining-room: heavens! what a gale! the venison is high!

Various other adverse incidents occur, and the party return home, grateful to the post-boys for not being drunk, and thankful to Providence for not being thrown into a wet ditch.

In addition to these troubles and risks, there was an enemy at hand to apprehend—prejudice. The Squire of Heslington—'the last of the Squires'—regarded Mr. Smith as a Jacobin; and his lady, 'who looked as if she had walked straight out of the Ark, or had been the wife of Enoch,' used to turn aside as he passed. When, however, the squire found 'the peace of the village undisturbed, harvests as usual, his dogs uninjured, he first bowed, then called, and ended by a pitch of confidence;' actually discovered that Sydney Smith had made a joke; nearly went into convulsions of laughter, and finished by inviting the 'dangerous fellow,' as he had once thought him, to see his dogs.

In 1813 Sydney Smith removed, as he thought it his duty to do, to Foston-le-Clay, and, 'not knowing a turnip from a carrot,' began to farm three hundred acres, and not having any money, to build a parsonage-house.

It was a model parsonage, he thought, the plan being formed by himself and 'Kate.' Being advised by his neighbours to purchase oxen, he bought (and christened) four oxen, 'Tug and Lug,' 'Crawl and Haul.' But Tug and Lug took to fainting, Haul and Crawl to lie down in the mud, so he was compelled to sell them, and to purchase a team of horses.

The house plunged him into debt for twenty years; and a man-servant being too expensive, the 'wise Wit' caught up a country girl, made like a mile-stone, and christened her 'Bunch,' and Bunch became the best butler in the county.

He next set up a carriage, which he christened the 'Immortal,' for it grew, from being only an ancient green chariot, supposed to have been the earliest invention of the kind, to be known by all the neighbours; the village dogs barked at it, the village boys cheered it, and 'we had no false shame.'

One could linger over the annals of Sydney Smith's useful, happy life at Foston-le-Clay, visited there indeed by Mackintosh, and each day achieving a higher and higher reputation in literature. We see him as a magistrate, 'no friend to game,' as a country squire in Suffolk solemnly said of a neighbour, but a friend to man; with a pitying heart, that forbade him to commit young delinquents to gaol, though he would lecture them severely, and call out, in bad cases, 'John, bring me out my private gallows,' which brought the poor boys on their knees. We behold him making visits, and even tours, in the 'Immortal,' and receiving Lord and Lady Carlisle in their coach and four, which had stuck in the middle of a ploughed field, there being scarcely any road, only a lane up to the house. Behold him receiving his poor friend, Francis Homer, who came to take his last leave of him, and died at Pisa, in 1817, after earning honours, paid, as Sir James Mackintosh remarked, to intrinsic claims alone—'a man of obscure birth, who never filled an office.' See Sydney Smith, in 1816, from the failure of the harvest (he who was in London 'a walking patty'), sitting down with his family to repast without bread, thin, unleavened cakes being the substitute. See his cheerfulness, his submission to many privations: picture him to ourselves trying to ride, but falling off incessantly; but obliged to leave off riding 'for the good of his family, and the peace of his parish' (he had christened his horse, 'Calamity'). See him suddenly prostrate from that steed in the midst of the streets of York, 'to the great joy of Dissenters,' he declares: another time flung as if he had been a shuttlecock, into a neighbouring parish, very glad that it was not a neighbouring planet, for somehow or other his horse and he had a 'trick of parting company.' 'I used,' he wrote, 'to think a fall from a horse dangerous, but much experience has convinced me to the contrary. I have had six falls in two years, and just behaved like the Three per Cents., when they fell—I got up again, and am not a bit the worse for it, any more than the stock in question.'

This country life was varied by many visits. In 1820 he went to visit Lord Grey, then to Edinburgh, to Jeffrey travelling by the coach, a gentleman, with whom he had been talking, said, 'There is a very clever fellow lives near here, Sydney Smith, I believe; a devilish odd fellow.'—'He may be an odd fellow,' cried Sydney, taking off his hat, 'but here he is, odd as he is, at your service.'

Sydney Smith found great changes in Edinburgh—changes, however, in many respects for the better. The society of Edinburgh was then in its greatest perfection. 'Its brilliancy, Lord Cockburn remarks, 'was owing to a variety of peculiar circumstances, which only operated during this period. The principal of these were the survivance of several of the eminent men of the preceding age, and of curious old habits, which the modern flood had not yet obliterated; the rise of a powerful community of young men of ability; the exclusion of the British from the Continent, which made this place, both for education and for residence, a favourite resort of strangers; the war, which maintained a constant excitement of military preparation and of military idleness: the blaze of that popular literature which made this the second city in the empire for learning and science; and the extent and the ease with which literature and society embellished each other, without rivalry, and without pedantry.

Among the 'best young' as his lordship styles them, were Lord Webb Seymour and Francis Horner; whilst those of the 'interesting old' most noted were Elizabeth Hamilton and Mrs. Grant of Laggan, who had 'unfolded herself,' to borrow Lord Cockburn's words, in the 'Letters from the Mountains,' 'an interesting treasury of good solitary thoughts.' Of these two ladies, Lord Cockburn says, 'They were excellent women, and not too blue. Their sense covered the colour.' It was to Mrs. Hamilton that Jeffrey said, 'That there was no objection to the blue stocking, provided the petticoat came low enough to cover it.' Neither of these ladies possessed personal attractions. Mrs. Hamilton had the plain face proper to literary women; Mrs. Grant was a tall dark woman, with much dignity of manner: in spite of her life of misfortune, she had a great flow of spirits. Beautifully, indeed, does Lord Cockburn render justice to her character: 'She was always under the influence of an affectionate and delightful enthusiasm, which, unquenched by time and sorrow, survived the wreck of many domestic attachments, and shed a glow over the close of a very protracted life.'

Both she and Mrs. Hamilton succeeded in drawing to their conversazioni, in small rooms of unpretending style, men of the highest order, as well as attractive women of intelligence. Society in Edinburgh took the form of Parisian soirées, and although much divided into parties, was sufficiently general to be varied. It is amusing to find that Mrs. Grant was at one time one of the supposed 'Authors of "Waverley,"' until the disclosure of the mystery silenced reports. It was the popularity of 'Marmion,' that made Scott, as he himself confesses, nearly lose his footing. Mrs. Grant's observation on him, after meeting the Great Unknown at some brilliant party, has been allowed, even by the sarcastic Lockhart, to be 'witty enough.' 'Mr. Scott always seems to me to be like a glass, through which the rays of admiration pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit of [¹³] that lies beside it will presently be in a blaze—and no wonder.'

Scott endeavoured to secure Mrs. Grant a pension; merited as he observes, by her as an authoress, 'but much more,' in his opinion, 'by the firmness and elasticity of mind with which she had borne a great succession of domestic calamities.' 'Unhappily,' he adds, 'there was only about £100 open on the Pension List, and this the minister assigned in equal portions to Mrs. G—— and a distressed lady, grand-daughter of a forfeited Scottish nobleman. Mrs. G—— , proud as a Highlandwoman, vain as a poetess, and absurd as a blue-stocking, has taken this partition in malam partem, and written to Lord Melville about her merits, and that her friends do not consider her claims as being fairly canvassed, with something like a demand that her petition be submitted to the king. This is not the way to make her plack a bawbee, and Lord M—— , a little miffed in turn, sends the whole correspondence to me to know whether Mrs. G—— will accept the £50 or not

Now, hating to deal with ladies when they are in an unreasonable humour, I have got the good-humoured Man of Feeling to find out the lady's mind, and I take on myself the task of making her peace with Lord M—— . After all, the poor lady is greatly to be pitied:—her sole remaining daughter deep and far gone in a decline.'

The Man of Feeling proved successful, and reported soon afterwards that the 'dirty pudding' was eaten by the almost destitute authoress. Scott's tone in the letters which refer to this subject does little credit to his good taste and delicacy of feeling, which were really attributable to his character.

Very few notices occur of any intercourse between Scott and Sydney Smith in Lockhart's 'Life,' It was not, indeed, until 1827 that Scott could be sufficiently cooled down from the ferment of politics which had been going on to meet Jeffrey and Cockburn. When he dined, however, with Murray, then Lord Advocate, and met Jeffrey, Cockburn, the late Lord Rutherford, then Mr. Rutherford, and others of 'that file,' he pronounced the party to be 'very pleasant, capital good cheer, and excellent wine, much laugh and fun. I do not know,' he writes, 'how it is, but when I am out with a party of my Opposition friends, the day is often merrier than when with our own set. It is because they are cleverer? Jeffery and Harry Cockburn are, to be sure, very extraordinary men, yet it is not owing to that entirely. I believe both parties meet with the feeling of something like novelty. We have not worn out our jests in daily contact. There is also a disposition on such occasions to be courteous, and of course to be pleased.'

On his side, Cockburn did ample justice to the 'genius who,' to use his own words, 'has immortalized Edinburgh and delighted the 'world.' Mrs. Scott could not, however, recover the smarting inflicted by the critiques of Jeffrey on her husband's works. Her—'And I hope, Mr. Jeffrey, Mr. Constable paid you well for your Article' (Jeffrey dining with her that day), had a depth of simple satire in it that ever, an Edinburgh Reviewer could hardly exceed. It was, one must add, impertinent and in bad taste. 'You are very good at cutting up.'

Sydney Smith found Jeffrey and Cockburn rising barristers. Horner, on leaving Edinburgh, had left to Jeffrey his bar wig, and the bequest had been lucky. Jeffrey was settled at Craigcrook, a lovely English-looking spot, with wooded slopes and green glades, near Edinburgh; and Cockburn had, since 1811, set up his rural gods at Bonally, near Colinton, just under the Pentland Hills, and he wrote, 'Unless some avenging angel shall expel me, I shall never leave that paradise.' And a paradise it was. Beneath those rough, bare hills, broken here and there by a trickling burn, like a silver thread on the brown sward, stands a Norman tower, the addition, by Playfair's skill, to what was once a scarcely habitable farmhouse. That tower contained Lord Cockburn's fine library, also his ordinary sitting-rooms. There he read and wrote, and received such society as will never meet again, there or elsewhere—amongst them Sydney Smith. Beneath—around the tower—stretches a delicious garden, composed of terraces, and laurel-hedged walks, and beds of flowers, that bloomed freely in that sheltered spot. A bowling-green, shaded by one of the few trees near the house, a sycamore, was the care of many an hour; for to make the turf velvety, the sods were fetched from the hills above—from 'yon hills,' as Lord Cockburn would have called them. And this was for many years one of the rallying points of the best Scottish society, and, as each autumn came round, of what the host called his Carnival. Friends were summoned from the north and the south—'death no apology.' High jinks within doors, excursions without. Every Edinburgh man reveres the spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Lord Cockburn. 'Every thing except the two burns, he wrote, 'the few old trees, and the mountains, are my own work. Human nature is incapable of enjoying more happiness than has been my lot here. I have been too happy, and often tremble in the anticipation that the cloud must come at last.' And come it did; but found him not unprepared, although the burden that he had to bear in after-life was heavy. In their enlarged and philosophic minds, in their rapid transition from sense to nonsense, there was an affinity in the characters of Sydney Smith and of Lord Cockburn which was not carried out in any other point. Smith's conversation was wit—Lord Cockburn's was eloquence.

From the festivities of Edinburgh Sydney Smith returned contentedly to Foston-le-Clay, and to Bunch. Amongst other gifted visitors was Mrs. Marcet. 'Come here, Bunch,' cries Sydney Smith one day; 'come and repeat your crimes to Mrs. Marcet.' Then Bunch, grave as a judge, began to repeat: 'Plate-snatching, gravy-spilling, door-slamming, blue-bottle- fly-catching, and curtsey-bobbing. 'Blue-bottle-fly-catching,' means standing with her mouth open, and not attending; and 'curtsey-bobbing' was curtseying to the centre of the earth.

One night, in the winter, during a tremendous snowstorm, Bunch rushed in, exclaiming, 'Lord and Lady Mackincrush is com'd in a coach and four.' The lord and lady proved to be Sir James and his daughter, who had arrived to stay with his friends in the remote parsonage of Foston-le-Clay a few days, and had sent a letter, which arrived the day afterwards to announce their visit. Their stay began with a blunder; and when Sir James departed, leaving kind feelings behind him—books, his hat, his gloves, his papers and other articles of apparel were found also. 'What a man that would be,' said Sydney Smith, 'had he one particle of gall, or the least knowledge of the value of red tape!' It was true that the indolent, desultory character of Mackintosh interfered perpetually with his progress in the world. He loved far better to lie on the sofa reading a novel than to attend a Privy Council; the slightest indisposition was made on his part a plea for avoiding the most important business.

Sydney Smith had said that 'when a clever man takes to cultivating turnips and retiring, it is generally an imposture;' but in him the retirement was no imposture. His wisdom shone forth daily in small and great matters. 'Life,' he justly thought, 'was to be fortified by many friendships,' and he acted up to his principles, and kept up friendships by letters. Cheerfulness he thought might be cultivated by making the rooms one lives in as comfortable as possible. His own drawing-room was papered on this principle, with a yellow flowering pattern; and filled with 'irregular regularities;' his fires were blown into brightness by Shadrachs, as he called them—tubes furnished with air opening in the centre of each fire, His library contained his rheumatic armour: for he tried heat and compression in rheumatism; put his legs into narrow buckets, which he called his jack-boots; wore round his throat a tin collar; over each shoulder he had a large tin thing like a shoulder of mutton; and on his head he displayed a hollow helmet filled with hot water. In the middle of a field into which his windows looked, was a skeleton sort of a machine, his Universal Scratcher; with which every animal from a lamb to a bullock could scratch itself. Then on the Sunday the Immortal was called into use, to travel in state to a church like a barn; about fifty people in it; but the most original idea was farming through the medium of a tremendous speaking-trumpet from his own door, with its companion, a telescope, to see what his people are about! On the 24th of January, 1828, the first notable piece of preferment was conferred on him by Lord Lyndhurst then Chancellor, and of widely differing political opinions to Sydney Smith. This was a vacant stall in the cathedral at Bristol, where on the ensuing 5th of November, the new canon gave the Mayor and Corporation of that Protestant city such a dose of 'toleration as should last them many a year.' He went to Court on his appointment, and appeared in shoestrings instead of buckles. 'I found,' he relates, 'to my surprise, people looking down at my feet: I could not think what they were at. At first I thought they had discovered the beauty of my legs; but at last the truth burst on me, by some wag laughing and thinking I had done it as a good joke. I was, of course, exceedingly annoyed to have been supposed capable of such a vulgar unmeaning piece of disrespect, and kept my feet as coyly under my petticoats as the veriest prude in the country till I should make my escape.' His circumstances were now improved, and though moralists, he said, thought property an evil, he declared himself happier every guinea he gained. He thanked God for his animal spirits, which received, unhappily, in 1829, a terrible shock from the death of his eldest son, Douglas, aged twenty-four. This was the great misfortune of his life; the young man was promising, talented, affectionate. He exchanged Foston-le-Clay at this time for a living in Somersetshire, of a beautiful and characteristic name—Combe Florey.

Combe Florey seems to have been an earthly paradise, seated in one of those delicious hollows or in Combes, for which that part of the west of England is celebrated. His withdrawal from the Edinburgh Review—Mackintosh's death—the marriage of his eldest daughter, Saba, to Dr. Holland (now Sir Henry Holland)—the termination of Lord Grey's Administration, which ended Sydney's hopes of being a bishop, were the leading events of his life for the next few years.

It appears that Sydney Smith felt to the hour of his death pained that those by whose side he had fought for fifty years, in their adversity, the Whig party, should never have offered what he declared he should have rejected, a bishopric, when they were constantly bestowing such promotions on persons of mediocre talent and claims. Waiving the point, whether it is right or wrong to make men bishops because they have been political partizans, the cause of this alleged injustice may be found in the tone of the times, which was eminently tinctured with cant. The Clapham sect were in the ascendancy; and Ministers scarcely dared to offend so influential a body. Even the gentle Sir James Mackintosh refers, in his Journal, with disgust to the phraseology of the day:—

'They have introduced a new language, in which they never say that A. B. is good, or virtuous, or even religious; but that he is an "advanced Christian." Dear Mr. Wilberforce is an "advanced Christian." Mrs. C. has lost three children without a pang, and is so "advanced a Christian" that she could see the remaining twenty, "with poor dear Mr. C.," removed with perfect tranquillity.'

Such was the disgust expressed towards that school by Mackintosh, whose last days were described by his daughter as having been passed in silence and thought, with his Bible before him, breaking that silence—and portentous silence—to speak of God, and of his Maker's disposition towards man.

His mind ceased to be occupied with speculations; politics interested him no more. His own 'personal relationship to his Creator' was the subject of his thoughts. Yet Mackintosh was not by any means considered as an advanced Christian, or even as a Christian at all by the zealots of his time.

Sydney Smith's notions of a bishop were certainly by no means carried out in his own person and character. 'I never remember in my time,' he said, 'a real bishop: a grave, elderly man, full of Greek, with sound views of the middle voice and preterpluperfect tense; gentle and kind to his poor clergy, of powerful and commanding eloquence in Parliament, never to be put down when the great interests of mankind were concerned, leaning to the Government when it was right, leaning to the people when they were right; feeling that if the Spirit of God had called him to that high office, he was called for no mean purpose, but rather that seeing clearly, acting boldly, and intending purely, he might confer lasting benefit upon mankind.'

In 1831 Lord Grey appointed Sydney Smith a Canon Resilentiary of St. Paul's; but still the mitre was withheld, although it has since appeared that Lord Grey had destined him for one of the first vacancies in England.

Henceforth his residence at St. Paul's brought him still more continually into the world, which he delighted by his 'wise wit.' Most London dinners, he declared, evaporated in whispers to one's next neighbours. He never, however, spoke to his neighbour, but 'fired' across the table. One day, however, he broke his rule, on hearing a lady, who sat next him, say in a sweet low voice, 'No gravy, sir.'—'Madam!' he cried, 'I have all my life been looking for a person who disliked gravy, let us swear immortal friendship.' She looked astonished, but took the oath, and kept it. 'What better foundation for friendship,' he asks, 'than similarity of tastes?'

He gave an evening party once a week; when a profusion of wax-lights was his passion. He loved to see young people decked with natural flowers; he was, in fact, a blameless and benevolent Epicurean in everything; great indeed was the change from his former residence at Foston, which he used to say was twelve miles from a lemon. Charming as his parties at home must have been, they wanted the bon-hommie and simplicity of former days, and Of the homely suppers in Orchard Street. Lord Dudley, Rogers, Moore, 'Young Macaulay,' as he was called for many years, formed now his society. Lord Dudley was then in the state which afterwards became insanity, and darkened completely a mind sad and peculiar from childhood. Bankes, in his 'Journal,' relates an anecdote of him about this time, when, as he says, 'Dudley's mind was on the wane; but still his caustic humour would find vent through the cloud which was gradually over-shadowing his masterly intellect.' He was one day sitting in his room soliloquizing aloud; his favourite Newfoundland-dog was at his side, and seemed to engross all ——m's attention. A gentleman was present who was good-looking and good-natured, but not overburthened with sense. Lord Dudley at last, patting his dog's head, said, 'Fido mio, they say dogs have no souls. Humph, and still they say ——' (naming the gentleman present) 'has a soul!' One day Lord Dudley met Mr. Allen, Lord Holland's librarian, and asked him to dine with him. Allen went. When asked to describe his dinner, he said, 'There was no one there. Lord Dudley talked a little to his servant, and a great deal to his dog, but said not one word to me.'

Innumerable are the witticisms related of Sydney Smith, when seated at a dinner table—having swallowed in life what he called a 'Caspian Sea' of soup. Talking one day of Sir Charles Lyell's book, the subject of which was the phenomena which the earth might, at some future period, present to the geologists. 'Let us imagine,' he said, 'an excavation on the site of St. Paul's; fancy a lecture by the Owen of his future era on the thigh-bone of a minor canon, or the tooth of a dean: the form, qualities, and tastes he would discover from them.' 'It is a great proof of shyness,' he said, 'to crumble your bread at dinner. Ah! I see,' he said, turning to a young lady, 'you're afraid of me: you crumble your bread. I do it when I sit by the Bishop of London, and with both hands when I sit by the Archbishop.'

Be gave a capital reproof to a lively young M.P. who was accompanying him after dinner to one of the solemn evening receptions at Lambeth Palace during the life of the late Archbishop of Canterbury. The M.P. had been calling him 'Smith,' though they had never met before that day. As the carriage stopped at the Palace, Smith turned to him and said, 'Now don't, my good fellow, don't call the Archbishop "Howley."'

Talking of fancy-balls—'Of course,' he said, 'if I went to one, I should go as a Dissenter.' Of Macaulay, he said, 'To take him out of literature and science, and to put him in the House of Commons, is like taking the chief physician out of London in a pestilence.'

Nothing amused him so much as the want of perception of a joke. One hot day a Mrs. Jackson called on him, and spoke of the oppressive state of the weather. 'Heat! it was dreadful,' said Sydney; 'I found I could do nothing for it but take off my flesh and sit in my bones.' 'Take off your flesh and sit in your bones! Oh, Mr. Smith! how could you do that?' the lady cried. 'Come and see next time, ma'am—nothing more easy.' She went away, however, convinced that such a proceeding was very unorthodox. No wonder, with all his various acquirements, it should be said of him that no 'dull dinners were ever remembered in his company.'

A happy old age concluded his life, at once brilliant and useful. To the last he never considered his education as finished. His wit, a friend said, 'was always fresh, always had the dew on it. He latterly got into what Lord Jeffrey called the vicious habit of water drinking. Wine, he said, destroyed his understanding. He even 'forgot the number of the Muses, and thought it was thirty-nine, of course.' He agreed with Sir James Mackintosh that he had found the world more good and more foolish than he had thought when young. He took a cheerful view of all things; he thanked God for small as well as great things, even for tea. 'I am glad,' he used to say, 'I was not born before tea.' His domestic affections were strong, and were heartily reciprocated.

General society he divided into classes: 'The noodles—very numerous and well known. The affliction woman—a valuable member of society, generally an ancient spinster in small circumstances, who packs up her bag and sets off in cases of illness or death, "to comfort, flatter, fetch, and carry." The up-takers—people who see, from their fingers' ends and go through a room touching everything. The clearers—who begin at a dish and go on tasting and eating till it is finished. The sheep-walkers—who go on for ever on the beaten track. The lemon-squeezers of society—who act on you as a wet blanket; see a cloud in sunshine; the nails of the coffin in the ribbons of a bride; extinguish all hope; people, whose very look sets your teeth on an edge. The let-well-aloners, cousin-german to the noodles—yet a variety, and who are afraid to act, and think it safer to stand still. Then the washerwomen—very numerous! who always say, "Well, if ever I put on my best bonnet, 'tis sure to rain," &c.

'Besides this there is a very large class of people always treading on your gouty foot, or talking in your deaf ear, or asking you to give them something with your lame hand,' &c.

During the autumn of the year 1844, Sydney Smith felt the death-stroke approaching. 'I am so weak, both in body and mind,' he said, 'that I believe if the knife were put into my hand, I should not have strength enough to stick it into a Dissenter.' In October he became seriously ill. 'Ah! Charles,' he said to General Fox (when he was being kept very low), 'I wish they would allow me even the wing of a roasted butterfly,' He dreaded sorrowful faces around him; but confided to his old servant, Annie Kay—and to her alone—his sense of his danger.

Almost the last person Sydney Smith saw was his beloved brother Bobus, who followed him to the grave a fortnight after he had been laid in the tomb.

He lingered till the 22nd of February, 1845. His son closed his eyes. His last act was, bestowing on a poverty-stricken clergyman a living.

He was buried at Kensal Green, where his eldest son, Douglas, had been interred.

It has been justly and beautifully said of Sydney Smith, that Christianity was not a dogma with him, but a practical and most beneficent rule of life.

As a clergyman, he was liberal, practical, staunch; free from the latitudinarian principles of Hoadley, as from the bigotry of Laud. His wit was the wit of a virtuous, a decorous man; it had pungency without venom; humour without indelicacy; and was copious without being tiresome.

[GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD MELCOMBE.]

A Dinner-giving lordly Poet.—A Misfortune for a Man of Society.— Brandenburgh House.—'The Diversions of the Morning.'—Johnson's Opinion of Foote—Churchill and 'The Rosciad.'—Personal Ridicule in its Proper Light.—Wild Specimen of the Poet.—Walpole on Dodington's 'Diary.'—The best Commentary on a Man's Life.—Leicester House.—Grace Boyle,—Elegant Modes of passing Time.—A sad Day.—What does Dodington come here for?— The Veteran Wit, Beau, and Politician.—'Defend us from our Executors and Editors.'

It would have been well for Lord Melcombe's memory, Horace Walpole remarks, 'if his fame had been suffered to rest on the tradition of his wit, and the evidence of his poetry.' And in the present day, that desirable result has come to pass. We remember Bubb Dodington chiefly as the courtier whose person, houses, and furniture were replete with costly ostentation, so as to provoke the satire of Foote, who brought him on the stage under the name of Sir Thomas Lofty in 'The Patron,'

We recall him most as 'l'Amphytrion chez qui on dine;' 'My Lord of Melcombe,' as Mallet says—

'Whose soups and sauces duly season'd,

Whose wit well tim'd and sense well reason'd,

Give Burgundy a brighter stain,

And add new flavour to Champagne.'

Who now cares much for the court intrigues which severed Sir Robert Walpole and Bubb Dodington? Who now reads without disgust the annals of that famous quarrel between George II. and his son, during which each party devoutly wished the other dead? Who minds whether the time-serving Bubb Dodington went over to Lord Bute or not? Who cares whether his hopes of political preferment were or were not gratified? Bubb Dodington was, in fact, the dinner-giving lordly poet, to whom even the saintly Young could write:—

'You give protection,—I a worthless strain.

Born in 1691, the accomplished courtier answered, till he had attained the age of twenty-nine, to the not very euphonious name of Bubb. Then a benevolent uncle with a large estate died, and left him, with his lands, the more exalted surname of Dodington. He sprang, however, from an obscure family, who had settled in Dorchester; but that disadvantage, which, according to Lord Brougham's famous pamphlet, acts so fatally on a young man's advancement in English public life, was obviated, as most things are, by a great fortune.

Mr. Bubb had been educated at Oxford: at the age of twenty-four he was elected M.P. for Winchelsea; he was soon afterwards named Envoy at the Court of Spain, but returned home after his accession of wealth to provincial honours, and became Lord-Lieutenant of Somerset. Nay, poets began to worship him, and even pronounced him to be well born:—

'Descended from old British sires;

Great Dodington to kings allied;

My patron then, my laurels' pride.

It would be consolatory to find that it is only Welsted who thus profaned the Muse by this abject flattery, were it not recorded that Thomson dedicated to him his 'Summer.' The dedication was prompted by Lord Binning; and 'Summer' was published in 1727 when Dodington was one of the Lords of the Treasury, as well as Clerk of the Pells in Ireland, It seemed, therefore, worth while for Thomson to pen such a passage as this:—'Your example sir, has recommended poetry with the greatest grace to the example of those who are engag'd in the most active scenes of life; and this, though confessedly the least considerable of those qualities that dignify your character, must be particularly pleasing to one whose only hope of being introduced to your regard is thro' the recommendation of an art in which you are a master.' Warton adding this tribute:—

'To praise a Dodington rash bard! forbear.

What can thy weak and ill-tun'd voice avail,

When on that theme both Young and Thomson fail?'

Yet even when midway in his career, Dodington, in the famous political caricature called 'The Motion,' is depicted as 'the Spaniel,' sitting between the Duke of Argyle's legs, whilst his grace is driving a coach at full speed to the Treasury, with a sword instead of a whip in his hand, with Lord Chesterfield as postilion, and Lord Cobham as a footman, holding on by the straps: even then the servile though pompous character of this true man of the world was comprehended completely; and Bubb Dodington's characteristics never changed.

In his political life, Dodington was so selfish, obsequious, and versatile as to incur universal opprobrium; he had also another misfortune for a man of society,—he became fat and lethargic. 'My brother Ned' Horace Walpole remarks, 'says he is grown of less consequence, though more weight.' And on another occasion, speaking of a majority in the House of Lords, he adds, 'I do not count Dodington, who must now always be in the minority, for no majority will accept him.'

Whilst, however, during the factious reign of George II., the town was declared, even by Horace to be wondrous dull; operas unfrequented, plays not in fashion, and amours old as marriages. Bubb Dodington, with his wealth and profusion, contrived always to be in vogue as a host, while he was at a discount as a politician. Politics and literature are the highroads in England to that much-craved-for distinction, an admittance into the great world; and Dodington united these passports in his own person: he was a poetaster, and wrote political pamphlets. The latter were published and admired: the poems were referred to as 'very pretty love verses,' by Lord Lyttelton, and were never published—and never ought to have been published, it is stated.

His bon mots, his sallies, his fortunes and places, and continual dangling at court, procured Bubo, as Pope styled him, one pre-eminence. His dinners at Hammersmith were the most recherchés in the metropolis. Every one remembers Brandenburgh House, when the hapless Caroline of Brunswick held her court there, and where her brave heart,—burdened probably with some sins, as well as with endless regrets,—broke at last. It had been the residence of the beautiful and famous Margravine of Anspach, whose loveliness in vain tempts us to believe her innocent, in despite of facts. Before those eras—the presence of the Margravine, whose infidelities were almost avowed, and the abiding of the queen, whose errors had, at all events, verged on the very confines of guilt—the house was owned by Dodington. There he gave dinners; there he gratified a passion for display, which was puerile; there he indulged in eccentricities which almost implied insanity; there he concocted his schemes for court advancement; and there, later in life, he contributed some of the treasures of his wit to dramatic literature. 'The Wishes,' a comedy, by Bentley, was supposed to owe much of its point to the brilliant wit of Dodington[¹⁴].

At Brandenburgh House, a nobler presence than that of Dodington still haunted the groves and alleys, for Prince Rupert had once owned it. When Dodington bought it, he gave it—in jest, we must presume—the name of La Trappe; and it was not called Brandenburgh House until the fair and frail Margravine came to live there.

Its gardens were long famous; and in the time of Dodington were the scene of revel. Thomas Bentley, the son of Richard Bentley, the celebrated critic, had written a play called 'The Wishes;' and during the summer of 1761 it was acted at Drury Lane, and met with the especial approbation of George III., who sent the author, through Lord Bute, a present of two hundred guineas as a tribute to the good sentiments of the production.

This piece, which, in spite of its moral tendency, has died out, whilst plays of less virtuous character have lived, was rehearsed in the gardens of Brandenburgh House. Bubb Dodington associated much with those who give fame; but he courted amongst them also those who could revenge affronts by bitter ridicule. Among the actors and literati who were then sometimes at Brandenburg House were Foote and Churchill; capital boon companions, but, as it proved, dangerous foes.'

Endowed with imagination; with a mind enriched by classical and historical studies; possessed of a brilliant wit, Bubb Dodington was, nevertheless, in the sight of some men, ridiculous. Whilst the rehearsals of 'The Wishes' went on, Foote was noting down all the peculiarities of the Lord of Brandenburgh House, with a view to bring them to account in his play of 'The Patron.' Lord Melcombe was an aristocratic Dombey: stultified by his own self-complacency, he dared to exhibit his peculiarities before the English Aristophanes. It was an act of imprudence, for Foote had long before (in 1747) opened the little theatre of the Haymarket with a sort of monologue play, 'The Diversions of the Morning,' in which he convulsed his audience with the perfection of a mimicry never beheld before, and so wonderful, that even the persons of his models seemed to stand before the amazed spectators.

These entertainments, in which the contriver was at once the author and performer, have been admirably revived by Mathews and others; and in another line, by the lamented Albert Smith. The Westminster justices, furious and alarmed, opposed the daring performance, on which Foote changed the name of his piece, and called it 'Mr. Foote giving Tea to his Friends,' himself still the sole actor, and changing with Proteus-like celerity from one to the other. Then came his 'Auction of Pictures,' and Sir Thomas de Veil, one of his enemies, the justices, was introduced. Orator Henley and Cock the auctioneer figured also; and year after year the town was enchanted by that which is most gratifying to a polite audience, the finished exhibition of faults and follies. One stern voice was raised in reprobation, that of Samuel Johnson: he, at all events, had a due horror of buffoons; but even he owned himself vanquished.

'The first time I was in Foote's company was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased: and it is very difficult to please a man against his will. I went on eating my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him; but the dog was so very comical, that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back in my chair, and fairly laugh it out. Sir, he was irresistible.' Consoled by Foote's misfortunes and ultimate complicated misery for his lessened importance, Bubb Dodington still reigned, however, in the hearts of some learned votaries. Richard Bentley, the critic, compared him to Lord Halifax—

'That Halifax, my Lord, as you do yet,

Stood forth the friend of poetry and wit,

Sought silent merit in the secret cell,

And Heav'n, nay even man, repaid him well.

A more remorseless foe, however, than Foote appeared in the person of Charles Churchill, the wild and unclerical son of a poor curate of Westminster. Foote laughed Bubb Dodington down, but Churchill perpetuated the satire; for Churchill was wholly unscrupulous, and his faults had been reckless and desperate. Wholly unfit for a clergyman, he had taken orders, obtained a curacy in Wales at £30 a year—not being able to subsist, took to keeping a cider-cellar, became a sort of bankrupt, and quitting Wales, succeeded to the curacy of his father, who had just died. Still famine haunted his home; Churchill took, therefore, to teaching young ladies to read and write, and conducted himself in the boarding-school where his duties lay, with wonderful propriety. He had married at seventeen; but even that step had not protected his morals: he fell into abject poverty. Lloyd, father of his friend Robert Lloyd, then second master of Westminster, made an arrangement with his creditors. Young Lloyd had published a poem called 'The Actor;' Churchill, in imitation, now produced 'The Rosciad,' and Bubb Dodington was one whose ridiculous points were salient in those days of personality. 'The Rosciad' had a signal success, which completed the ruin of its author: he became a man of the town, forsook the wife of his youth, and abandoned the clerical character. There are few sights more contemptible than that of a clergyman who has cast off his profession, or whose profession has cast him off. But Churchill's talents for a time kept him from utter destitution. Bubb Doddington may have been consoled by finding that he shared the fate of Dr. Johnson, who had spoken slightingly of Churchill's works, and who shone forth, therefore, in 'The Ghost,' a later poem, as Dr. Pomposo.

Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, drew a portrait of Lord Melcombe, which is said to have been taken from the life; but perhaps the most faithful delineation of Bubb Dodington's character was furnished by himself in his 'Diary;' in which, as it has been well observed, he 'unveiled the nakedness of his mind, and displayed himself as a courtly compound of mean compliance and political prostitution.' It may, in passing, be remarked, that few men figure well in an autobiography; and that Cumberland himself, proclaimed by Dr. Johnson to be a 'learned, ingenious, accomplished gentleman,' adding, 'the want of company is an inconvenience, but Mr. Cumberland is a million:' in spite of this eulogium, Cumberland has betrayed in his own autobiography unbounded vanity, worldliness, and an undue estimation of his own perishable fame. After all, amusing as personalities must always be, neither the humours of Foote, the vigorous satire of Churchill, nor the careful limning of Cumberland, whilst they cannot be ranked among talents of the highest order, imply a sort of social treachery. The delicious little colloquy between Boswell and Johnson places low personal ridicule in its proper light.

Boswell.—'Foote has a great deal of humour.' Johnson.—'Yes, sir.' Boswell.—'He has a singular talent of exhibiting characters.' Johnson—'Sir. it is not a talent—it is a vice; it is what others abstain from. It is not comedy, which exhibits the character of a species—as that of a miser gathered from many misers—it is farce, which exhibits individuals.' Boswell.—'Did not he think of exhibiting you, sir?' Johnson.—'Sir, fear restrained him; he knew I would have broken his bones. I would have saved him the trouble of cutting off a leg; I would not have left him a leg to cut off.'

Few annals exist of the private life of Bubb Dodington, but those few are discreditable.

Like most men of his time, and like many men of all times, Dodington was entangled by an unhappy and perplexing intrigue.

There was a certain 'black woman,' as Horace Walpole calls a Mrs. Strawbridge, whom Bubb Dodington admired. This handsome brunette lived in a corner house of Saville Row, in Piccadilly, where Dodington visited her. The result of their intimacy was his giving this lady a bond of ten thousand pounds to be paid if he married any one else. The real object of his affections was a Mrs. Behan, with whom he lived seventeen years, and whom, on the death of Mrs. Strawbridge, he eventually married.

Among Bubb Dodington's admirers and disciples was Paul Whitehead, a wild specimen of the poet, rake, satirist, dramatist, all in one; and what was quite in character, a Templar to boot. Paul—so named from being born on that Saint's day—wrote one or two pieces which brought him an ephemeral fame, such as the 'State Dunces,' and the 'Epistle to Dr. Thompson,' 'Manners,' a satire, and the 'Gymnasiad,' a mock heroic poem, intended to ridicule the passion for boxing, then prevalent. Paul Whitehead, who died in 1774, was an infamous, but not, in the opinion of Walpole, a despicable poet, yet Churchill has consigned him to everlasting infamy as a reprobate, in these lines:—

'May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?)

Be born a Whitebread, and baptised a Paul.'

Paul was not, however, worse than his satirist Churchill; and both of these wretched men were members of a society long the theme of horror and disgust, even after its existence had ceased to be remembered, except by a few old people. This was the 'Hell-fire Club,' held in appropriate orgies at Medmenham Abbey, Buckinghamshire. The profligate Sir Francis Dashwood, Wilkes, and Churchill, were amongst its most prominent members.

With such associates, and living in a court where nothing but the basest passions reigned and the lowest arts prevailed, we are inclined to accord with the descendant of Bubb Dodington, the editor of his 'Diary,' Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, who declares that all Lord Melcombe's political conduct was 'wholly directed by the base motives of vanity, selfishness, and avarice.' Lord Melcombe seems to have been a man of the world of the very worst calibre; sensual, servile, and treacherous; ready, during the lifetime of his patron, Frederick, Prince of Wales, to go any lengths against the adverse party of the Pelhams, that Prince's political foes—eager, after the death of Frederick, to court those powerful men with fawning servility.

The famous 'Diary' of Bubb Dodington supplies the information from which these conclusions have been drawn. Horace Walpole, who knew Dodington well, describes how he read with avidity the 'Diary,' which was published in 1784.

'A nephew of Lord Melcombe's heirs has published that Lord's "Diary." Indeed it commences in 1749, and I grieve it was not dated twenty years later. However, it deals in topics that are twenty times more familiar and fresh to my memory than any passage that has happened within these six months I wish I could convey it to you. Though drawn by his own hand, and certainly meant to flatter himself, it is a truer portrait than any of his hirelings would have given. Never was such a composition of vanity, versatility, and servility. In short, there is but one feature wanting in it, his wit, of which in the whole book there are not three sallies.'

The editor of this 'Diary' remarks, 'that he will no doubt be considered a very extraordinary editor; the practice of whom has generally been to prefer flattery to truth, and partiality to justice.' To understand, not the flattery which his contemporaries heaped upon Bubb Dodington, but the opprobrium with which they loaded his memory—to comprehend not his merits but his demerits—it is necessary to take a brief survey of his political life from the commencement. He began life, as we have seen, as a servile adherent of Sir Robert Walpole. A political epistle to the Minister was the prelude to a temporary alliance only, for in 1737, Bubb went over to the adverse party of Leicester House, and espoused the cause of Frederick, Prince of Wales, against his royal father He was therefore dismissed from the Treasury. When Sir Robert fell, Bubb expected to rise, but his expectations of preferment were not realized. He attacked the new Administration forthwith, and succeeded so far in becoming important that he was made Treasurer of the Navy; a post which he resigned in 1749, and which he held again in 1755, but which he lost the next year. On the accession of George III., he was not ashamed to appear altogether in a new character, as the friend of Lord Bute; he was, therefore, advanced to the peerage by the title of Baron of Melcombe Regis, in 1761. The honour was enjoyed for one short year only; and on the 28th of July, 1762, Bubb Dodington expired. Horace Walpole, in his 'Royal and Noble Authors,' complains that 'Dodington's "Diary" was mangled, in compliment, before it was imparted to the public.' We cannot therefore judge of what the 'Diary' was before, as the editor avows that every anecdote was cut out, and all the little gossip so illustrative of character and manners which would have brightened its dull pages, fell beneath the power of a merciless pair of scissors. Mr. Penruddocke Wyndham conceives, however, that he was only doing justice to society in these suppressions. 'It would,' he says, 'be no entertainment to the reader to be informed who daily dined with his lordship, or whom he daily met at the table of other people.'

Posterity thinks differently: a knowledge of a man's associates forms the best commentary on his life; and there is much reason to rejoice that all biographers are not like Mr. Penruddocke Wyndham. Bubb Dodington, more especially, was a man of society: inferior as a literary man, contemptible as a politician, it was only at the head of his table that he was agreeable and brilliant. He was, in fact, a man who had no domestic life; a courtier, like Lord Hervey, but without Lord Hervey's consistency. He was, in truth, a type of that era in England: vulgar in aims; dissolute in conduct; ostentatious, vain-glorious—of a low, ephemeral ambition; but at the same time talented, acute, and lavish to the lettered. The public is now the patron of the gifted. What writer cares for individual opinion, except as it tends to sweep up the gross amount of public blame or censure? What publisher will consent to undertake a work because some lord or lady recommended it to his notice? The reviewer is greater in the commonwealth of letters than the man of rank.

But in these days it was otherwise; and they who, in the necessities of the times, did what they could to advance the interest of the belles lettres, deserve not to be forgotten.

It is with a feeling of sickness that we open the pages of this great Wit's 'Diary,' and attempt to peruse the sentences in which the most grasping selfishness is displayed. We follow him to Leicester House, that ancient tenement—(wherefore pulled down, except to erect on its former site the narrowest of streets, does not appear): that former home of the Sydneys had not always been polluted by the dissolute, heartless clique who composed the court of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Its chambers had once been traversed by Henry Sydney, by Algernon, his brother. It was their home—their father, Robert Sydney, Earl of Leicester, having lived there. The lovely Dorothy Sydney, Waller's Saccharissa, once, in all purity and grace, had danced in that gallery where the vulgar, brazen Lady Middlesex, and her compliant lord, afterwards flattered the weakest of princes, Frederick. In old times Leicester House had stood on Lammas land—land in the spirit of the old charities, open to the poor after Lammas-tide; and even 'the Right Hon. the Earl of Leicester'—as an old document hath it—was obliged, if he chose to turn out his cows or horses on that appropriated land, to pay a rent for it to the overseers of St. Martin's parish, then really 'in the fields.' And here this nobleman not only dwelt in all state himself, but let, or lent his house to persons whose memory seems to hallow even Leicester Fields. Elizabeth of Bohemia, after what was to her indeed 'life's fitful fever,' died at Leicester House. It became then, temporarily, the abode of ambassadors. Colbert, in the time of Charles II., occupied the place; Prince Eugène, in 1712, held his residence here; and the rough soldier, famous for all absence of tact—brave, loyal-hearted, and coarse—lingered at Leicester House in hopes of obstructing the peace between England and France.

All that was good and great fled for ever from Leicester House at the instant that George II., when Prince of Wales, was driven by his royal father from St. James's, and took up his abode in it until the death of George I. The once honoured home of the Sydneys henceforth becomes loathsome in a moral sense. Here William, Duke of Cumberland—the hero, as court flatterers called him—the butcher, as the poor Jacobite designated him—of Culloden, first saw the light. Peace and respectability then dignified the old house for ever. Prince Frederick was its next inmate: here the Princess of Wales, the mother of George III., had her lying-in, and her royal husband held his public tables; and at these and in every assembly, as well as in private, one figure is conspicuous.

Grace Boyle—for she unworthily bore that great name—was the daughter and heiress of Richard, Viscount Shannon. She married Lord Middlesex, bringing him a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. Short, plain, 'very yellow,' as her contemporaries affirm, with a head full of Greek and Latin, and devoted to music and painting; it seems strange that Frederick should have been attracted to one far inferior to his own princess both in mind and person. But so it was, for in those days every man liked his neighbour's wife better than his own. Imitating the forbearance of her royal mother-in-law, the princess tolerated such of her husband's mistresses as did not interfere in politics: Lady Middlesex was the 'my good Mrs. Howard,' of Leicester House. She was made Mistress of the Robes: her favour soon 'grew,' as the shrewd Horace remarks, 'to be rather more than Platonic.' She lived with the royal pair constantly, and sat up till five o'clock in the morning at their suppers; and Lord Middlesex saw and submitted to all that was going on with the loyalty and patience of a Georgian courtier. Lady Middlesex was a docile politician, and on that account, retained her position probably long after she had lost her influence.

Her name appears constantly in the 'Diary,' out of which everything amusing has been carefully expunged.

'Lady Middlesex, Lord Bathurst, Mr. Breton, and I, waited on their Royal Highnesses to Spitalfields, to see the manufacture of silk.' In the afternoon off went the same party to Norwood Forest, in private coaches, to see a 'settlement of gypsies.' Then returning, went to find out Bettesworth, the conjuror; but not discovering him, went in search of the little Dutchman. Were disappointed in that; but 'concluded,' relates Bubb Dodington, 'the peculiarities of this day by supping with Mrs. Cannon, the princess's midwife.'

All these elegant modes of passing the time were not only for the sake of Lady Middlesex, but, it was said, of her friend, Mrs. Granville, one of the Maids of Honour, daughter of the first Lord Lansdown, the poet. This young lady, Eliza Granville, was scarcely pretty: a far, red-haired girl.

All this thoughtless, if not culpable, gallantry was abruptly checked by the rude hand of death. During the month of March, Frederick was attacked with illness, having caught cold. Very little apprehension was expressed at first, but, about eleven days after his first attack, he expired. Half an hour before his death, he had asked to see some friends, and had called for coffee and bread and butter: a fit of coughing came on, and he died instantly from suffocation. An abscess, which had been forming in his side, had burst; nevertheless, his two physicians, Wilmot and Lee, 'knew nothing of his distemper.' According to Lord Melcombe, who thus refers to their blunders, 'They declared, half an hour before his death, that his pulse was like a man's in perfect health. They either would not see or did not know the consequences of the black thrush, which appeared in his mouth, and quite down in his throat. Their ignorance, or their knowledge of his disorder, renders them equally inexcusable for not calling in other assistance.'

The consternation in the prince's household was great, not for his life, but for the confusion into which politics were thrown by his death. After his relapse, and until just before his death, the princess never suffered any English, man or woman, above the degree of valet-de-chambre to see him; nor did she herself see any one of her household until absolutely necessary. After the death of his eldest born, George II. vented his diabolical jealousy upon the cold remains of one thus cut off in the prime of life. The funeral was ordered to be on the model of that of Charles II., but private counter-orders were issued to reduce the ceremonial to the smallest degree of respect that could be paid.

On the 13th of April, 1751, the body of the prince was entombed in Henry VII.'s chapel. Except the lords appointed to hold the pall, and attend the chief mourner, when the attendants were called over in their ranks, there was not a single English lord, not one bishop, and only one Irish lord (Lord Limerick), and three sons of peers. Sir John Rushout and Dodington were the only privy counsellors who followed. It rained heavily, but no covering was provided for the procession. The service was performed without organ or anthem. 'Thus,' observes Bubb Dodington, 'ended this sad day.'

Although the prince left a brother and sisters, the Duke of Somerset acted as chief mourner. The king hailed the event of the prince's death as a relief, which was to render happy his remaining days; and Bubb Dodington hastened, in a few months, to offer to the Pelhams 'his friendship and attachment.' His attendance at court was resumed, although George II. could not endure him; and the old Walpolians, nick-named the Black-tan, were also averse to him.

Such were Bubb Dodington's actions. His expressions, on occasion of the prince's death, were in a very different tone.

'We have lost,' he wrote to Sir Horace Mann, 'the delight and ornament of the age he lived in,—the expectations of the public: in this light I have lost more than any subject in England; but this is light,—public advantages confined to myself do not, ought not, to weigh with me. But we have lost the refuge of private distress—the balm of the afflicted heart the shelter of the miserable against the fury of private adversity; the arts, the graces, the anguish, the misfortunes of society, have lost their patron and their remedy.

'I have lost my companion—my protector—the friend that loved me, that condescended to hear, to communicate, to share in all the pleasures and pains of the human heart: where the social affections and emotions of the mind only presided without regard to the infinite disproportion of my rank and condition. This is a wound that cannot, ought not to heal. If I pretended to fortitude here, I should be infamous—a monster of ingratitude—and unworthy of all consolation, if I was not inconsolable.'

'Thank you,' writes the shrewd Horace Walpole, addressing Sir Horace Mann, 'for the transcript from Bulb de Tristibus. I will keep your secret, though I am persuaded that a man who had composed such a funeral oration on his master had himself fully intended that its flowers should not bloom and wither in obscurity.'

Well might George II., seeing him go to court say: 'I see Dodington here sometimes, what does he come for?'

It was, however, clearly seen what he went for, when, in 1753, two years after the death of his 'benefactor,' Dodington humbly offered His Majesty his services in the house, and 'five members,' for the rest of his life, if His Majesty would give Mr. Pelham leave to employ him for His Majesty's service. Nevertheless he continued to advise with the Princess of Wales, and to drop into her house as if it had been a sister's house—sitting on a stool near the fireside, and listening to her accounts of her children.

In the midst of these intrigues for favour on the part of Dodington, Mr. Pelham died, and was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, the issue of whose administration is well known.

In 1760 death again befriended the now veteran wit, beau and politician. George II. died; and the intimacy which Dodington had always taken care to preserve between himself and the Princess of Wales, ended advantageously for him; and he instantly, in spite of all his former professions to Pelham, joined hand and heart with that minister, from whom he obtained a peerage. This, as we have seen, was not long enjoyed. Lord Melcombe, as this able, intriguing man was now styled, died on the 28th of July, 1762; and with him terminated the short-lived distinction for which he had sacrificed even a decent pretext of principle and consistency.

So general has been the contempt felt for his character, that it seems almost needless to assert that Bubb Dodington was eminently to be despised. Nothing much more severe can be said of him than the remarks of Horace Walpole—upon his 'Diary;' in which he observes that Dodington records little but what is to his own disgrace; as if he thought that the world would forgive his inconsistencies as readily as he forgave himself. 'Had he adopted,' Horace well observes, 'the French title "Confessions," it would have seemed to imply some kind of penitence.'

But vain-glory engrossed him: 'He was determined to raise an altar to himself, and for want of burnt offerings, lighted the pyre, like a great author (Rousseau), with his own character.'

It was said by the same acute observer, both of Lord Hervey and of Bubb Dodington, that they were the only two persons he ever knew that were always aiming at wit and never finding it.' And here, it seems, most that can be testified in praise of a heartless, clever man, must be summed up.

Lord Melcombe's property, with the exception of a few legacies, devolved upon his cousin Thomas Wyndham, of Hammersmith, by whom his Lordship's papers, letters, and poems, were bequeathed to Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, with an injunction, that only such as 'might do honour to his memory should be made public.'

After this, in addition to the true saying, defend us from our friends one may exclaim, 'defend us from our executors and editors.'

---

Footnote 1: [(return)]

Life by Warburton, p 70.

Footnote 2: [(return)]

Life of Warburton, p. 63.

Footnote 3: [(return)]

Gray migrated to Pembroke in 1756.

Footnote 4: [(return)]

The accomplished novelist, Mrs. Gore, famous for her facility, used to say that a three-volume novel just 'dripped from her pen.'

Footnote 5: [(return)]

Sir Robert Walpole purchased a house and garden at Chelsea in 1722, near the college, adjoining Gough House.—Cunningham's 'London.'

Footnote 6: [(return)]

Afterwards the well-known and dissolute Marquis of Hertford.

Footnote 7: [(return)]

None of the addresses sent in having given satisfaction, Lord Byron was requested to write one, which he did.

Footnote 8: [(return)]

Another version is that Tom replied: 'You don't happen to have it about you, sir, do you?'

Footnote 9: [(return)]

Lord Edward Fitzgerald was one of the most devoted of her admirers: he chose his wife, Pamela, because she resembled Mrs. Sheridan.—See Moore's Life of Lord Edward.

Footnote 10: [(return)]

Mr. Jesse says that the Beau's grandfather was a servant of Mr. Charles Monson, brother to the first Lord Monson.

Footnote 11: [(return)]

Another version, given by Captain Jesse, represents this to have taken place at a ball given at the Argyle Rooms in July, 1813, by Lord Alvanley, Sir Henry Miklmav, Mr. Pierrepoint, and Mr. Brummell.

Footnote 12: [(return)]

Dr. James Hook, Dean of Worcester, was father to Dr. Walter Farquhar Hook, now the excellent Dean of Chichester, late Vicar of Leeds.

Footnote 13: [(return)]

Alluding to Lady Scott.

Footnote 14: [(return)]

See Walpole's 'Royal and Noble Authors'

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