‘I dragged him here, Mr. Erin, like iniquity, with cart-ropes. The quarrels of commentators, I know, are like the bars of a castle; they’ll be shot rather than open their arms to one another. For my sake, however, I hope you will, both of you, make a truce while this little matter of business is under discussion; then to it again hammer and tongs with all my heart.—Now, where’s this play?’
Mr. Erin produced it from his breast-pocket, into which he had hurriedly thrust it.
‘Oh, that’s it, is it? Gad! he carries it about with him as a mother carries a newborn babe, whose paternity has never been questioned.’
Kemble smiled, as Coriolanus might have done at the mention of gratitude.
‘I think, Mr. Sheridan,’ said the antiquary in an offended tone, ‘if you will be so good as to glance at yonder certificate, including among other authorities your friend Dr. Parr, you must admit that the legitimacy of “Vortigern and Rowena“ is tolerably well established. Herbert Croft, Dr. Walton, the Poet Laureate, Sir James Bland Burgess, are vouchers——’
‘Weighty enough, indeed,’ interposed the manager impatiently; ‘anything ought to go down with such names attached to it. But the play, the play’s the thing. Let’s look at it.’
It was a detail, if report spoke true, that Sheridan did not always insist upon. He had offered to accept a comedy from the authoress of ‘Evelina’ unread, and to put it on the boards of Drury Lane. Even now, when the manuscript was spread out before him, he seemed to shrink from the task he had imposed upon himself.
‘Gad!’ he exclaimed, ‘there seems a good lot of it!’
‘There are two thousand eight hundred lines in all,’ explained Mr. Erin gravely.
‘Fourteen hundred lines are deemed sufficient for an acting drama,’ observed Mr. Kemble acidly.