‘Whatever you think of Shakespeare, Mr. Sheridan, you must allow that he at least always wrote poetry. Now, much of what I have had the honour to read to you is not poetry.’
‘But let us suppose Shakespeare was drunk.’
‘Sir!’ exclaimed the tragedian in an offended tone.
‘Sir!’ echoed the antiquary, dropping the folio with a crash.
‘Good Heavens! gentlemen, may not one even put a postulate? Even Euclid, a writer of little imagination, permits that much. It is not such a very impossible supposition. Have you never heard of a man of genius with a turn for the bottle?’
As he looked very hard at the tragedian, that gentleman felt called upon to reply. ‘I have no personal experience of anything of that kind,’ he said loftily.
‘Well, of course not; how should you?’ returned Sheridan blandly, but with a curve of the lip that seemed to say, ‘We are talking of men of genius.’ Perhaps his reference to his own weakness made him bitter. If it was so, the feeling was very transitory; it was with his most winning smile that he presently addressed his friend, ‘Come, Prester John, we can do nothing without you in this affair; surely you will not fail us.’
‘I will have no responsibility in the matter,’ was the haughty reply. ‘I will not append my name to yonder list; I will not have it go forth to the world that I admit the genuineness of this production; I will not stamp it with my warranty; I will not——’
‘Tut, tut, man,’ broke in the manager impatiently; ‘but you’ll act, you’ll act.’