Such coincidences, whether accidental or designed, are at least curious, and the following is another of somewhat a different kind:—"Steal! (says Sir Fretful) to be sure they may; and egad, serve your best thoughts as gipsies do stolen children, disfigure them, to make 'em pass for their own." [Footnote: This simile was again made use of by him in a speech upon Mr. Pitt's India Bill, which he declared to be "nothing more than a bad plagiarism on Mr. Fox's, disfigured, indeed, as gipsies do stolen children, in order to make them pass for their own.">[ Churchill has the same idea in nearly the same language:—
"Still pilfers wretched plans and makes them worse,
Like gipsies, lest the stolen brat be known,
Defacing first, then claiming for their own."
The character of Puff, as I have already shown, was our author's first dramatic attempt; and, having left it unfinished in the porch as he entered the temple of Comedy, he now, we see, made it worthy of being his farewell oblation in quitting it. Like Eve's flowers, it was his
"Early visitation, and his last."
We must not, however, forget a lively Epilogue which he wrote this year, for Miss Hannah More's tragedy of Fatal Falsehood, in which there is a description of a blue-stocking lady, executed with all his happiest point. Of this dense, epigrammatic style, in which every line is a cartridge of wit in itself, Sheridan was, both in prose and verse, a consummate master; and if any one could hope to succeed, after Pope, in a Mock Epic, founded upon fashionable life, it would have been, we should think, the writer of this epilogue. There are some verses, written on the "Immortelle Emilie" of Voltaire, in which her employments, as a savante and a woman of the world, are thus contrasted:—
"Tout lui plait, tout convient a son vaste genie,
Les livres, les bijoux, les compas, les pompons,
Les vers, les diamans, les beribis, l'optique,
L'algebre, les soupers, le Latin, les jupons,
L'opera, les proces, le bal, et la physique."
How powerfully has Sheridan, in bringing out the same contrasts, shown the difference between the raw material of a thought, and the fine fabric as it comes from the hands of a workman:—
"What motley cares Corilla's mind perplex,
Whom maids and metaphors conspire to vex!
In studious deshabille behold her sit,
A letter'd gossip and a housewife wit:
At once invoking, though for different views,
Her gods, her cook, her milliner, and muse.
Round her strew'd room a frippery chaos lies,
A chequer'd wreck of notable and wise.
Bills, books, caps, couplets, combs, a varied mass,
Oppress the toilet and obscure the glass;
Unfinished here an epigram is laid,
And there a mantua-maker's bill unpaid.
There new-born plays foretaste the town's applause,
There dormant patterns pine for future gauze.
A moral essay now is all her care,
A satire next, and then a bill of fare.
A scene she now projects, and now a dish,
Here Act the First, and here 'Remove with Fish.'
Now, while this eye in a fine frenzy rolls,
That soberly casts up a bill for coals;
Black pins and daggers in one leaf she sticks.
And tears, and threads, and bowls, and thimbles mix."
We must now prepare to follow the subject of this Memoir into a field of display, altogether different, where he was in turn to become an actor before the public himself, and where, instead of inditing lively speeches for others, he was to deliver the dictates of his eloquence and wit from his own lips. However the lovers of the drama may lament this diversion of his talents, and doubt whether even the chance of another School for Scandal were not worth more than all his subsequent career, yet to the individual himself, full of ambition, and conscious of versatility of powers, such an opening into a new course of action and fame, must have been like one of those sudden turnings of the road in a beautiful country, which dazzle the eyes of a traveller with new glories, and invite him on to untried paths of fertility and sunshine.
It has been before remarked how early, in a majority of instances, the dramatic talent has come to its fullest maturity. Mr. Sheridan would possibly never have exceeded what he had already done, and his celebrity had now reached that point of elevation, where, by a sort of optical deception in the atmosphere of fame, to remain stationary is to seem, in the eyes of the spectators, to fall. He had, indeed, enjoyed only the triumphs of talent, and without even descending to those ovations, or minor triumphs, which in general are little more than celebrations of escape from defeat, and to which they, who surpass all but themselves, are often capriciously reduced. It is questionable, too, whether, in any other walk of literature, he would have sustained the high reputation which he acquired by the drama. Very rarely have dramatic writers, even of the first rank, exhibited powers of equal rate, when out of the precincts of their own art; while, on the other hand, poets of a more general range, whether epic, lyric, or satiric, have as rarely succeeded on the stage. There is, indeed, hardly one of our celebrated dramatic authors (and the remark might be extended to other countries) who has left works worthy of his reputation in any other line; and Mr. Sheridan, perhaps, might only have been saved from adding to the list of failures, by such a degree of prudence or of indolence as would have prevented him from making the attempt. He may, therefore, be said to have closed his account with literature, when not only the glory of his past successes, but the hopes of all that he might yet have achieved, were set down fully, and without any risk of forfeiture, to his credit; and, instead of being left, like Alexander, to sigh for new worlds to vanquish, no sooner were his triumphs in one sphere of action complete than another opened to invite him to new conquests.