"This policy is very evident among the majority in both houses, who, though they make no scruple in private to acknowledge the total incapacity of ministers, yet, in public, speak and vote as if they believed them to have every virtue under heaven; and, on this principle, some gentlemen,—as Mr. Gibbon, for instance,—while, in private, they indulge their opinion pretty freely, will yet, in their zeal for the public good, even condescend to accept a place, in order to give a color to their confidence in the wisdom of the government."
It is needless to say that Mr. Sheridan had been for some time among the most welcome guests at Devonshire House—that rendezvous of all the wits and beauties of fashionable life, where Politics was taught to wear its most attractive form, and sat enthroned, like Virtue among the Epicureans, with all the graces and pleasures for handmaids.
Without any disparagement of the manly and useful talents, which are at present no where more conspicuous than in the upper ranks of society, it may be owned that for wit, social powers, and literary accomplishments, the political men of the period under consideration formed such an assemblage as it would be flattery to say that our own times can parallel. The natural tendency of the excesses of the French Revolution was to produce in the higher classes of England an increased reserve of manner, and, of course, a proportionate restraint on all within their circle, which have been fatal to conviviality and humor, and not very propitious to wit—subduing both manners and conversation to a sort of polished level, to rise above which is often thought almost as vulgar as to sink below it. Of the greater ease of manners that existed some forty or fifty years ago, one trifling, but not the less significant, indication was the habit, then prevalent among men of high station, of calling each other by such familiar names as Dick, Jack, Tom, &c. [Footnote: Dick Sheridan, Ned Burke, Jack Townshend, Tom Grenville, &c. &c.]—a mode of address that brings with it, in its very sound, the notion of conviviality and playfulness, and, however unrefined, implies, at least, that ease and sea-room, in which wit spreads its canvas most fearlessly.
With respect to literary accomplishments, too,—in one branch of which, poetry, almost all the leading politicians of that day distinguished themselves—the change that has taken place in the times, independently of any want of such talent, will fully account for the difference that we witness, in this respect, at present. As the public mind becomes more intelligent and watchful, statesmen can the less afford to trifle with their talents, or to bring suspicion upon their fitness for their own vocation, by the failures which they risk in deviating into others. Besides, in poetry, the temptation of distinction no longer exists—the commonness of that talent in the market, at present, being such as to reduce the value of an elegant copy of verses very far below the price it was at, when Mr. Hayley enjoyed an almost exclusive monopoly of the article.
In the clever Epistle, by Tickell, "from the Hon. Charles Fox, partridge-shooting, to the Hon. John Townshend, cruising," some of the most shining persons in that assemblage of wits and statesmen, who gave a lustre to Brooks's Club-House at the period of which we are speaking, are thus agreeably grouped:—
"Soon as to Brooks's thence thy footsteps bend, [Footnote: The well-known lines on Brooks himself are perhaps the perfection of this drawing-room style of humor:—
"And know, I've bought the best champagne from Brooks;
From liberal Brooks, 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.">[
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;—
* * * * *
On that auspicious night, supremely grac'd
With chosen guests, the pride of liberal taste,
Not in contentious heat, nor madd'ning strife,
Not with the busy ills, nor cares of life,
We'll waste the fleeting hours—far happier themes
Shall claim each thought and chase ambition's dreams.
Each beauty that sublimity can boast
He best shall tell, who still unites them most.
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-natur'd Devon! oft shall then appear
The cool complacence of thy friendly sneer:
Oft shall Fitzpatrick's wit and Stanhope's case
And Burgoyne's manly sense unite to please.
And while each guest attends our varied feats
Of scattered covies and retreating fleets,
Me shall they wish some better sport to gain,
And Thee more glory, from the next campaign."
In the society of such men the destiny of Mr. Sheridan could not be long in fixing. On the one side, his own keen thirst for distinction, and on the other, a quick and sanguine appreciation of the service that such talents might render in the warfare of party, could not fail to hasten the result that both desired.