"Thy busy head can find no gentle rest
For thinking on the events," &c. &c.
Some of his observations, however, are just and tasteful. Upon the Essay "Of Popular Discontents," after remarking, that "Sir W. T. opens all his Essays with something as foreign to the purpose as possible," he has the following criticism:—"Page 260, 'Represent misfortunes for faults, and mole-hills for mountains,'—the metaphorical and literal expression too often coupled. P. 262, 'Upon these four wheels the chariot of state may in all appearance drive easy and safe, or at least not be too much shaken by the usual roughness of ways, unequal humors of men, or any common accidents,'—another instance of the confusion of the metaphorical and literal expression."
Among the passages he quotes from Temple's verses, as faulty, is the following:—
"—that we may see,
Thou art indeed the empress of the sea."
It is curious enough that he himself was afterwards guilty of nearly as illicit a rhyme in his song "When 'tis night," and always defended it:—
"But when the fight's begun,
Each serving at his gun."
Whatever grounds there may be for referring these labors of Sheridan to the period of his retirement at Waltham Abbey, there are certainly but few other intervals in his life that could be selected as likely to have afforded him opportunities of reading. Even here, however, the fears and anxieties that beset him were too many and incessant to leave much leisure for the pursuits of scholarship. However, a state of excitement may be favorable to the development of genius—which is often of the nature of those seas, that become more luminous the more they are agitated,—for a student, a far different mood is necessary; and in order to reflect with clearness the images that study presents, the mind should have its surface level and unruffled.
The situation, indeed, of Sheridan was at this time particularly perplexing. He had won the heart, and even hand, of the woman he loved, yet saw his hopes of possessing her farther off than ever. He had twice risked his life against an unworthy antagonist, yet found the vindication of his honor still incomplete, from the misrepresentations of enemies, and the yet more mischievous testimony of friends. He felt within himself all the proud consciousness of genius, yet, thrown on the world without even a profession, looked in vain for a channel through which to direct its energies. Even the precarious hope, which his father's favor held out, had been purchased by an act of duplicity which his conscience could not approve; for he had been induced, with the view, perhaps, of blinding his father's vigilance, not only to promise that he would instantly give up a pursuit so unpleasing to him, but to take "an oath equivocal" that he never would marry Miss Linley.
The pressure of these various anxieties upon so young and so ardent a mind, and their effects in alternately kindling and damping its spirit, could only have been worthily described by him who felt them, and there still exist some letters which he wrote during this time, to a gentleman well known as one of his earliest and latest friends. I had hoped that such a picture, as these letters must exhibit, of his feelings at that most interesting period of his private life, would not have been lost to the present work. But scruples—over-delicate, perhaps, but respectable, as founded upon a systematic objection to the exposure of any papers, received under the seal of private friendship—forbid the publication of these precious documents. The reader must, therefore, be satisfied with the few distant glimpses of their contents, which are afforded by the answers of his correspondent, found among the papers entrusted to me. From these it appears, that through all his letters the same strain of sadness and despondency prevailed,—sometimes breaking out into aspirings of ambition, and sometimes rising into a tone of cheerfulness, which but ill concealed the melancholy under it. It is evident also, and not a little remarkable, that in none of these overflowings of his confidence, had he as yet suffered the secret of his French marriage with Miss Linley to escape; and that his friend accordingly knew but half the wretched peculiarities of his situation. Like most lovers, too, imagining that every one who approached his mistress must be equally intoxicated with her beauty as himself, he seems anxiously to have cautioned his young correspondent (who occasionally saw her at Oxford and at Bath) against the danger that lay in such irresistible charms. From another letter, where the writer refers to some message, which Sheridan had requested him to deliver to Miss Linley, we learn, that she was at this time so strictly watched, as to be unable to achieve—what to an ingenious woman is seldom difficult —an answer to a letter which her lover had contrived to convey to her.
It was at first the intention of the elder Mr. Sheridan to send his daughters, in the course of this autumn, under the care of their brother Richard, to France. But, fearing to entrust them to a guardian who seemed himself so much in need of direction, he altered his plan, and, about the beginning of October, having formed an engagement for the ensuing winter with the manager of the Dublin theatre, gave up his house in Bath, and set out with his daughters for Ireland. At the same time Mr. Grenville, (afterwards Marquis of Buckingham,) who had passed a great part of this and the preceding summer at Bath, for the purpose of receiving instruction from Mr. Sheridan in elocution, went also to Dublin on a short visit, accompanied by Mr. Cleaver, and by his brother Mr. Thomas Grenville—between whom and Richard Sheridan an intimacy had at this period commenced, which continued with uninterrupted cordiality ever after.