"Duke of Portland has just left me:—he is full of anxiety about you:— this is the second time he has called to inquire."
Having secured his own election, Mr. Sheridan now hastened to lend his aid, where such a lively reinforcement was much wanted, on the hustings at Westminster. The contest here was protracted to the 2d of July; and it required no little exercise both of wit and temper to encounter the cool personalities of Tooke, who had not forgotten the severe remarks of Sheridan upon his pamphlet the preceding year, and who, in addition to his strong powers of sarcasm, had all those advantages which, in such a contest, contempt for the courtesies and compromises of party warfare gives. Among other sallies of his splenetic humor it is related, that Mr. Fox having, upon one occasion, retired from the hustings, and left to Sheridan the task of addressing the multitude, Tooke remarked, that such was always the practice of quack-doctors, who, whenever they quit the stage themselves, make it a rule to leave their merry-andrews behind. [Footnote: Tooke, it is said, upon coming one Monday morning to the hustings, was thus addressed by a pietism of his opponent, not of a very reputable character—"Well, Mr. Tooke, you will have all the blackguards with you to day"—"I am delighted to hear it, Sir," (said Tooke, bowing,) "and from such good authority.">[
The French Revolution still continued, by its comet-like course, to dazzle, alarm, and disturb all Europe. Mr. Burke had published his celebrated "Reflections" in the month of November, 1790; and never did any work, with the exception, perhaps, of the Eikon Basilike, produce such a rapid, deep, and general sensation. The Eikon was the book of a King, and this might, in another sense, be called the Book of Kings. Not only in England, but throughout all Europe,—in every part of which monarchy was now trembling for its existence,—this lofty appeal to loyalty was heard and welcomed. Its effect upon the already tottering Whig party was like that of "the Voice," in the ruins of Rome, "disparting towers." The whole fabric of the old Rockingham confederacy shook to its base. Even some, who afterwards recovered their equilibrium, at first yielded to the eloquence of this extraordinary book,—which, like the aera of chivalry, whose loss it deplores, mixes a grandeur with error, and throws a charm round political superstition, that will long render its pages a sort of region of Royal romance, to which fancy will have recourse for illusions that have lost their last hold on reason.
The undisguised freedom with which Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan expressed every where their opinions of this work and its principles had, of course, no small influence on the temper of the author, and, while it confirmed him in his hatred and jealousy of the one, prepared him for the breach which he meditated with the other. This breach was now, indeed, daily expected, as a natural sequel to the rupture with Mr. Sheridan in the last session; but, by various accidents and interpositions, the crisis was delayed till the 6th of May, when the recommitment of the Quebec Bill,—a question upon which both orators had already taken occasion to unfold their views of the French Revolution,—furnished Burke with an opportunity, of which he impetuously took advantage, to sever the tie between himself and Mr. Fox forever.
This scene, so singular in a public assembly, where the natural affections are but seldom called out, and where, though bursts of temper like that of Burke are common, such tears as those shed by Mr. Fox are rare phenomena,—has been so often described in various publications, that it would be superfluous to enter into the details of it here. The following are the solemn and stern words in which sentence of death was pronounced upon a friendship, that had now lasted for more than the fourth part of a century. "It certainly," said Mr. Burke, "was indiscretion at any period, but especially at his time of life, to provoke enemies, or to give his friends occasion to desert him; yet, if his firm and steady adherence to the British Constitution placed him in such a dilemma, he would risk all, and, as public duty and public prudence taught him, with his last words exclaim, 'Fly from the French Constitution.'" [Mr. Fox here whispered, that "there was no loss of friendship.">[ Mr. Burke said, "Yes, there was a loss of friendship;—he knew the price of his conduct;—he had done his duty at the price of his friend; their friendship was at an end."
In rising to reply to the speech of Burke, Mr. Fox was so affected as to be for some moments unable to speak:—he wept, it is said, even to sobbing; and persons who were in the gallery at the time declare, that, while he spoke, there was hardly a dry eye around them.
Had it been possible for two natures so incapable of disguise—the one from simplicity and frankness, the other from ungovernable temper,—to have continued in relations of amity, notwithstanding their disagreement upon a question which was at that moment setting the world in arms, both themselves and the country would have been the better for such a compromise between them. Their long habits of mutual deference would have mingled with and moderated the discussion of their present differences; —the tendency to one common centre to which their minds had been accustomed, would have prevented them from flying so very widely asunder; and both might have been thus saved from those extremes of principle, which Mr. Burke always, and Mr. Fox sometimes, had recourse to in defending their respective opinions, and which, by lighting, as it were, the torch at both ends, but hastened a conflagration in which Liberty herself might have been the sufferer. But it was evident that such a compromise would have been wholly impossible. Even granting that Mr. Burke did not welcome the schism as a relief, neither the temper of the men nor the spirit of the times, which converted opinions at once into passions, would have admitted of such a peaceable counterbalance of principles, nor suffered them long to slumber in that hollow truce, which Tacitus has described,—"manente in speciem amicitia" Mr. Sheridan saw this from the first; and, in hazarding that vehement speech, by which he provoked the rupture between himself and Burke, neither his judgment nor his temper were so much off their guard as they who blamed that speech seemed inclined to infer. But, perceiving that a separation was in the end inevitable, he thought it safer, perhaps, as well as manlier, to encounter the extremity at once, than by any temporizing delay, or too complaisant suppression of opinion, to involve both himself and Mr. Fox in the suspicion of either sharing or countenancing that spirit of defection, which, he saw, was fast spreading among the rest of their associates.
It is indeed said, and with every appearance of truth, that Mr. Sheridan had felt offended by the censures which some of his political friends had pronounced upon the indiscretion (as it was called) of his speech in the last year, and that, having, in consequence, withdrawn from them the aid of his powerful talents during a great part of the present session, he but returned to his post under the express condition, that he should be allowed to take the earliest opportunity of repeating, fully and explicitly, the same avowal of his sentiments.
The following letter from Dr. Parr to Mrs. Sheridan, written immediately after the scene between Burke and Sheridan in the preceding year, is curious:—