THE

BRITISH REVIEW,

AND

LONDON CRITICAL JOURNAL.

NOVEMBER, 1817.

ART. XIII.-MEMOIRS OF TH. RT. HONOURABLE RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.

1. Memoirs of the public and private Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan, with a particular Account of his Family and Connexions. By John Watkins, LL.D. 2 vols. 4to. pp. 750. Colburn. London, 1817.

2. Speeches of the late Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan: several corrected by Himself. Edited by a Constitutional Friend. 5 vols. 8vo. Martin. London, 1816.

THERE are those who deny the existence of any original differ ence in the faculties of men; and who maintain that genius is solely created by circumstances, either of accidental influence, or specific culture. But until the constituent qualities of the human intellect can be brought within the reach of physical analysis, every man must and will decide this question for himself by the practical test of his own experience, and the convictions produced in his mind by general observation. He who duly appreciates the intellectual achievements of the subject of the above memoir, will be at a loss to find in the circumstances of his early life the source of his subsequent eminence. His success is a problem which has no solution but in mystery, nor will any theory afford an explanation so satisfactory as that which adopts the principle of innate superiority, and supposes certain natural advantages in the primary endowments of the mind. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox breathed an atmosphere of

knowledge from their very infancy; they had parental instruction and parental example to animate and inform their minds, of a nature certainly to make them great, (we speak only politically): and the youth of Mr. Burke, as we have observed in a former article, was a protracted season of preparation, devoutly directed towards the attainment of truth, and full of the sober and serious purposes of utility. But the early career of Sheridan, even to the ripest manhood, was disturbed by interests and objects commonly fatal to literature, to science, and to political ambition. Except a year or two of his boyhood, passed under the tuition of Dr. Parr at Harrow School, the docile period of his life was lost in inaction, or consumed in desultory or dissipating occupation; and where his intellect was employed, it seems to have chosen those paths of ephemeral fame, which seldom lead to solid or useful acquisitions. Even the maturer exercises of his mind, however high they raised his reputation as a comic writer, contributed but little to the fund from which he was afterwards to draw in the great emergencies of his political warfare. From dramatic composition, and the politics of a theatre, from a course of shifts and difficulties, want and waste, negligence and distress; from a vortex of festivity, folly, and inebriety, was this extraordinary man on a sudden introduced into the great Council of the nation, and at once set in competition with men whose talents as speakers and reasoners have marked with a distinct character the æra in which they flourished. It is true that Mr. Sheridan was frequently in the company of Mr. Burke, Dr. Johnson, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, before the commencement of his parliamentary life; but who does not know, how little, without the accompaniments of meditation, reading, and spontaneous exercise, is to be acquired of sound and accurate knowledge, from table-talk and desultory discussion. His acceptance, indeed, with persons of the above description, when considerably under thirty years of age, increases our surprise at the maturity of his attainments under circumstances so unfavourable to their advancement. But we do not mean to suppose any thing miraculous in the history of Mr. Sheridan. Ideas came into his mind by the usual inlets, and his acquaintance with things and men was derived from communication and observation, as in the case of others; but we mean to insist upon the rare felicity of those mental powers, and the native soundness of that intellectual constitution which, from amidst the bustle of business, speculation, and pleasure, from amidst the anxieties of uncertain subsistence, from amidst difficulties, and clamour, and discontent, the fruit of a defective morality, and unsteady conduct, answered the first call to high station in public affairs with many of the qualifications of a statesman, and rose at once, if not to the sum

mit of ambitious hope, to an altitude certainly demanding, exercising, and displaying, the loftiest capacity.

It is curious, however, as well as interesting and consoling, to observe how necessary to the worth and efficacy of genius is moral sobriety of sentiment, and virtuous decorum of conduct. The irregular training and desultory habits of this extraordinary person, spread through his whole life their deteriorating influence. No regular progression, no accumulation of authority, no gradual increase of personal ascendancy, no gratuitous reliance, no respectful prepossessions, were the fruits of his repeated victories in eloquence or argument. Gratitude for occasional efforts of genuine patriotism never rose to habitual esteem. Conviction and persuasion, though often the effect of his vivacious eloquence, never ripened into confidence; the morning and meridian of his days were equal in their lustre, and that lustre rather corruscating and intermittent, than full, effulgent, and continuous.

The character of our House of Commons which reflects the general temper of the nation, a temper naturally rather suspicious of declamation--the diffusion and cheapness of popular oratory, --and above all, the notoriety of the real nature of party-principle, which makes truth and general utility a sacrifice to factious views, and personal ambition, has deprived eloquence, merely as eloquence, of much of its influence over public affairs, and private opinions. Nor can we altogether lament a state of things, however brought about, in which the passions are become less a prey to the artifices of rhetoric, and in which general eloquence thus compelled to take a higher aim, is forced to call to its aid, the weight of character, and the attraction of truth. Disconnected and occasional displays of oratory, on which anciently the greatest transactions, and even the fate of commonwealths, turned, produce nothing in our day but an effect as perishing as dramatic impressions; we feel, admire, acclaim, and forget. In this country no man is able to maintain a personal ascendancy in political affairs by the strength of eloquence alone. It must be an eloquence into which character flows with its colouring and prevailing ingredients; an eloquence in which the permanent influence of truth displays itself in a series of consistent efforts, --an eloquence of sincere feeling and manly counsel, holding nothing so high in policy as virtue and honour,-it is only this sort of eloquence which, in a country circumstanced as England at present is, can invest the statesman with any real influence over the public mind. A popularity so acquired will seldom be borne upon the voice of acclamation, and to the superficial observer will scarcely seem to exist; but it lies deep at that focus where the rays of real opinion unite, and towards which

self-love is sure to direct the homage and hopes of a commu nity in the critical hour of national peril.

It must be allowed that there were moments when Mr. Sheridan exerted his extraordinary powers for the preservation of his country, independently of his party connexions, and these were moments worth all his life besides; but such was far from being the general tendency of his eloquence: it was in the main of a thoroughly factious character; and partook of all the dangerous and debasing qualities which belong to private ambition and party purposes. He allied himself, or rather devoted himself to a set of men, distinguished as much by their talents as by their want, in general, of that moral dignity without which talents are neither profitable nor safe. He chose unhappily to commit himself to a sea of troubles in a vessel scarcely sea-worthy, to which the state could never trust itself, and which ultimately cast him, forlorn and destitute, a shipwrecked voyager on the shore of an awful eternity.

The party to which Mr. Sheridan thus devoted himself, however respectable some of the individuals composing it may have been, did certainly never as a body possess the confidence of the country at large, nor were its leaders distinguished by that eloquence into which character is incorporated with advantage to its moral dominion. The eminent person under whom he was enlisted was a latitudinarian in life and principle. In the drill and discipline of party-politics he was alone exact: far from strict in matters of religion and morality, but precise and rigorous in his expectations of conformity in his political adherents to the stern maxims of unvarying opposition to Government: the child of party, the champion of party, the martyr to party : sacrificing, through a miscalculating policy, that permanent popularity which we have above described, to the slippery title of "Man of the People," he abandoned to his great rival the durable tenure of public confidence and esteem. We are far from imputing to Mr. Fox dishonourable conduct, but we cannot see in his political life the model of a real patriot, nor in his private conduct an exemplary pattern of decorum. Neither religion, nor the self-denying duties which spring from it, were visible in his intercourse or practice; nor can it be contended that in his love of his country the love of its mind and character was sufficiently cherished to make him sensible of the importance of his moral example. It can scarcely be maintained, indeed, by any candid person, that the party of which Mr. Fox was the leader, and to which Mr. Sheridan united himself, was characterised in general by any higher degree of morality than the maxims of worldly honour inculcate. We do not forget that Mr. Burke and Mr. Windham were members of this political

confederacy, when Mr. Sheridan first became one of the number; nor do we doubt that many persons of moral life and regular habits were by principle attached to this unfortunate party; but as its character became more developed we find the wise and the good deserting it, and perhaps saving the nation by their timely apostasy.

Mr. Fox, as the illustrious leader of his party, has always appeared to us to have been placed in a situation degrading to moral dignity of character. The iron servitude of ambition kept him engaged in a perpetuity of opposition to measures on account of the men from whom they proceeded; and so strong was the dominion of party-principles over his mind, as to render this dangerous policy his boast, and to blind him to the consequences of an avowal so subversive of the influence of his oratory. The other members of the party, though attached to their leader, partly by principle, partly by friendship, and partly by an union of hopes and prospects, were many of them persons of too much light, liberality, and patriotism to adopt this promiscuous principle of opposition. They sometimes, and among them Mr. Sheridan, asserted a moral emancipation from the shackles of party, and rose by every such effort in the esteem of their country. Thus it was only in the second year of Mr. Sheridan's political life that the speech of Mr. Fox on the bill for the repeal of the marriage act, a captivating display of splendid and mischievous sophistry, placed Mr. Sheridan in a very honourable opposition to his friend, and drew from him the pledge of a patriotism too strong for private interest or attachment, and which occasionally, in the sequel of his political life, he manfully and faithfully redeemed. Even on the great subject of the French Revolution, which involved the party in so much discredit both as patriots and politicians, the rock on which the fame of Mr. Fox was irretrievably shattered, Mr. Sheridan, towards the close of his parliamentary career, displayed a portion of English spirit, and held up to the just abhorrence of his countrymen the revolutionary tyrant, at whose court Mr. Fox had condescended to be distinguished by contaminating honours.

Between Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox, although for some time associated as the professed supporters of what called itself the Whig interest, there always existed a radical difference on many of the great questions of constitutional policy. This difference of sentiment lay in some measure dormant during the American war, which, while it lasted, absorbed all other interests, and during the discussions on India, and the trial of its GovernorGeneral, in which all the great members of opposition were closely united in sentiment and action; but when these objects