"Of that same tree which

gave

the box,

Now rattling in the hand of FOX,
Perhaps his coffin shall be made.

He then rambles into prose, as was his custom, on a sort of knight-errantry after thoughts and images :-"The lawn thou hast chosen for thy bridal shift thy shroud may be of the same piece. That flower thou hast bought to feed thy vanity-from the same tree thy corpse may be decked. Reynolds shall, like his colours, fly; and Brown, when mingled with the dust, manure the grounds he once laid out. Death is life's second childhood; we return to the breast from whence we came, are weaned,

* * *""

There are a few detached lines and couplets of a poem, intended to ridicule some fair invalid, who was much given to falling in love with her physicians :

"Who felt her pulse, obtained her heart."

The following couplet, in which he characterises an amiable friend of his, Dr. Bain, with whom he did not become acquainted till the year 1792, proves these fragments to have been written after that period :

"Not

savage

*

nor gentle BAIN—

She was in love with Warwick Lane."

An "Address to the Prince," on the exposed style of women's dress, consists of little more than single lines, not yet wedded into couplets;

such as- "The more you show, the less we wish to see."-" And bare their bodies, as they mask their minds," etc. This poem, however, must have been undertaken many years after his entrance into Parliament, as the following curious political memorandum will prove :-"I like it no better for being from France-whence all ills come-altar of liberty, begrimed at once with blood and mire."

There are also some Anacreontics-lively, but boyish and extravagant, For instance, in expressing his love of bumpers :

"Were mine a goblet that had room
For a whole vintage in its womb.
I still would have the liquor swim
An inch or two above the brim."

The following specimen is from one of those poems, whose length and completeness prove them to have been written at a time of life when he was more easily pleased, and had not yet arrived at that state of glory and torment for the poet, when

66

Toujours mécontent de ce qu'il vient de faire,
Il plait à tout le monde et ne saurait se plaire.
"The Muses call'd, the other morning,
On Phoebus, with a friendly warning
That invocations came so fast,
They must give up their trade at last,
And if he meant to' assist them all,
The aid of Nine would be too small.

Me then, as clerk, the Council chose,
To tell this truth in humble

prosc.

But Phœbus, possibly intending

To show what all their hopes must end in,
To give the scribbling youths a sample,
And frighten them by my example,
Bade me ascend the poet's throne,
And give them verse-much like their own.

"Who has not heard each poet sing
The powers of Heliconian spring?
Its noble virtues we are told

By all the rhyming crew of old.—
Drink but a little of its well,

And straight you could both write and spell,
While such rhyme-giving pow'rs run through it,
A quart would make an epic poet." etc. etc.

A poem on the miseries of a literary drudge begins thus promisingly :

"Think ye how dear the sickly meal is bought,

By him who works at verse and trades in thought?"

The rest is hardly legible; but there can be little doubt that he would have done this subject justice; for he had himself tasted of the bitterness with which the heart of a man of genius overflows, when forced by indigence to barter away (as it is here expressed) here expressed) "the reversion of

his thoughts," and

"Forestall the blighted harvest of his brain."

VOL. I.

27

314

MEMOIRS OF R. B. SHERIDAN.

It will be easily believed that, in looking over the remains, both dramatic and poetical, from which the foregoing specimens are taken, I have been frequently tempted to indulge in much ampler extracts. It appeared to me, however, more prudent, to rest satisfied with the selections here given; for, while less would have disappointed the curiosity of the reader, more might have done injustice to the memory of the author.

THE period at which Mr. Sheridan entered upon his political career was, in every respect, remarkable. A persevering and vindictive war against America, with the folly and guilt of which the obstinacy of the Court and the acquiescence of the people are equally chargeable, was fast approaching that crisis, which every unbiassed spectator of the contest had long foreseen,—and at which, however humiliating to the haughty pretensions of England, every friend to the liberties of the human race rejoiced. It was, perhaps, as difficult for this country to have been long and virulently opposed to such principles as the Americans asserted in this contest, without being herself corrupted by the cause which she maintained, as it was for the French to have fought, in the same conflict, by the side of the oppressed, without catching a portion of that enthusiasm for liberty, which such an alliance was calculated to inspire. Accordingly, while the voice of Philosophy was heard along the neighbouring shores,