THE

MUCH has been lately written about Sheil-two volumes of "Memoirs," and two more containing a republication of his "Legal and Political Sketches," with notes by the editor.* Both are able and authentic works, containing much information, indited in a friendly spirit. They have been generally read, and elaborately reviewed. We cannot add anything that is new on the leading events of a life so completely familiar to the public; while it is extremely difficult to collect or express impartial opinions on the political character of an individual whose feelings and views, as reflected in his speeches, were so frequently in the extreme. On such points, posterity is a more equal judge than the living generation. Talleyrand did wisely when he directed that his memoirs should not be given to the world until a certain number of years had elapsed. He thought he should be better understood, and more fairly estimated, when what he said or did was no longer the topic of yesterday, but had passed into an historical record. Sheil plunged deep into the stormy sea of politics, during a period when the waves ran high, and the current was overwhelmingly impetuous. For a long time, it was much more likely that he would be hunted down as the mark for a criminal prosecution, than that his name would figure in the Red Book as a Privy Councillor, a Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital, a Vice-President of the Board of Trade, a Judge-Advocate-General, or her Majesty's Ambassador at a foreign court. Yet he successively filled all those offices, although always an enthusiastic emancipator, and an advocate for Repeal, until he saw that the word was a mockery, and the realisation of the chimera impossible. In the present notice, as in the case of Moore, and for similar reasons, it is

purposed to pass over what has been already so amply discussed, and to confine our remarks more immediately to the leading object of the series to which they belong. In some of the statements that have appeared from time to time, respecting Sheil's dramatic productions, there have been omissions and inaccuracies- not very important perhaps, but even in trifles it is better to be correct than erroneous.

RICHARD LALOR SHEIL was born at the country-residence of his father, near Waterford, on the 17th of August, 1791. He received his principal education at the Jesuit Seminary of Stonyhurst, in Lancashire, and at Trinity College, Dublin. He cared little for mathematics, but distinguished himself in classical learning. His poetical, imaginative temperament, decided the preference. In his twentythird year, he produced his first tragedy, Adelaide, or the Emigrants, which he was inspired to write by admiration of Miss O'Neill, then the leading goddess of the Dublin Theatre. The talents of this great actress, more than the intrinsic merit of the play-which was first acted at Crowstreet, on the 19th February, 1814carried through this early attempt of the young author with flattering suc cess. In 1816, Miss O'Neill, remembering her Dublin laurels, anxious to serve Sheil, and above all, desirous of an original character in London, obtained from the management of Covent Garden the production of Adelaide. The two leading parts, next in importance to her own, were sustained by Young and Charles Kemble; and great efforts were made to ensure a favourable verdict. On the 23rd of May the trial came off; but the sentence was one of condemnation, not loudly expressed, but conveyed by inference. The play was announced for

In

repetition on three evenings, but was never acted a second time. The extraordinary exertion attending Miss O'Neill's performance of the heroine, was alleged in the play-bills as the reason for indefinite postponement; but the absence of names in the box-plan afforded a more feasible solution. this case the decision of the public can scarcely be objected to. There were some passages of true poetic beauty, particularly that which describes the personal charms of Adelaide (drawn from her fair representative); but they were overloaded by others of unnatural exaggeration. The entire drama was rather an effort of promise than an instance of realised talent. The plot and incidents are too meagre for a five-act play. The action is supposed to take place at the time of the first French Revolution. St. Evermont, a noble Royalist, has escaped into Germany with his wife, Adelaide his daughter, and Julia, his niece. Count Lunenburg has given them a cottage to reside in, on his domains. He and Adelaide fall mutually in love, and are privately married, as she supposes; but, in the third act, Lunenburg acknowledges that he has imposed on her by a false ceremony, and offers to repair all by a public union. Adelaide, instead of acceding to his proposal, says she will wed despair, and stigmatises herself as the vilest of women; whereas in fact she has been guilty of no crime, except that of contracting a clandestine marriage. Adelaide poisons herself. Albert, her brother, challenges Lunenburg, who flings away his own sword, and rushes on the weapon of his opponent. The tragedy concludes with this double suicide, which a little temper and explanation might have rendered unnecessary. St. Evermont, père, has a very questionable speech, which must have escaped the vigilant eyes of the licenser, or assuredly he would have expunged it. The venerable exile says he saw "his lawful monarch's bleeding head, and yet he prayed;" he saw "his castlewalls crumbled into ashes by the devouring flames, and yet he prayed;" but when he finds his daughter betrayed by one of his most trusted friends, he can pray no more!" Young was greatly applauded in this

"A tragedy, to succeed, should be either uniformly excellent, or uniformly dull. Either will do almost equally well. We are convinced that it would be possible to write a tragedy which should be a tissue of unintelligible commonplaces from beginning to end, in which not one word that is said shall be understood by the audience; and yet, provided appearances are saved, and nothing is done to trip up the heels of the imposture, it would go down. Adelaide, or the Emigrants, is an instance in point. If there had been one good passage in this play, it would infallibly have been damned. But it was all of a piece; one absurdity justified another. The first scene was like the second; the second act no worse than the first; the third like the second, and so on to the end. The mind accommodates itself to circumstances. The author never once roused the indignation of his hearers by the disappointment of their expectations. He startled the slumbering furies of the pit by no dangerous inequalities. We were quite resigned by the middle of the third simile, and equally thankful when the whole was over. The language of this tragedy is made up of nonsense and indecency; mixed metaphors abound in it. The torrent of passion rolls along precipices.' Pleasure is said to gleam upon despair, 'like moss upon the

desolate rock.' The death of a hero is com

pared to the peak of a mountain setting in seas of glory, or some such dreadful simile, built up with ladders and scaffolding. Then the thunder and lightning are mingled with bursts of fury and revenge in inextricable confusion. There are such unmeaning phrases as contagious gentleness; and the heroes and the heroine, in their transports, as a common practice, set both worlds at defiance."

All this comes rather under the head of smart, pungent writing, than sound criticism, or clear reasoning; but it was very discouraging to a young dramatic aspirant when he found it on his breakfast-table, the following morning, in the columns of an influential journal. It would scarcely whet his appetite more than the parting consolation suggested to Wolsey by his angry

master. Sheil felt his disappointment, but he exhibited no outward tokens of chagrin. Being behind the scenes during the performance, he saw that his play produced silence rather than applause, and anticipating the result, asked, abruptly, "When do they usually begin to damn a new piece here?"* A London success would have been very gratifying to him. He had lately married, or was on the point of marrying, his first wife, Miss O'Halloran, a niece of Sir Wm. M'Mahon, Master of the Rolls, and might anticipate a young family. His father had lost much of his property in unlucky speculations, and his own means were restricted. He disliked the dull drudgery of the law, to which he was professionally condemned, and courted Apollo, equally from inclination and the hope of more agreeable profit. He knew that many living dramatists had received large sums for popular plays. At that very moment his countryman, Maturin, was emerging from toilsome obscurity, and the town rang with the praises of Bertram, while Adelaide was consigned to oblivion. In spite of the condemnation of Hazlitt, he tried his luck again, and within twelve months after his first failure. On the 3rd of May, 1817, his tragedy of The Apostate appeared at Covent Garden, and was received with most decided approbation. It was repeated twelve times during that season; and between the sum paid from the treasury of the theatre, and the profits of the copyright, placed seven hundred pounds in the hands of the author. It is unquestionably a better play than Adelaide, constructed with more attention to dramatic rules, and far superior in interest and incident. The occasional inflation of the poetry is less apparent, as the action passes during the romantic period, in Spain, the peculiar land of romance, and about the time of the revolt of the Moors from Philip the Second. The acting was superb. No tragedy of common pretensions could fail with such a cast as the following:-Hemeya (the descendant of the Moorish kings), C. Kemble; Malec (an old Moor), Mr. Young; Pescara (Governor of Grenada), Macready; Alvarez (a Spanish nobleman), Murray; Comez (an inquisitor), Eger

ton; Florinda (daughter to Alvarez), Miss O'Neill.

The writer of this article was present on the first representation, and well remembers the enthusiasm of the audience. Miss O'Neill played with an intensity of feeling and power, of which those who never saw that fascinating actress can form but a very faint conception. Macready, at that time working his way, found a good stepping-stone in a very repulsive character, which no other actor could have invested with the same consequence. Charles Kemble presented a perfect beau ideal of the heroic apostate; and Young, as the old Moor, topped them all. He had a fulminating speech against the Inquisition, then recently restored by the amiable Ferdinand the Seventh, which he delivered con amore, and with an effect that produced peals upon peals of applause, such as coldblooded or more fastidious moderns never indulge in now, within the walls of any theatre. The passage is admirable in itself, and may be selected as a good characteristic specimen of the author's style, which a very qualified notice in the Quarterly Review admitted to be original, and not borrowed from any popular school. Hemeya has warned his friend to be cautious in speech, and pointing to the terrible prison-house, before which they are conversing, says—

"Look at yon gloomy towers; e'en now we stand Within the shadows of the Inquisition."

Malec replies, indignantly

"Art thou afraid? Look at yon gloomy towers! Has thy fair minion told thee to beware

Of damps and rheums caught in the dungeon's vapours?

Or has she said those dainty limbs of thine
Were only made for love? Look at yon towers!
Ay! I will look upon them, not to fear,
But deeply curse them. There ye stand aloft,
Frowning in all your black and dreary pride,
Monastic monuments of human misery-
Houses of torment-palaces of horror!
Oft have you echoed to the lengthened shriek
Of midnight murder; often have you heard
The deep choked groan of stifled agony
Burst in its dying whisper. Curses on ye!
Curse on the tyrant that sustains you, too!
Oh may ye one day from your tow'ring height
Fall on the wretches that uphold your domes,
And crush them in your ruins !—"

The Apostate continued an attractive play at Covent Garden as long as Miss O'Neill remained a member of the company; but it has never been

revived at any London theatre since her secession in 1819.

On the 22nd of April, 1818, Sheil's third tragedy, entitled Bellamira, or the Fall of Tunis, was produced at Covent Garden, with the same powerful cast which had supported The Apostate, but with very inferior success. It was said that Miss O'Neill disliked her part, and this was the reason assigned for the speedy withdrawal of the play from the bills. She acted the character once afterwards in Bath, and to a very bad house. Nevertheless, the author again received four hundred pounds, while the treasury of the theatre must have sustained a loss. Sheil's fourth and best tragedy, Evadne, or the Statue, came out on the 10th of February, 1819, only five months before Miss O'Neill retired from the London boards.* Again he had the advantage of her brilliant talents, supported as before by Young, Macready, and Charles Kemble. Evadne ran for thirty nights to crowded houses. The author dedicated it to Thomas Moore, and his profits amounted to five hundred pounds. The tragedy is founded on Shirley's Traytor (written in 1635),† but modified to suit the more refined notions of the nineteenth century. Sheil, in his preface, almost claims the merit of original conception for a skilful adaptation. He says, "No one contests the originality of Douglas, because Home took his plot from an old ballad, and even profited by the Merope of Voltaire. Rowe's Fair Penitent is a still stronger case; that fine tragedy is modelled on Massinger's Fatal Dowry. Otway and Southern rarely invented their plots." Many more parallel instances were ready, had he cared to cite them. He might have ascended to Shakspeare, who usually built on history, old legends, or popular novels of his day.

Evadne is a well-constructed drama, less nervous in diction than The Traytor, but freed as much as possible from the indelicacy inherent to the subject, and infinitely more agreeable in the

catastrophe, which winds up happily, while just retribution overtakes the villain Ludovico (the Lorenzo of The Traytor). In Shirley's play, the innocent and guilty fall together, and the concluding scene exhibits a perfect shambles. We are dull enough not to feel keenly the intense beauty and strength of the elder dramatists, always excepting Shakspeare, and a very few selections from his contemporaries and immediate successors. Their plots turn on the most revolting crimes, incidents, and situations, and are for the most part compounded of disgusting variations of murder, butchery, incest, violation, and adultery, carried out with broad brutality, and scantily redeemed by an occasional passage of harmonious or pathetic versification, which cannot be uttered to refined ears, from the objectionable nature of the inference or context. The general impression with which we rise from the perusal of these highly vaunted masters of the olden times, is one of surprise and regret that so much power should be combined with so little taste, and such executive talent thrown away on impracticable subjects. The morbid eccentricities of genius are very unaccountable. Within the last ninety years, Horace Walpole, a wit, a courtier, and a coxcomb, wrote and printed a revolting tragedy, called The Mysterious Mother, which Lord Byron praises to the echo, while he eulogises the author as the Ultimus Romanorum. The play is undoubtedly clever, and contains some fine didactic and descriptive poetry; but the subject shuts it out from the stage, although Walpole evidently wished to try the experiment, and coquetted for that purpose, while he affected to disclaim it. He even wrote an epilogue in character, to be spoken by his neighbour and close ally, Mrs. Clive, who in all probability would have rebelled in that instance, had the ungracious task been pressed upon her. During the summer which has just concluded, Madame Ristori has been attracting

all Paris to the Mirra of Alfieri, which an English audience would not tolerate for half an act that is, if they happened to understand it. But with them, omne ignotum pro magnifico is a maxim which has not yet entirely lost its influence.

Sheil delighted in describing the beauty of his heroines. He had done so in Adelaide, and again in Evadne he paints from the same representative, in the following fine passage, in which Vicentio contemplates the lady of his choice, believing that her affection is changed, while her personal attractions retain all their unequalled brilliancy:

But you
do not look altered-would you did!
Let me peruse the face where loveliness
Stays, like the light after the sun is set.
Sphered in the stillness of those heaven-blue eyes,
The soul sits beautiful; the high white front,
Smooth as the brow of Pallas, seems a temple
Sacred to holy thinking; and those lips
Wear the small smile of sleeping infancy,
They are so innocent. Ah, thou art still
The same soft creature, in whose lovely form
Virtue and beauty seemed as if they tried
Which should exceed the other. Thou hast got
That brightness all around thee, that appeared
An emanation of the soul, that loved
To adorn its habitation with itself;
And in thy body was like light, that looks
More beautiful in the reflecting cloud
It lives in, in the evening.
Thou art not altered-would thou wert!"

Oh, Evadne,

If we judge Evadne with critical severity, the exchange of pictures in the second act must be pronounced a clumsy incident. The trick is too common-place and transparent. Evadne lends Olivia Vicentio's miniature to look at for a moment. On Vicentio's almost immediate approach, she demands it back, and does not perceive, in her hurry, that Olivia has treache rously substituted the king's, with which she has been provided by Ludovico for that express purpose. Vicentio, after some altercation with Evadne, calls on her to produce his picture. She takes that of the king from her bosom, supposing it to be Vicentio's, and this drives the quarrel between the two lovers to the point of frenzy. If Evadne had acted on the principles of common sense or reflection, she must at once have perceived that the false Olivia had played her a trick. The short space of time which intervenes between the change of the pictures and the discovery of that change, precludes the possibility of any other supposition on rational principles. But Evadne, unlike a woman, and very much in the strain of a true tragedy

heroine, disclaims reason, and rhapsodises into nonsense :

"Sure some dark spell, some fearful witchery-
Some dæmon paints it on the coloured air-
'Tis not reality that stares upon me!"

Miss O'Neill performed Evadne twice in Dublin, in July, 1819, after the close of the Covent Garden season, but the play was not then attractive. It has more recently been revived by Miss Helen Faucit, who added much to her fame by her admirable impersonation of the heroine.

On the 3rd of May, 1820, a drama in three acts, entitled Montoni, or the Phantom, appeared at Covent Garden. It was only acted twice, and never printed. On the second night it was performed as an afterpiece-a certain indication of failure. The characters and actors were as follows:-Baron Montoni, Macready; Sebastian, Abbott; Calatro, Yates; Gregorio, an abbot, Egerton; Rosaline, Miss Foote. Sheil was known to be the author, but he had no desire to be much identified with a piece which diminished rather than increased his reputation. As in the earlier case of Bertram and Adelaide, he was again overshadowed by the superior eclât of Knowles's Virginius, which was produced at the same theatre within a fortnight after. In the following year, Sheil materially assisted Banim in Damon and Pythias, first acted at Covent Garden on the 28th of May, 1821. This play has been sometimes printed with the names of both, but the exact share to which the two authors could lay claim has never been distinctly ascertained. Sheil, more than once, in conversation on the subject with the writer of this notice, told him that he had contributed several speeches, and much general supervision and advice as to the construction of the drama.

On the 11th December, 1822, Sheil's last tragedy, The Huguenot, appeared in the same theatre which had witnessed his earlier efforts, but without the success which maturer experience might have looked for. It was written three years before, in 1819, and the heroine intended for Miss O'Neill, whose absence was severely felt, and her place inadequately supplied. Macready alone remained of the leading performers who had so distinguished themselves in The Apostate, Bellamira, and Evadne. Three nights terminated the short