80 Selwyn's Little Companion taken from Him. when they returned to the Continent; but in 1777, the mar chioness, being then in Brussels, claimed her daughter back again; though less, it seems, from any great anxiety on the child's account, than because her husband's parents, in Milan, objected to their grand-daughter being left in England; and also, not a little, from fear of the voice of Mrs. Grundy. Selwyn seems to have used all kinds of arguments to retain the child; and a long correspondence took place, which the marchesa begins with, My very dear friend,' and many affectionate expressions, and concludes with a haughty 'Sir,' and her opinion that his conduct was 'devilish.' The affair was, therefore, clearly a violent quarrel, and Selwyn was obliged at last to give up the child. He had a carriage fitted up for her expressly for her journey; made out for her a list of the best hotels on her route; sent his own confidential man-servant with her, and treasured up among his 'relics' the childish little notes, in a large scrawling hand, which Mie-Mie sent him. Still more curious was it to see this complete man of the world, this gambler for many years, this club-lounger, drinker, associate of well-dressed blasphemers, of Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey, devoting, not his money only, but his very time to this mere child, leaving town in the height of the season for dull Matson, that she might have fresh air; quitting his hot club-rooms, his nights spent at the piquet-table, and the rattle of the dice, for the quiet, pleasant terraces of his country-house, where he would hold the little innocent Mie-Mie by her tiny hand, as she looked up into his shrivelled dissipated face; quitting the interchange of wit, the society of the Townshends, the Walpoles, the Williamses, the Edgecumbes; all the jovial, keen wisdom of Gilly, and Dick, and Horace, and Charles, as they called one another, for the meaningless prattle, the merry laughter of this half-English, half-Italian child. It redeems Selwyn in our eyes, and it may have done him real good: nay, he must have felt a keen refreshment in this change from vice to innocence; and we understand the misery he expressed, when the old bachelor's one little companion and only pure friend was taken away from him. His love for the child was well known in London society; and of it did Sheridan's friends take advantage, when they wanted His later Days and Death. 81 to get Selwyn out of Brookes', to prevent his black-balling the dramatist. The anecdote is given in the next memoir. In his later days Selwyn still haunted the clubs, hanging about, sleepy, shrivelled, dilapidated in face and figure, yet still respected and dreaded by the youngsters, as the 'celebrated Mr. Selwyn.' The wit's disease-gout-carried him off at last, in 1791, at the age of seventy-two. He left a fortune which was not contemptible: £33,000 of it were to go to Mie-Mie-by this time a young lady-and as the Duke of Queensberry, at his death, left her no less than £150,000, Miss was by no means a bad match for Lord Yarmouth.* See what a good thing it is to have three papas, when two of them are rich! The duke made Lord Yarmouth his residuary legatee, and between him and his wife divided nearly half-a-million. Let us not forget in closing this sketch of George Selwyn's life, that, gambler and reprobate as he was, he possessed some good traits, among which his love of children appears in shining colours. * Afterwards the well-known and dissolute Marquis of Hertford. 190% RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. Sheridan a Dunce.-Boyish Dreams of Literary Fame.-Sheridan in Love.-A Nest of Nightingales.-The 'Maid of Bath.'-Captivated by Genius.Sheridan's Elopement with 'Cecilia.'-His Duel with Captain Matthews.-Standards of Ridicule.-Painful Family Estrangements.-Enters Drury Lane. Success of the Famous 'School for Scandal.'-Opinions of Sheridan and his Influence.-The Literary Club.-Anecdote of Garrick's Admittance.-Origin of the 'Rejected Addresses.'-New Flights.-Political Ambition. The Gaming Mania.-Almacks'.-Brookes'.- Black-balled. -Two Versions of the Election Trick.-St. Stephen's Won.-Vocal Difficulties.— Leads a Double Life.-Pitt's Vulgar Attack.-Sheridan's Happy Retort.Grattan's Quip.-Sheridan's Sallies.-The Trial ct Warren Hastings.Wonderful Effect of Sheridan's Eloquence.-The Supreme Effort. -The Star Culminates.-Native Taste for Swindling.-A Shrewd but Graceless Oxonian.-Duns Outwitted.-The Lawyer Jockeyed.-Adventures with Bailiffs. Sheridan's Powers of Persuasion.-House of Commons Greek.Curious Mimicry.—The Royal Boon Company.-Street Frolics at Night.An Old Tale.-'All's well that ends well.'-The Fray in St. Giles.'-Unopened Letters.-An Odd Incident.-Reckless Extravagance.-Sporting Ambition.-Like Father like Son.-A Severe and Witty Rebuke.-Intemperance. Convivial Excesses of a Past Day.-Worth wins at last.-Bitter Pangs.-The Scythe of Death.-Sheridan's Second Wife.-Debts of Honour.-Drury Lane Burnt.-The Owner's Serenity.-Misfortunes never come Singly. The Whitbread Quarrel.—Ruined.—Undone and almost Forsaken. -The Dead Man Arrested.-The Stories fixed on Sheridan.-Extempore Wit and Inveterate Talkers. OOR Sheridan! gambler, spendthrift, debtor, as thou wert, what is it that shakes from our hand the stone we would fling at thee? Almost, we must confess it, thy very faults; at least those qualities which seem to have been thy glory and thy ruin: which brought thee into temptation; to which, hadst thou been less brilliant, less bountiful, thou hadst never been drawn. What is it that disarms us when we review thy life, and wrings from us a tear when we should utter a reproach? Thy punishment; that bitter, miserable end; that long battling with poverty, debt, disease, all brought on by thyself; that abandonment in the hour of need, more bitter han them all; that awakening to the terrible truth of the hol lowness of man and rotenness of the world!-surely this is enough surely we may hope that a pardon followed. But now let us view thee in thy upward flight-the genius, the wit, the monarch of mind. This great man, this wonderful genius, this eloquent senator, this most applauded dramatist was-hear it, ch, ye boys! and fling it triumphantly in the faces of your pedagogues-Sheridan, at your age, was a dunce! This was the more extraordinary, inasmuch as his father, mother, and grandfather were all celebrated for their quick mental powers. The last, in fact, Dr. Sheridan, was a successful and eminent schoolmaster, the intimate friend of Dean Swift, and an author. He was an Irish man and a wit, and would seem to have been a Jacobite to boot, for he was deprived of a chaplaincy he held under Government; for preaching, on King George's birthday, a sermon having for its text 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.' Sheridan's mother, again—an eccentric, extraordinary woman --wrote novels and plays; among the latter 'The Discovery,' which Garrick said was 6 one of the best comedies he ever read ;' and Sheridan's father, Tom Sheridan, was famous, in connection with the stage, where he was so long the rival of David Garrick. Born of such parents, in September, 1751, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was sent in due course to Harrow, where that famous old pedant, Dr. Parr, was at that time one of the masters. The Doctor has himself described the lazy boy, in whose face he discovered the latent genius, and whom he attempted to inspire with a love of Greek verbs and Latin verses, by making him ashamed of his ignorance. But Richard preferred English verses and no verbs, and the Doctor failed. He did not, even at that period, cultivate elocution, of which his father was sc good a master; though Dr. Parr remembered one of his sisters, on a visit to Harrow, reciting, in accordance with her father's teaching, the well-known lines 'None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserve the fair. But the real mind of the boy who would not be a scholar showed 84 Boyish Dreams of Literary Fame. itself early enough. He had only just left Harrow, when he began to display his literary abilities. He had formed at school the intimate acquaintance of Halhed, afterwards a distinguished Indianist, a man of like tastes with himself; he had translated with him some of the poems of Theocritus. The two boys had revelled together in boyish dreams of literary fame—ah, those boyish dreams! so often our noblest-so seldom realized. So often, alas! the aspirations to which we can look back as our purest and best, and which make us bitterly regret that they were but dreams. And now, when young Halhed went to Oxford, and young Sheridan to join his family at Bath, they continued these ambitious projects for a time, and laid out their fancy at full usury over many a work destined never to see the fingers of the printer's devil. Among these was a farce, or rather burlesque, which shows immense promise, and which, oddly enough, resembles in its cast the famous 'Critic,' which followed it later. It was called 'Jupiter,' and turned chiefly on the story of Ixion 'Embracing cloud, Ixion like,' the lover of Juno, who caught a cold instead of the Queen of Heaven; and who, according to the classical legend, tortured for ever on a wheel, was in this production to be condemned for ever to trundle the machine of a 'needy knife-grinder,' amid a grand musical chorus of razors, scissors, and penknives to grind! This piece was amusing enough, and clever enough, though it betrayed repeatedly the youthfulness of its authors; but less so their next attempt, a weekly periodical, to be called 'Hernan's Miscellany,' of which Sheridan wrote, or was to write, pretty nearly the whole. None but the first number was ever completed, and perhaps we need not regret that no more followed it; but it is touching to see these two young men, both feeling their powers, confident in them, and sunning their halcyon's wings in the happy belief that they were those of the eagle, longing eagerly, earnestly, for the few poor guineas that they hoped from their work. Halhed, indeed, wrote diligently, but his colleague was not true to the contract, and though the hope of gold stimulated him-for he was poor |