Search

In Byron’s Diary for 1813, we read: ‘Lord Holland told me a piece of curious sentimentality about Sheridan. The other night we were all delivering our respective and various opinions on him, and mine was this—“Whatever Sheridan has done or chooses to do has been, par excellence, the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy (School for Scandal), the best drama (The Duenna, to my mind far beyond that St Giles lampoon, The Beggar’s Opera), the best farce (The Critic,—it is only too good for a farce), and the best address (Monologue on Garrick); and, to crown all, delivered the very best oration (the famous Begum speech) ever conceived or heard in this country.” Somebody told Sheridan this the next day, and on hearing it he burst into tears.’ ‘Poor Brinsley!’ adds Byron, ‘if they were tears of pleasure, I would rather have said these few but most sincere words than have written the Iliad or made his own celebrated Philippic. Nay, his own comedy never gratified one more than to hear that he had derived a moment’s gratification from any praise of mine, humble as it must appear to my “elders and betters”’.…

I do not know any good model for a life of Sheridan but that of Savage.1 Recollect, however, that the life of such a man may be made far more amusing than if he had been a Wilberforce;—and this without offending the living, or insulting the dead. The Whigs abused him;2 however, he never left them. As for his creditors, remember, Sheridan never had a shilling and was thrown, with great powers and passions, into the thick of the world, and placed upon the pinnacle of success, with no other external means to support him in his election. Did Fox pay his debts?—or did Sheridan take a subscription? Was the **’s drunkenness more excusable than his? Were his intrigues more notorious than those of all his contemporaries? and is his memory to be blasted, and theirs respected? Don’t let yourself be led away by clamour but compare him with the coalitioner Fox, and the pensioner Burke as a man of principle, and with ten hundred thousand in personal views, and with none in talent, for he beat them all out and out. Without means, without connexion, without character (which might be false at first, and make him mad afterwards from desperation) he beat them all, in all he ever attempted. In writing the Life of Sheridan, never mind the angry lies of the humbug Whigs. Recollect that he was an Irishman and a clever fellow, and that we have had some very pleasant days with him.

‘Lewis1 was not a very successful writer. His Monk was abused furiously by Mathias, in his Pursuits of Literature, and he was forced to suppress it. Abellino he merely translated. Pizarro was a sore subject with him, and no wonder that he winced at the name. Sheridan, who was not very scrupulous about applying to himself literary property at least, manufactured his play without so much as an acknowledgment, pecuniary or otherwise, from Lewis’s ideas;2 and bad as Pizarro is, I know (from having been on the Drury-Lane Committee, and knowing, consequently, the comparative profits of plays,) that it brought in more money than any other play has ever done, or perhaps ever will do.

n/a

n/a