ADVENTURES WITH BAILIFFS. 359 this, he required more ingenuity to get rid of the limbs of the law, when they came, as they did frequently in his later years. It was the fashionable thing in by-gone novels of the "Pelham" school, and even in more recent comedies, to introduce a welldressed sheriff's officer at a dinner-party or ball, and take him through a variety of predicaments, ending, at length, in the revelation of his real character; and probably some such scene is still enacted from time to time in the houses of the extravagant: but Sheridan's adventures with bailiffs seem to have excited more attention. In the midst of his difficulties he never ceased to entertain his friends, and "why should he not do so, since he had not to pay?" Pay your bills, sir? what a shameful waste of money!" he once said. Thus, one day a young friend was met by him and taken back to dinner, "quite in a quiet way, just to meet a very old friend of mine, a man of great talent, and most charming companion." When they arrived they found "the old friend" already installed, and presenting a somewhat unpolished appearance, which the young man explained to himself by supposing him to be a genius of somewhat low extraction. His habits at dinner, the eager look, the free use of his knife, and so forth, were all accounted for in the same way, but that he was a genius of no slight distinction was clear from the deep respect and attention with which Sheridan listened to his slightest remarks, and asked his opinion on English poetry. Meanwhile Sheridan and the servant between them plied the genius very liberally with wine; and the former, rising, made him a complimentary speech on his critical powers, while the young guest, who had heard nothing from his lips but the commonest platitudes in very bad English, grew more and more amused. The wine told in time, the "genius" sang songs which were more Saxon than delicate, talked loud, clapped his host on the shoulder, and at last rolled fairly under the table. "Now," said Sheridan, quite calmly to his young friend, "we will go up stairs; and, Jack" (to his servant) "take that man's hat and give him to the watch." He then explained in the same calm tone, that this was a bailiff of whose company he was growing rather tired, and wanted to be rid. But his finest tricks were undoubtedly those by which he turned, harlequin-like, a creditor into a lender. This was done by sheer force of persuasion, by assuming a lofty indignation, or by putting forth his claims to mercy with the most touching eloquence, over which he would laugh heartily when his point was gained. He was often compelled to do this during his theatrical management, when a troublesome creditor might have interfered with the success of the establishment. 360 HOUSE OF COMMONS GREEK. He talked over an upholsterer who came with a writ for £350, till the latter handed him, instead, a check for £200. He once, when the actors struck for arrears of wages to the amount of £3000, and his bankers refused flatly to Kelly to advance another penny, screwed the whole sum out of them in less than a quarter of an hour by sheer talk. He got a gold watch from Harris, the manager, with whom he had broken several appointments, by complaining that as he had no watch he could never tell the time fixed for their meetings; and, as for putting off pressing creditors, and turning furious foes into affectionate friends, he was such an adept at it, that his reputation as a dun-destroyer is quite on a par with his fame as comedian and orator. Hoaxing, a style of amusement fortunately out of fashion now, was almost a passion with him, and his practical jokes were as merciless as his satire. He and Tickell, who had married the sister of his wife, used to play them off on one another like a couple of schoolboys. One evening, for instance, Sheridan got together all the crockery in the house and arranged it in a dark passage, leaving a small channel for escape for himself, and then, having teased Tickell till he rushed after him, bounded out and picked his way gingerly along the passage. His friend followed him unwittingly, and at the first step stumbled over a washhand-basin, and fell forward with a crash on piles of plates and dishes, which cut his face and hands in a most cruel manner, Sheridan all the while laughing immoderately at the end of the passage, secure from vengeance. But his most impudent hoax was that on the Honorable House of Commons itself. Lord Belgrave had made a very telling speech which he wound up with a Greek quotation, loudly applauded. Sheridan had no arguments to meet him with; so rising, he admitted the force of his lordship's quotation (of which he probably did not understand a word), but added that had he gone a little farther, and completed the passage, he would have seen that the context completely altered the sense. He would prove it to the House, he said, and forthwith rolled forth a grand string of majestic gibberish so well imitated that the whole assembly cried, "Hear, hear!" Lord Belgrave rose again, and frankly admitted that the passage had the meaning ascribed to it by the honorable gentleman, and that he had overlooked it at the moment. At the end of the evening, Fox, who prided himself on his classical lore, came up to and said to him, "Sheridan, how came you to be so ready with that passage? It is certainly as you say, but I was not aware of it before you quoted it." Sherry was wise enough to keep his own counsel for the time, but must have felt delightfully tickled at the ignorance of the would-be savants with whom he was politically associated. Probably Sheridan could not at any time have quoted a whole passage of Greek on the spur of the moment; but it is certain that he had not kept up his classics, and at the time in question must have forgotten the little he ever knew of them. This facility of imitating exactly the sound of a language without introducing a single word of it is not so very rare, but is generally possessed in greater readiness by those who know no tongue but their own, and are therefore more struck by the strangeness of a foreign one, when hearing it. Many of us have heard Italian songs in which there was not a word of actual Italian sung in London burlesques, and some of us have laughed at Levassor's capital imitation of English; but perhaps the cleverest mimic of the kind I ever heard was M. Laffitte, brother of that famous banker who made his fortune by picking up a pin. This gentleman could speak nothing but French, but had been brought by his business into contact with foreigners of every race at Paris, and when he once began his little trick, it was impossible to believe that he was not possessed of a gift of tongues. His German and Italian were good enough, but his English was so splendidly_counterfeited, that after listening to him for a short time, I suddenly heard a roar of laughter from all present, for I had actually unconsciously answered him, "Yes," "No," "Exactly so,” and “I quite agree with you!" Undoubtedly much of Sherry's depravity must be attributed to his intimacy with a man whom it was a great honor to a youngster then to know, but who would probably be scouted even from a London club in the present day-the Prince of Wales. The part of a courtier is always degrading enough to play; but to be courtier to a prince whose favor was to be won by proficiency in vice and audacity in follies, to truckle to his tastes, to pander to his voracious lusts, to win his smiles by the invention of a new pleasure, and his approbation by the plotting of a new villainy, what an office for the author of "The School for Scandal," and the orator renowned for denouncing the wickednesses of Warren Hastings! What a life for the young poet who had wooed and won the Maid of Bath -for the man of strong domestic affections, who wept over his father's sternness, and loved his son only too well! It was bad enough for such mere worldlings as Captain Hanger or Beau Brummell, but for a man of higher and purer feelings, like Dick Sheridan, who, with all his faults, had some poetry in his soul, such a career was doubly disgraceful. It was at the house of the beautiful, lively, and adventurous Q |