I

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SPARKLING SHERIDAN.

HAVE been very seriously at work on a book,

which I am just now sending to the press, and which I think will do me some credit, if it leads to nothing else. However, the profitable affair is of another nature. There will be a Comedy of mine in rehearsal at Covent Garden within a few days. I did not set to work on it till within a few days of my setting out for Crome, so you may think I have not, for these last six weeks, been very idle. I have done it at Mr. Harris's (the manager's) own request; it is now complete in his hands, and preparing for the stage. He, and some of his friends also who have heard it, assure me in the most flattering terms that there is not a doubt of its success. It will be very well played, and Harris tells me that the least shilling I shall get (if it succeeds) will be six hundred pounds. I shall make no secret of it towards the time of representation, that it may not lose any support my friends can give it. I had not written a line of it two months ago, except a scene or two, which I believe you have seen in an off act of a little farce."

Thus wrote a certain young gentleman to his fatherin-law, Thomas Linley, in November, 1774. It need hardly be added that the son-in-law was Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who, at the early age of twenty-three, had translated Aristænetus, fought a couple of duels, eloped with and married, the beautiful Miss Linley of Bath, and just completed a comedy which is still considered one of the most delightful in the English language.

This prodigy-for so must have been the man who could produce both The Rivals and The School for Scandal before he reached his thirtieth year-was the son of Thomas Sheridan, the self-constituted rival of Garrick, and the grandson of Dr. Sheridan, who obtained a sort of reflected glory from his intimacy with Jonathan Swift. Richard's mother, charming woman, had intellectual gifts of a much more than respectable order; she was the author of several long-since forgotten novels and of a play* which so august an authority as Garrick pronounced "one of the best comedies he ever read." Another comedy of hers, which never saw the light, might have possessed interest even for posterity, since Tom Moore records that it "has been supposed by some of those sagacious persons, who love to look for flaws in the titles of fame, to have passed, with her other papers, into the possession of her son, and after a transforming sleep, like that of the chrysalis, in his hands, to have taken

* The Discovery.

wing at length in the brilliant form of The Rivals." Poor lady! even were this true, you never would have grudged your erratic son the fame of it all.

As a schoolboy young Richard proved a dismal failure, and he who, in less than thirty years afterwards, 'held senates enchained by his eloquence and audiences fascinated by his wit, was, by common consent both of parent and preceptor, pronounced to be ‘a most impenetrable dunce."" At Harrow he was a sad fellow when it came to study hours, but at playtime he proved so lovable, manly, and genial that he suffered less punishment for his indolence than might otherwise have been meted out to him. The erudite Dr. Parr, then one of the under-masters of the school, wrote of Sheridan many years later: "There was little in his boyhood worth communication. He was inferior to many of his school-fellows in the ordinary business of school, and I do not remember any one instance in which he distinguished himself by Latin or English composition, in prose or verse.

His eye, his countenance, his general manner, were striking. His answers to any common question were prompt and acute. We knew the esteem, and even admiration, which, somehow or other, all his schoolfellows felt for him. He was mischievous enough, but his pranks were accompanied by a sort of vivacity and cheerfulness which delighted Sumner* and myself. I had much talk with him about his apple-loft,

* Dr. Robert Sumner, then the upper-master.

for the supply of which all the gardens in the neighborhood were taxed, and some of the lower boys were employed to furnish it. I threatened, but without asperity, to trace the depredators through his associates, up to their leader. He, with perfect good-humor, set me at defiance, and I never could bring the charge home to him."

This bright young scamp, who could steal apples, neglect his lessons, and yet endear himself to his teachers by his natural charm and sprightliness, soon grew ambitious. He had a soul above apples after all; he longed for the airy pinnacle of a literary celebrity, and in the year 1770, when he is living with his father at Bath, we find him scheming with an old Harrow chum, young Halhead, now at Oxford, to make the world ring with the sound of their names. They are so boyish about it all, too; as, for instance, when they determine to translate the epistles of Aristænetus, about whom nobody cares, and especially when done into English by two unknown lads. Then they write a parody called Jupiter, which never gets acted; they issue one number of a rather puerile paper called Hernan's Miscellany, and plan half a dozen works whose brilliancy must surely set the Thames on fire.

The only tangible result of this literary partnership is that translation of Aristænetus, which is expected to win so much classical reputation for the apprentices. The first part of the work-alas! there never