Page images
PDF
EPUB

Character of the Rt. Hon. Richd. Brinsley SHERIDAN, as an Orator. -Written in 1820.

THE genius of SHERIDAN was not so much an endowment, as a prodigality of nature. It was the lavished riches of mind, without economy in the design, or care in the distribution. As if to show the splendour and the insufficiency of great talents, his mind was a combination of brilliant powers, while his life had little of usefulness, and nothing of elevation.

He was not the creature of effort or of study - he did not proceed from the schools a favoured being of their cultivation; nor gradually rise into celebrity, by measured advances to fame. There is that sort of genius that hardly foretells its future distinction-but which at some auspicious moment manifests itself, and burning with an inward and intense lustre, suddenly flashes upon the world like a comet out of the depths of nature eccentric in its course, and apparently unpurposed in its destination. It is a brightness and a novelty, that excites wonder for a season-baffles calculation in its career-but leaves at its departure, the calmer glories which it obscured, fixed in their high place--long to outlive the memory of its wild and splendid innovation. Something of that character was the genius of SHERIDAN. It excited surprise in its onset, and shed fascination round its course: but its energy was not so sanetified by use, as to make the public who admired its presence, mourn its departure as a calamity.

Of all those qualities which in a free and civilized community make men powerful without the ensigns of power, he had a share, which has scarcely ever fallen to the lot of any. In a country like England, where boldness of opinion invigorates the action of the mind-where the discussion of principles incessantly agitates and preserves the political vigour— where eloquence has an imperious influence, inseparable from the very nature of civil society-there, talents like those with which this extraordinary man was gifted, were calculated to wield over a general mind the sceptre of a despotic popularity :—but it is the proud distinction of England, that genius, however great, which sacrifices virtue to the passions, immolates its own authority.

The oratorical abilities of SHERIDAN, united more of inherent vigour with the attractive qualities of mind and expression, than perhaps those of any other man. While he could lead on the people, he was not deficient in those views which tend to the conservation of states-he was a patriot, and might have been a statesman-but he wanted conduct to become the Pericles of his day. He failed, perhaps because he was too successful. When his reputation was most florid, it threw a wild luxuriance over the vices, which were sapping its vigour and preparing its decline. The gratification of passion appeared to leave his genius unimpaired, only the more effectually to ruin its hopes, and strew its honours in untimely ruin. His fate was the more bitter and mournfully instructive, as it came not from the force of outward adversity, or the power or contrivance of enemies. He created his own fortunes, and to himself they owed their extinction.

It is in vain to say, that the great in whom he trusted deserted him. When he could have commanded their resources, he made himself a dependent on their bounty: when he could have caused vulgar greatness to follow in his train, he made himself part of its circumstance and retinue: he wasted with it the hours which should have been given to independence: he gratified a vain love of display, when he should have been consolidating his public fame: he forsook the rugged paths of glory and the example of great men, for the flowery delusions of convivial intimacy.—When he did this, he abandoned his own fortunes-and who can wonder that they at length deserted him?

What grandeur in his talents-what munificence and littleness were compounded in his disposition! He could resist the strong purposes of power, but he could not control one of his weakest passions-he could appeal to noble sentiments with a voice worthy of the advocate of a great people, and he stooped to acts that levelled him with those who had neither honour nor understanding. He proved by his life and in his death, that no genius is so gifted with dominion and prerogative, as to be entitled to a dispensing power over the sacred obligations of morality.

As an orator, his mind was on a great scale-it united prac

tical force, with an epic elevation-the richest hues of fancy, with stern original thought-the logic of political address, with the lustre of the imagination- strength, with brilliancy— accuracy, with expansion.

He possessed, in an eminent degree, the talent that combines facts and arguments, and collects the scattered lights of a subject into one great focus of illustration. His rhetoric had a broad design and a majestic course-sometimes calm, sometimes impetuous-it flowed always clear and full-a river diffusing fertility, or a torrent sweeping away obstacles-beautiful in its calm progress-terrible in its agitation.

The various power which touches all the chords of human sensation, belonged to him-that magical command of the feelings and their language, which makes oratory perform over the mind of collected multitudes almost the miracles of Orpheus, he practised with unbounded success. He could throw an exhaustless variety of brilliant thoughts around the arguments that rushed along from the source of a vigorous reason. He could captivate the most wary and cautious mind-he could hurry away, in pleasurable emotion, the refined as well as the uncultivated temperament-for he could bring down philosophy from her high sphere, to the level of common apprehension, and render her popular without destroying her divinity. Full of great sensibilities, he gave them to his subjects with the natural power with which they pressed upon his mind. There was no ingenuity or affectation in the mode of applying them. He did not adjust his feelings as in a mirror, and measure out the language of sentiment with artificial elegance, and sententious precision:-the words glowed upon his lips as nature gave them utterance; and they fell upon the heart like the dictates of inspiration.

Every great master in a liberal art looks to nature as the source of excellence; and however he may improve his powers by cultivation, never renders his mind artificial; whereas, secondary men study any thing but nature, and therefore arrive at any thing but truth. They crowd themselves with particulars, but they do not know how to combine them; or they refine upon a single thought, until it becomes shadowy

and fugitive. Such men are rhetoricians-they sacrifice to the exterior graces, all consideration of inherent power—of lasting energy-of scope of design, and spirit of elucidation-and they substitute the flowers of language, for the richness of fancy and the bloom of mental productiveness. Such were not the faults of SHERIDAN-his exuberance was the excess of mind; a vigour that sometimes ran into wildness, and which a cultivated taste could not always restrain. He so far deviated from the classic models of oratory, that he did not chasten the power of imagination, so that it should rather brighten than overshine argument. The accessary parts of decorum, therefore, sometime overlaid the principal-as in those works of art, where ornament is too profusely lavished for the symmetry of the design; but the error was always so splendid, that the spirit of the transgression was more admired, than the critical violation condemned. This is always excusable in that high genius whose resources overcharge the demand, and whose opulence can admit of a fierce profusion: but in imitators, it is the servile vice of an impoverished spirit and a meagre imagination. They seize upon the faulty parts with a perverse instinct for error, and transplant them into a soil where there is no principle of fertility to account for their production: this practice gradually injures the reputation of those who set a wrong example, and all the vice and folly of the imitator attach to the memory of the original. SHERIDAN, BURKE, and CURRAN have suffered in this way; they have been called the heads of a school of which they could not own a disciple; and whatever departures they made from a great taste, have been amply punished by the extravagance of their supposed followers.

The play of fancy, and the light artillery of wit, were auxiliary powers to the eloquence of SHERIDAN, and he employed them much in debate. In sarcastic personalities, few could contend with him-he was a master of ridicule-a humorous combatant of human weakness--a keenly satirical opponent in the single combat of debate. His allusions were often remote, always novel, and always applicable :-his wit was an incessant flame-like that of CURRAN, it flashed with exhaustless bril

liancy and point, but it was less local and more classical; for highly creative as was his fancy, the beautiful association of literature ever hovered about it.

The ordinary current of his expression was sparkling and animated; but when occasion supplied a great excitement, he rose into a style of noble elevation. Then sentiments of grandeur burst from him-thought came thronging and fierce to utterance-imagination kindled as with a holy fervourargument and imagery flowed in quick succession, boldly conceived, and rapidly executed-and his powers of description blended the most picturesque circumstances with terror, pathos, and sublime emotion.

Such was SHERIDAN in the arena where his powers shone in their proper lustre.-Happy if it had been only there he had been known and admired-happy if he had had wisdom to consult for the preservation of that fame, which so much talent had created! but an undue ambition of display, and a fond love of indulgence, made him waste among the delights of Capua, the strength which had once carried him to the gates of Rome. Thus, when he should have grasped dominion, he sunk into dependence-inferior men passed him towards the goal of glory-those who had drawn him aside, condemned the errors which they had occasioned !

He deeply experienced that selfishness by which the votaries of pleasure too late, and too severely, admonish the genius which they have flattered and betrayed. When a great man sets in the storms of public life, his decline, if not happy, is at least accompanied by sublime circumstances. But the fortunes of SHERIDAN glided away quietly in obscure decline. They had risen in uncommon brilliancy, but they closed upon the world without any of the attendant signs of departing greatness. Heaven had bestowed on him that mental abundance which falls to the lot of few. He had received as his portion, an assemblage of its rarest gifts, but he left the up-hill road of ambition, and, like the prodigal son, he wasted his substance in riotous living like him, too, he found the consequence of his errors, and their punishment, in that useful vice, ingratitude; and he, who was the idol of the great and gay, hardly left one

« PreviousContinue »