|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 43
This sort of thing happened once more, in the same year, at Brocket.
On this occasion Sheridan pursued his victim into the nursery, and
threw himself on his knees. It gave Lady Bessborough an opportunity
which even she could not fail to perceive--and she used it. "I
interrupted the most animated professions by showing him the child and
asking him if his grandchildren were as pretty as mine. He jump'd up,
but with such fury in his looks that I was really frighten'd..." And
that may very well be the end: _solvuntur tabul� risu_. Lord Granville
Gower married in 1809, and the confidential correspondence died the
death; but Sheridan lingered until 1816, and actually carried on his
desperate pursuit within three days of the end. She visited him, and
described what took place to Lord Broughton. He assured her, she said,
that he should visit her after his death. She asked, "Why, having
persecuted her all her life, would he now carry it into death?'
'Because I am resolved you shall remember me.'"[A] The story of his
telling her that his eyes would see her through the coffin-lid is well
known, and may be apocryphal; but the melodrama is Sheridan all over.
[Footnote A: Mr. Sichel, in his monumental book on Sheridan, doubts
the lady's memory, one of his grounds of doubt being that Sheridan
"would not have been likely to have thus behaved before his wife." But
Mr. Sichel did not then know what Sheridan was capable of doing before
his wife.]
Curiosity rather than edification is served by the publication of such
frank revelations as Lady Bessborough's, but that is a matter for her
descendants, and was probably considered. What relates to Sheridan is
quite another thing. On his death Byron hailed him with eloquent if
extravagant praise; he was buried in Westminster Abbey; three long
biographies have been written round him, not one of which has failed
to do justice to his abilities, and not one pointed out the extent of
his moral aberration. Mr. Sichel, the latest of them, says that "he
had pursued his own path and spurned the little arts of those who
twitted him with roguery." But if the Granville Gower correspondence
is to be believed--and how can it not--he was either a very bad rogue
or a madman. Sheridan, after all's said, made a great figure in
his day, and must stand the racket of it, so to speak. Gossip about
Harriet may be left to the idle; but Sheridan belongs to History.
A FOOTNOTE TO COLERIDGE
Coleridge is one of our great men who require many footnotes, for
there are characteristics of his which need all the extenuation they
can get. How comes it, for instance, that he could write, and not only
write but publish, in the same decade, and sometimes in the same year,
poetry which is of our very best, and some which for frozen inanity it
would be hard to equal anywhere? How could a thinker of his power of
brain cover leagues of letter-paper with windy nonsense and mawkish
insincerity? And finally, of what quality was the talk of one whose
social life was entirely monologue? To the first of these questions
Wordsworth perhaps helps with an analogy, but not very far; for it is
certain that Wordsworth's opinion of the importance of his own
verses was inflexible, whereas Coleridge, having another medium of
expression, was by no means so insistent upon publishing. Upon the
second, it may be observed that when a philosopher is at the same time
a poet, and therefore his own rhapsodist, it is probable that he will
charm the understanding of many, but certain that he will bewitch
his own. The certainty is clinched when the rhapsodist is without the
humorous sense. It was the possession of that which enabled Charles
Lamb, who loved him, to see him "Archangel, a little damaged," and
even in one dreadful moment of his life to reprove him for a too
oleaginous sympathy. Lamb, in fact, was always able to view his friend
with clear eyes. In a letter to Manning, enclosing "all Coleridge's
letters" to himself, he says that in them Manning will find "a good
deal of amusement, to see genuine talent struggling against a pompous
display of it." No criticism could be sounder. But Coleridge never
wavered from the belief that he was in no phase of his being an
ordinary man. If his thoughts were not ordinary thoughts, his
imaginings not ordinary imaginings, then his stomach-aches were not
ordinary stomach-aches, but strokes of calamity so grievous as to
demand from him copious commentary and appeals for more sympathy than
is ordinarily given to ordinary men. And, strange to say, he received
it. There was that in the "noticeable man with large grey eyes" which
drew the love of his friends and the regard of acquaintance. His talk
had the quality of his Ancient Mariner's; one could not choose
but hear. The accounts which we have of that, however, are mainly
sympathetic; it is not so certain how it affected hearers who were not
predisposed.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|