---

ly two appendices, and a check of copies in some six large American libraries reveals the same number. The copy with the three Appendices would seem quite rare.

One or two symbols and abbreviations have been used for the sake of economy. A new note or comment by Johnson, one added in 1773, is indicated by (1773) at the end of the note. "W" is Warburton; "T" is Theobald. The notation "W: winter" points to an easily recognizable emendation by Warburton in a line quoted before the note in question. Easily identifiable references to revisions of notes in the 1765 edition, or to revisions later made in the 1778 edition, are placed in parentheses at the end of the notes. Scholars interested in these revisions must check them for themselves. Act, scene, and line references to Shakespeare are from Kittredge's edition of the works (Boston, 1936). The numbers in parentheses after the reference in Kittredge are to page and note number (the volume being given only once) in the 1773 edition. The page reference is to the page upon which the note, Johnson's or another editor's, starts; sometimes the notes extend to three or more pages. The text of Shakespeare quoted is that of the 1773 edition; this is the text that Johnson's contemporaries saw, and it would be a distortion to reprint Johnson's notes after a modern text.

The following list is of notes Johnson omitted in 1773; the references are, of course, to the 1765 edition: I, 64, 0; 94,0 106 ; 113, 0; 133,0; 151,0 ; 153,0 ; 233, 8; 469, 1; II, 217, 2; 295, 8; 326, 8; 396, 8; 464, 6; III, 193, 3; IV, 149, 2; 201, 5; 347, 4; 372, 5; 398, 7; 404, 3; V, 61, 5; 107, 9; VI, 17, 3; 80, 5; [166]; 415, 9; 440, 9; VII, 316, 3; VIII, 121, 9; 198, 2; 272, 6; 281, 9; 362, 7. Fourteen notes in the 1765 edition, there inadvertently unattributed, are taken verbatim from other editors and critics; five of these are correctly attributed in 1773 (see 1765, V, 182, 1; VI, 24, 3 and 177, 3; and Appendix, notes on V, 253 and VII, 444). Four notes are entirely omitted: 1773, II, 50, 4; 138, 5; V, 297, 6; and VII, 317, 6. In four others (1773, I, 249, 5; II, 466, 7; VI, 72, 4; and X, 417, 8) the part of the note that is not Johnson's is set off by brackets and properly attributed. Finally, the note on II, 452 in the 1765 Appendix, taken partly from "Mr. Smith," appears in 1773 (I, 195, 5) as part of Steevens' comment. Introduction on Comedies.

If I were to select the one passage in Dr. Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare which occasioned the greatest immediate protest and which has continued to be held up to critical scorn, I should have to pitch upon this: "In tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion to be comick; but in comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to his nature. In his tragick scenes there is always something wanting, but his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct." As a theatre-goer, Johnson could also say in the Preface that "familiar comedy is often more powerful on the theatre, than in the page; imperial tragedy is always less." One might logically assume, then, that Johnson's greater enjoyment of Shakespeare's comedies would be easily remarked in his commentary—and even, possibly, that they would be singled out for more annotation and comment than the tragedies or the histories. The most heavily annotated plays are, however, the tragedies, and it is curious to observe that the sombre "problem comedy," Measure for Measure, commands more notes than any other comedy. Further, Johnson's moral and religious sensibilities were offended by profanity and obscenity in the drama, and Shakespeare's comedies, far more than his tragedies and histories, transgress in this direction. One recollects, finally, that the dramatic genre favored most by Johnson was the "she-tragedy." Was Johnson lauding Shakespeare's comedies because the tragedies had been excessively praised? I do not know.

I an most grateful to the Research Board of the University of Illinois for a grant which greatly expedited my work.

sehold of the Prince of Wales, and was in attendance upon His Royal Highness, during the early part of the King's illness, at Windsor. The following letters, addressed by him to Mr. Sheridan at this period, contain some curious particulars, both with respect to the Royal patient himself, and the feelings of those about him, which, however secret and confidential they were at the time, may now, without scruple, be made matters of history:—

"MY DEAR SHERIDAN,

"Half past ten at night.

"I arrived here about three quarters of an hour after Pitt had left it. I inclose you the copy of a letter the Prince has just written to the Chancellor, and sent by express, which will give you the outline of the conversation with the Prince, as well as the situation of the King's health. I think it an advisable measure, [Footnote: Meaning, the communication to the Chancellor] as it is a sword that cuts both ways, without being unfit to be shown to whom he pleases,—but which he will, I think, understand best himself. Pitt desired the longest delay that could be granted with propriety, previous to the declaration of the present calamity. The Duke of York, who is looking over me, and is just come out of the King's room, bids me add that His Majesty's situation is every moment becoming worse. His pulse is weaker and weaker; and the Doctors say it is impossible to survive it long, if his situation does not take some extraordinary change in a few hours.

"So far I had got when your servant came, meaning to send this by the express that carried the Chancellor's letter; in addition to which, the Prince has desired Doctor Warren to write an account to him, which he is now doing. His letter says, if an amendment does not take place in twenty-four hours, it is impossible for the King to support it:—he adds to me, he will answer for his never living to be declared a lunatic. I say all this to you in confidence, (though I will not answer for being intelligible,) as it goes by your own servant; but I need not add, your own discretion will remind you how necessary it is that neither my name nor those I use should be quoted even to many of our best friends, whose repetition, without any ill intention, might frustrate views they do not see.

"With respect to the papers, the Prince thinks you had better leave them to themselves, as we cannot authorize any report, nor can he contradict the worst; a few hours must, every individual says, terminate our suspense, and, therefore, all precaution must be needless:—however, do what you think best. His Royal Highness would write to you himself; the agitation he is in will not permit it. Since this letter was begun, all articulation even seems to be at an end with the poor King: but for the two hours preceding, he was in a most determined frenzy. In short, I am myself in so violent a state of agitation, from participating in the feelings of those about me, that if I am intelligible to you, 'tis more than I am to myself. Cataplasms are on his Majesty's feet, and strong fomentations have been used without effect: but let me quit so painful a subject. The Prince was much pleased with my conversation with Lord Loughborough, to whom I do not write, as I conceive 'tis the same, writing to you.

"The Archbishop has written a very handsome letter, expressive of his duty and offer of service; but he is not required to come down, it being thought too late.

"Good night.—I will write upon every occasion that information may be useful.

"Ever yours, most sincerely,

"J. W. PAYNE.

"I have been much pleased with the Duke's zeal since my return, especially in this communication to you."

"DEAR SHERIDAN,

"Twelve o'clock, noon.

"The King last night about twelve o'clock, being then in a situation he could not long have survived, by the effect of James's powder, had a profuse stool, after which a strong perspiration appeared, and he fell into a profound sleep. We were in hopes this was the crisis of his disorder, although the doctors were fearful it was so only with respect to one part of his disorder. However, these hopes continued not above an hour, when he awoke, with a well-conditioned skin, no extraordinary degree of fever, but with the exact state he was in before, with all the gestures and ravings of the most confirmed maniac, and a new noise, in imitation of the howling of a dog; in this situation he was this morning at one o'clock, when we came to bed. The Duke of York, who has been twice in my room in the course of the night, immediately from the King's apartment, says there has not been one moment of lucid interval during the whole night,—which, I must observe to you, is the concurring, as well as fatal testimony of all about him, from the first moment of His Majesty's confinement. The doctors have since had their consultation, and find His Majesty calmer, and his pulse tolerably good and much reduced, but the most decided symptoms of insanity. His theme has been all this day on the subject of religion, and of his being inspired, from which his physicians draw the worst consequences, as to any hopes of amendment. In this situation His Majesty remains at the present moment, which I give you at length, to prevent your giving credit to the thousand ridiculous reports that we hear, even upon the spot. Truth is not easily got at in palaces, and so I find here; and time only slowly brings it to one's knowledge. One hears a little bit every day from somebody, that has been reserved with great costiveness, or purposely forgotten; and by all such accounts I find that the present distemper has been very palpable for some time past, previous to any confinement from sickness; and so apprehensive have the people about him been of giving offence by interruption, that the two days (viz. yesterday se'nnight and the Monday following) that he was five hours each on horseback, he was in a confirmed frenzy. On the Monday at his return he burst out into tears to the Duke of York, and said, 'He wished to God he might die, I for he was going to be mad;' and the Queen, who sent to Dr. Warren, on his arrival, privately communicated her knowledge of his situation for some time past, and the melancholy event as it stood exposed. I am prolix upon all these different reports, that you may be completely master of the subject as it stands, and which I shall continue to advertise you of in all its variations. Warren, who is the living principle in this business, (for poor Baker is half crazed himself,) and who I see every half hour, is extremely attentive to the King's disorder. The various fluctuations of his ravings, as well as general situation of his health, are accurately written down throughout the day, and this we have got signed by the Physician every day, and all proper inquiry invited; for I think it necessary to do every thing that may prevent their making use hereafter of any thing like jealousy, suspicion, or mystery, to create public distrust; and, therefore, the best and most unequivocal means of satisfaction shall be always attended to.

"Five o'clock, P.M.

"So far I had proceeded when I was, on some business of importance, obliged to break off till now; and, on my return, found your letter;—I need not, I hope, say your confidence is as safe as if it was returned to your own mind, and your advice will always be thankfully adopted. The event we looked for last night is postponed, perhaps for a short time, so that, at least, we shall have time to consider more maturely. The Doctors told Pitt they would beg not to be obliged to make their declaration for a fortnight as to the incurability of the King's mind, and not to be surprised if, at the expiration of that time, they should ask more time; but that they were perfectly ready to declare now for the furtherance of public business, that he is now insane; that it appears to be unconnected with any other disease of his body, and that they have tried all their skill without effect, and that to the disease they at present see no end in their contemplation:—these are their own words, which is all that can be implied in an absolute declaration,—for infallibility cannot be ascribed to them.

"Should not something be done about the public amusements? If it was represented to Pitt, it might embarrass them either way; particularly as it might call for a public account every day. I think the Chancellor might take a good opportunity to break with his colleagues, if they propose restriction, the Law authority would have great weight with us, as well as preventing even a design of moving the City;—at all events, I think Parliament would not confirm their opinion. If Pitt stirs much, I think any attempt to grasp at power might be fatal to his interest, at least, well turned against it.

"The Prince has sent for me directly, so I'll send this now, and write again."

In the words, "I think the Chancellor might take a good opportunity to break with his colleagues," the writer alludes to a negotiation which Sheridan had entered into with Lord Thurlow, and by which it was expected that the co-operation of that Learned Lord might be secured, in consideration of his being allowed to retain the office of Chancellor under the Regency.

Lord Thurlow was one of those persons who, being taken by the world at their own estimate of themselves, contrive to pass upon the times in which they live for much more than they are worth. His bluntness gained him credit for superior honesty, and the same peculiarity of exterior gave a weight, not their own, to his talents; the roughness of the diamond being, by a very common mistake, made the measure of its value. The negotiation for his alliance on this occasion was managed, if not first suggested, by Sheridan; and Mr. Fox, on his arrival from the Continent, (having been sent for express upon the first announcement of the King's illness,) found considerable progress already made in the preliminaries of this heterogeneous compact.

The following letter from Admiral Payne, written immediately after the return of Mr. Fox, contains some further allusions to the negotiations with the Chancellor:—

"MY DEAR SHERIDAN,

"I am this moment returned with the Prince from riding, and heard, with great pleasure, of Charles Fox's arrival; on which account, he says, I must go to town to-morrow, when I hope to meet you at his house some time before dinner. The Prince is to see the Chancellor to-morrow, and therefore he wishes I should be able to carry to town the result of this interview, or I would set off immediately. Due deference is had to our former opinion upon this subject, and no courtship will be practised; for the chief object in the visit is to show him the King, who has been worse the two last days than ever: this morning he made an effort to jump out of the window, and is now very turbulent and incoherent. Sir G. Baker went yesterday to give Pitt a little specimen of his loquacity, in his discovery of some material state-secrets, at which he looked astonished. The Physicians wish him to be removed to Kew; on which we shall proceed as we settled. Have you heard any thing of the Foreign Ministers respecting what the P. said at Bagshot? The Frenchman has been here two days running, but has not seen the Prince. He sat with me half an hour this morning, and seemed much disposed to confer a little closely. He was all admiration and friendship for the Prince, and said he was sure every body would unite to give vigor to his government.

"To-morrow you shall hear particulars; in the mean time I can only add I have none of the apprehensions contained in Lord L.'s letter. I have had correspondence enough myself on this subject to convince me of the impossibility of the Ministry managing the present Parliament by any contrivance hostile to the Prince. Dinner is on table; so adieu; and be assured of the truth and sincerity of

"Yours affectionately,

"Windsor, Monday, 5 o'clock, P. M.

"J. W. P.

"I have just got Rodney's proxy sent."

The situation in which Mr. Fox was placed by the treaty thus commenced, before his arrival, with the Chancellor, was not a little embarrassing. In addition to the distaste which he must have felt for such a union, he had been already, it appears, in some degree pledged to bestow the Great Seal, in the event of a change, upon Lord Loughborough. Finding, however, the Prince and his party so far committed in the negotiation with Lord Thurlow, he thought it expedient, however contrary to his own wishes, to accede to their views; and a letter, addressed by him to Mr. Sheridan on the occasion, shows the struggle with his own feelings and opinions, which this concession cost him:—

"DEAR SHERIDAN,

"I have swallowed the pill,—a most bitter one it was,—and have written to Lord Loughborough, whose answer of course must be consent. What is to be done next? Should the Prince himself, you, or I, or Warren, be the person to speak to the Chancellor? The objection to the last is, that he must probably wait for an opportunity, and that no time is to be lost. Pray tell me what is to be done: I am convinced, after all, the negotiation will not succeed, and am not sure that I am sorry for it. I do not remember ever feeling so uneasy about any political thing I ever did in my life. Call if you can.

"Yours ever,

"C. J. F."

Sat. past 12.

Lord Loughborough, in the mean time, with a vigilance quickened by his own personal views, kept watch on the mysterious movements of the Chancellor; and, as appears by the following letter, not only saw reason to suspect duplicity himself, but took care that Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan should share in his distrust:—

"MY DEAR S.

"I was afraid to pursue the conversation on the circumstance of the Inspection committed to the Chancellor, lest the reflections that arise upon it might have made too strong an impression on some of our neighbors last night. It does indeed appear to me full of mischief, and of that sort most likely to affect the apprehensions of our best friends, (of Lord John for instance,) and to increase their reluctance to take any active part.

"The Chancellor's object evidently is to make his way by himself, and he has managed hitherto as one very well practised in that game. His conversations, both with you and Mr. Fox, were encouraging, but at the same time checked all explanations on his part under a pretence of delicacy towards his colleagues. When he let them go to Salthill and contrived to dine at Windsor, he certainly took a step that most men would have felt not very delicate in its appearance, and unless there was some private understanding between him and them, not altogether fair; especially if you add to it the sort of conversation he held with regard to them. I cannot help thinking that the difficulties of managing the patient have been excited or improved to lead to the proposal of his inspection, (without the Prince being conscious of it,) for by that situation he gains an easy and frequent access to him, and an opportunity of possessing the confidence of the Queen. I believe this the more from the account of the tenderness he showed at his first interview, for I am sure, it is not in his character to feel any. With a little instruction from Lord Hawksbury, the sort of management that was carried on by means of the Princess-Dowager, in the early part of the reign, may easily be practised. In short, I think he will try to find the key of the back stairs, and, with that in his pocket, take any situation that preserves his access, and enables him to hold a line between different parties. In the present moment, however, he has taken a position that puts the command of the House of Lords in his hands, for * * * * * * *. [Footnote: The remainder of this sentence is effaced by damp]

"I wish Mr. Fox and you would give these considerations what weight you think they deserve, and try if any means can be taken to remedy this mischief, if it appears in the same light to you.

"Ever yours, &c."

What were the motives that induced Lord Thurlow to break off so suddenly his negotiation with the Prince's party, and declare himself with such vehemence on the side of the King and Mr. Pitt, it does not appear very easy to ascertain. Possibly, from his opportunities of visiting the Royal Patient, he had been led to conceive sufficient hopes of recovery, to incline the balance of his speculation that way; or, perhaps, in the influence of Lord Loughborough [Footnote: Lord Loughborough is supposed to have been the person who instilled into the mind of Mr. Fox the idea of advancing that claim of right for the Prince, which gave Mr. Pitt, in principle as well as in fact, such an advantage over him.] over Mr. Fox, he saw a risk of being supplanted in his views on the Great Seal. Whatever may have been the motive, it is certain that his negotiation with the Whigs had been amicably carried on, till within a few hours of his delivery of that speech, from whose enthusiasm the public could little suspect how fresh from the incomplete bargain of defection was the speaker, and in the course of which he gave vent to the well-known declaration, that "his debt of gratitude to His Majesty was ample, for the many favors he had graciously conferred upon him, which, when he forgot, might God forget him!" [Footnote: "Forget you!" said Wildes, "he'll see you d—-d first."]

As it is not my desire to imitate those biographers, who swell their pages with details that belong more properly to History, I shall forbear to enter into a minute or consecutive narrative of the proceedings of Parliament on the important subject of the Regency. A writer of political biography has a right, no doubt, like an engineer who constructs a navigable canal, to lay every brook and spring in the neighborhood under contribution for the supply and enrichment of his work. But, to turn into it the whole contents of the Annual Register and Parliamentary Debates is a sort of literary engineering, not quite so laudable, which, after the example set by a Right Reverend biographer of Mr. Pitt, will hardly again be attempted by any one, whose ambition, at least, it is to be read as well as bought.

Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt, it is well known, differed essentially, not only with respect to the form of the proceedings, which the latter recommended in that suspension of the Royal authority, but also with respect to the abstract constitutional principles, upon which those proceedings of the Minister were professedly founded. As soon as the nature of the malady, with which the King was afflicted, had been ascertained by a regular examination of the physicians in attendance on His Majesty, Mr. Pitt moved (on the 10th of December), that a "Committee be appointed to examine and report precedents of such proceedings as may have been had, in case of the personal exercise of the Royal authority being prevented or interrupted, by infancy, sickness, infirmity, or otherwise, with a view to provide for the same." [Footnote: Mr. Burke and Mr. Sheridan were both members of this committee, and the following letter from the former to Sheridan refers to it:—

"MY DEAR SIR,

"My idea was, that on Fox's declaring that the precedents, neither individually nor collectively, do at all apply, our attendance ought to have been merely formal. But as you think otherwise, I shall certainly be at the committee soon after one. I rather think, that they will not attempt to garble: because, supposing the precedents to apply, the major part are certainly in their favor. It is not likely that they mean to suppress,—but it is good to be on our guard.

"Ever most truly yours, &c.

"EDMUND BURKE."

Gerard Street, Thursday Morning.]

It was immediately upon this motion that Mr. Fox advanced that inconsiderate claim of Right for the Prince of Wales, of which his rival availed himself so dexterously and triumphantly. Having asserted that there existed no precedent whatever that could bear upon the present case, Mr. Fox proceeded to say, that "the circumstance to be provided for did not depend upon their deliberations as a House of Parliament,—it rested elsewhere. There was then a person in the kingdom, different from any other person that any existing precedents could refer to,—an Heir Apparent, of full age and capacity to exercise the royal power. It behoved them, therefore, to waste not a moment unnecessarily, but to proceed with all becoming speed and diligence to restore the Sovereign power and the exercise of the Royal Authority. From what he had read of history, from the ideas he had formed of the law, and, what was still more precious, of the spirit of the Constitution, from every reasoning and analogy drawn from those sources, he declared that he had not in his mind a doubt, and he should think himself culpable if he did not take the first opportunity of declaring it, that, in the present condition of His Majesty, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales had as clear, as express a Right to exercise the power of Sovereignty, during the continuance of the illness and incapacity, with which it had pleased God to afflict His Majesty, as in the case of His Majesty's having undergone a natural demise."

It is said that, during the delivery of this adventurous opinion, the countenance of Mr. Pitt was seen to brighten with exultation at the mistake into which he perceived his adversary was hurrying; and scarcely had the sentence, just quoted, been concluded, when, slapping his thigh triumphantly, he turned to the person who sat next to him, and said, "I'll un-Whig the gentleman for the rest of his life!"

Even without this anecdote, which may be depended upon as authentic, we have sufficient evidence that such were his feelings in the burst of animation and confidence with which he instantly replied to Mr. Fox,—taking his ground, with an almost equal temerity, upon the directly opposite doctrine, and asserting, not only that "in the case of the interruption of the personal exercise of the Royal Authority, it devolved upon the other branches of the Legislature to provide a substitute for that authority," but that "the Prince of Wales had no more right to exercise the powers of government than any other person in the realm."

The truth is, the assertion of a Right was equally erroneous, on both sides of the question. The Constitution having provided no legal remedy for such an exigence as had now occurred, the two Houses of Parliament had as little right (in the strict sense of the word) to supply the deficiency of the Royal power, as the Prince had to be the person elected or adjudged for that purpose. Constitutional analogy and expediency were the only authorities by which the measures necessary in such a conjuncture could be either guided or sanctioned; and if the disputants on each side had softened down their tone to this true and practical view of the case, there would have been no material difference, in the first stage of the proceedings between them,—Mr. Pitt being ready to allow that the Heir Apparent was the obvious person to whom expediency pointed as the depository of the Royal power, and Mr. Fox having granted, in a subsequent explanation of his doctrine, that, strong as was the right upon which the claim of the Prince was founded, His Royal Highness could not assume that right till it had been formally adjudicated to him by Parliament. The principle, however, having been imprudently broached, Mr. Pitt was too expert a tactician not to avail himself of the advantage it gave him. He was thus, indeed, furnished with an opportunity, not only of gaining time by an artful protraction of the discussions, but of occupying victoriously the ground of Whiggism, which Mr. Fox had, in his impatience or precipitancy, deserted, and of thus adding to the character, which he had recently acquired, of a defender of the prerogatives of the Crown, the more brilliant reputation of an assertor of the rights of the people.

In the popular view which Mr. Pitt found it convenient to take of this question, he was led, or fell voluntarily into some glaring errors, which pervaded the whole of his reasonings on the subject. In his anxiety to prove the omnipotence of Parliament, he evidently confounded the Estates of the realm with the Legislature, [Footnote: Mr. Grattan and the Irish Parliament carried this error still farther, and founded all their proceedings on the necessity of "providing for the deficiency of the Third Estate."] and attributed to two branches of the latter such powers as are only legally possessed by the whole three in Parliament assembled. For the purpose, too, of flattering the people with the notion that to them had now reverted the right of choosing their temporary Sovereign, he applied a principle, which ought to be reserved for extreme cases, to an exigence by no means requiring this ultimate appeal,—the defect in the government being such as the still existing Estates of the realm, appointed to speak the will of the people, but superseding any direct exercise of their power, were fully competent, as in the instance of the Revolution, to remedy. [Footnote: The most luminous view that has been taken of this Question is to be found in an Article of the Edinburgh Review, on the Regency of 1811,—written by one of the most learned and able men of our day, Mr. John Allen.]

Indeed, the solemn use of such language as Mr. Pitt, in his over-acted Whiggism, employed upon this occasion,—namely, that the "right" of appointing a substitute for the Royal power was "to be found in the voice and the sense of the people,"—is applicable only to those conjunctures, brought on by misrule and oppression, when all forms are lost in the necessity of relief, and when the right of the people to change and choose their rulers is among the most sacred and inalienable that either nature or social polity has ordained. But, to apply the language of that last resource to the present emergency was to brandish the sword of Goliath [Footnote: A simile applied by Lord Somers to the power of Impeachment, which, he said, "should be like Goliath's sword, kept in the temple, and not used but upon great occasions."] on an occasion that by no means called for it.

The question of the Prince's claim,—in spite of the efforts of the Prince himself and of his Royal relatives to avert the agitation of it,—was, for evident reasons, forced into discussion by the Minister, and decided by a majority, not only of the two Houses but of the nation, in his favor. During one of the long debates to which the question gave rise, Mr. Sheridan allowed himself to be betrayed into some expressions, which, considering the delicate predicament in which the Prince was placed by the controversy, were not marked with his usual tact and sagacity. In alluding to the claim of Right advanced for His Royal Highness, and deprecating any further agitation of it, he "reminded the Right Honorable Gentleman (Mr. Pitt) of the danger of provoking that claim to be asserted [a loud cry of hear! hear!], which, he observed, had not yet been preferred. [Another cry of hear! hear!]" This was the very language that Mr. Pitt most wished his adversaries to assume, and, accordingly, he turned it to account with all his usual mastery and haughtiness. "He had now," he said, "an additional reason for asserting the authority of the House, and defining the boundaries of Right, when the deliberative faculties of Parliament were invaded, and an indecent menace thrown out to awe and influence their proceedings. In the discussion of the question, the House, he trusted, would do their duty, in spite of any threat that might be thrown out. Men, who felt their native freedom, would not submit to a threat, however high the authority from which it might come." [Footnote: Impartial Report of all the Proceedings on the Subject of the Regency]

The restrictions of the Prerogative with which Mr. Pitt thought proper to encumber the transfer of the Royal power to the Prince, formed the second great point of discussion between the parties, and brought equally adverse principles into play. Mr. Fox, still maintaining his position on the side of Royalty, defended it with much more tenable weapons than the question of Right had enabled him to wield. So founded, indeed, in the purest principles of Whiggism did he consider his opposition, on this memorable occasion, to any limitation of the Prerogative in the hands of a Regent, that he has, in his History of James II., put those principles deliberately upon record, as a fundamental article in the creed of his party. The passage to which I allude occurs in his remarks upon the Exclusion Bill; and as it contains, in a condensed form, the spirit of what he urged on the same point in 1789, I cannot do better than lay his own words before the reader. After expressing his opinion that, at the period of which he writes, the measure of exclusion from the monarchy altogether would have been preferable to any limitation of its powers, he proceeds to say:—"The Whigs, who consider the powers of the Crown as a trust for the people, a doctrine which the Tories themselves, when pushed in argument, will sometimes admit, naturally think it their duty rather to change the manager of the trust than impair the subject of it; while others, who consider them as the right or property of the King, will as naturally act as they would do in the case of any other property, and consent to the loss or annihilation of any part of it, for the purpose of preserving the remainder to him, whom they style the rightful owner." Further on he adds:—"The Royal Prerogative ought, according to the Whigs, to be reduced to such powers as are in their exercise beneficial to the people; and of the benefit of these they will not rashly suffer the people to be deprived, whether the executive power be in the hands of an hereditary or of an elective King, of a Regent, or of any other denomination of magistrate; while, on the other hand, they who consider Prerogative with reference only to Royalty will, with equal readiness, consent either to the extension or the suspension of its exercise, as the occasional interests of the Prince may seem to require."

Taking this as a correct exposition of the doctrines of the two parties, of which Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt may be considered to have been the representatives in the Regency question of 1789, it will strike some minds that, however the Whig may flatter himself that the principle by which he is guided in such exigencies is favorable to liberty, and however the Tory may, with equal sincerity, believe his suspension of the Prerogative on these occasions to be advantageous to the Crown, yet that in both of the principles, so defined, there is an evident tendency to produce effects, wholly different from those which the parties professing them contemplate.

On the one side, to sanction from authority the notion, that there are some powers of the Crown which may be safely dispensed with,—to accustom the people to an abridged exercise of the Prerogative, with the risk of suggesting to their minds that its full efficacy needs not be resumed,—to set an example, in short, of reducing the Kingly Power, which, by its success, may invite and authorize still further encroachments,—all these are dangers to which the alleged doctrine of Toryism, whenever brought into practice, exposes its idol; and more particularly in enlightened and speculative times, when the minds of men are in quest of the right and the useful, and when a superfluity of power is one of those abuses, which they are least likely to overlook or tolerate. In such seasons, the experiment of the Tory might lead to all that he most deprecates, and the branches of the Prerogative, once cut away, might, like the lopped boughs of the fir-tree, never grow again.

On the other hand, the Whig, who asserts that the Royal Prerogative ought to be reduced to such powers as are beneficial to the people, and yet stipulates, as an invariable principle, for the transfer of that Prerogative full and unimpaired, whenever it passes into other hands, appears, even more perhaps than the Tory, to throw an obstacle in the way of his own object. Circumstances, it is not denied, may arise when the increase of the powers of the Crown, in other ways, may render it advisable to control some of its established prerogatives. But, where are we to find a fit moment for such a reform,—or what opening will be left for it by this fastidious Whig principle, which, in 1680, could see no middle step between a change of the Succession and an undiminished maintenance of the Prerogative, and which, in 1789, almost upon the heels of a Declaration that "the power of the Crown had increased and ought to be diminished," protested against even an experimental reduction of it!

According to Mr. Fox, it is a distinctive characteristic of the Tory, to attach more importance to the person of the King than to his office. But, assuredly, the Tory is not singular in this want of political abstraction; and, in England, (from a defect, Hume thinks, inherent in all limited monarchies,) the personal qualities and opinions of the Sovereign have considerable influence upon the whole course of public affairs,—being felt alike in that courtly sphere around them where their attraction acts, and in that outer circle of opposition where their repulsion comes into play. To this influence, then, upon the government and the community, of which no abstraction can deprive the person of the monarch, the Whig principle in question (which seems to consider entireness of Prerogative as necessary to a King, as the entireness of his limbs was held to be among the Athenians,) superadds the vast power, both actual and virtual, which would flow from the inviolability of the Royal office, and forecloses, so far, the chance which the more pliant Tory doctrine would leave open, of counteracting the effects of the King's indirect personal influence, by curtailing or weakening the grasp of some of his direct regal powers. Ovid represents the Deity of Light (and on an occasion, too, which may be called a Regency question) as crowned with movable rays, which might be put off when too strong or dazzling. But, according to this principle, the crown of Prerogative must keep its rays fixed and immovable, and (as the poet expresses it) "circa caput OMNE micantes."

Upon the whole, however high the authorities, by which this Whig doctrine was enforced in 1789, its manifest tendency, in most cases, to secure a perpetuity of superfluous powers to the Crown, appears to render it unfit, at least as an invariable principle, for any party professing to have the liberty of the people for their object. The Prince, in his admirable Letter upon the subject of the Regency to Mr. Pitt, was made to express the unwillingness which he felt "that in his person an experiment should be made to ascertain with how small a portion of kingly power the executive government of the country might be carried on;"—but imagination has not far to go in supposing a case, where the enormous patronage vested in the Crown, and the consequent increase of a Royal bias through the community, might give such an undue and unsafe preponderance to that branch of the Legislature, as would render any safe opportunity, however acquired, of ascertaining with how much less power the executive government could be carried on, most acceptable, in spite of any dogmas to the contrary, to all true lovers as well of the monarchy as of the people.

Having given thus much consideration to the opinions and principles, professed on both sides of this constitutional question, it is mortifying, after all, to be obliged to acknowledge, that, in the relative situation of the two parties at the moment, may be found perhaps the real, and but too natural, source of the decidedly opposite views which they took of the subject. Mr. Pitt, about to surrender the possession of power to his rival, had a very intelligible interest in reducing the value of the transfer, and (as a retreating army spike the guns they leave behind) rendering the engines of Prerogative as useless as possible to his successor. Mr. Fox, too, had as natural a motive to oppose such a design; and, aware that the chief aim of these restrictive measures was to entail upon the Whig ministry of the Regent a weak Government and strong Opposition, would, of course, eagerly welcome the aid of any abstract principle, that might sanction him in resisting such a mutilation of the Royal power;—well knowing that (as in the case of the Peerage Bill in the reign of George I.) the proceedings altogether were actuated more by ill-will to the successor in the trust, than by any sincere zeal for the purity of its exercise.

Had the situations of the two leaders been reversed, it is more than probable that their modes of thinking and acting would have been so likewise. Mr. Pitt, with the prospect of power before his eyes, would have been still more strenuous, perhaps, for the unbroken transmission of the Prerogative—his natural leaning on the side of power being increased by his own approaching share in it. Mr. Fox, too, if stopped, like his rival, in a career of successful administration, and obliged to surrender up the reins of the state to Tory guidance, might have found in his popular principles a still more plausible pretext, for the abridgment of power in such unconstitutional hands. He might even too, perhaps, (as his India Bill warrants us in supposing) have been tempted into the same sort of alienation of the Royal patronage, as that which Mr. Pitt now practised in the establishment of the Queen, and have taken care to leave behind him a stronghold of Whiggism, to facilitate the resumption of his position, whenever an opportunity might present itself. Such is human nature, even in its noblest specimens, and so are the strongest spirits shaped by the mould in which chance and circumstances have placed them.

Mr. Sheridan spoke frequently in the Debates on this question, but his most important agency lay in the less public business connected with it. He was the confidential adviser of the Prince throughout, directed every step he took, and was the author of most of his correspondence on the subject. There is little doubt, I think, that the celebrated and masterly Letter to Mr. Pitt, which by some persons has been attributed to Burke, and by others to Sir Gilbert Elliot (afterwards Lord Minto), was principally the production of Mr. Sheridan. For the supposition that it was written by Burke there are, besides the merits of the production, but very scanty grounds. So little was he at that period in those habits of confidence with the Prince, which would entitle him to be selected for such a task in preference to Sheridan, that but eight or ten days before the date of this letter (Jan. 2.) he had declared in the House of Commons, that "he knew as little of the inside of Carlton House as he did of Buckingham House." Indeed, the violent state of this extraordinary man's temper, during the whole of the discussions and proceedings on the Regency, would have rendered him, even had his intimacy with the Prince been closer, an unfit person for the composition of a document, requiring so much caution, temper, and delicacy.

The conjecture that Sir Gilbert Elliot was the author of it is somewhat more plausible,—that gentleman being at this period high in the favor of the Prince, and possessing talents sufficient to authorize the suspicion (which was in itself a reputation) that he had been the writer of a composition so admirable. But it seems hardly necessary to go farther, in quest of its author, than Mr. Sheridan, who, besides being known to have acted the part of the Prince's adviser through the whole transaction, is proved by the rough copies found among his papers, to have written several other important documents connected with the Regency.

I may also add that an eminent statesman of the present day, who was at that period, though very young, a distinguished friend of Mr. Sheridan, and who has shown by the ability of his own State Papers that he has not forgot the lessons of that school from which this able production emanated, remembers having heard some passages of the Letter discussed in Bruton-street, as if it were then in the progress of composition, and has always, I believe, been under the impression that it was principally the work of Mr. Sheridan. [Footnote: To this authority may be added also that of the Bishop of Winchester, who says,—"Mr. Sheridan was supposed to have been materially concerned in drawing up this admirable composition."]

I had written thus far on the subject of this Letter—and shall leave what I have written as a memorial of the fallacy of such conjectures—when, having still some doubts of my correctness in attributing the honor of the composition to Sheridan, I resolved to ask the opinion of my friend, Sir James Mackintosh, a person above all others qualified, by relationship of talent, to recognize and hold parley with the mighty spirit of Burke, in whatever shape the "Royal Dane" may appear. The strong impression on his mind—amounting almost to certainty—was that no other hand but that of Burke could have written the greater part of the letter; [Footnote: It is amusing to observe how tastes differ;—the following is the opinion entertained of this letter by a gentleman, who, I understand, and can easily believe, is an old established Reviewer. After mentioning that it was attributed to the pen of Burke, he adds,—"The story, however, does not seem entitled to much credit, for the internal character of the paper is too vapid and heavy for the genius of Burke, whose ardent mind would assuredly have diffused vigor into the composition, and the correctness of whose judgment would as certainly have preserved it from the charge of inelegance and grammatical deficiency."—DR. WATKINS, Life of Sheridan. Such, in nine cases out of ten, are the periodical guides of public taste.] and by a more diligent inquiry, in which his kindness assisted me, it has been ascertained that his opinion was, as it could not fail to be, correct. The following extract from a letter written by Lord Minto at the time, referring obviously to the surmise that he was, himself, the author of the paper, confirms beyond a doubt the fact, that it was written almost solely by Burke:—

"January 31st, 1789.

"There was not a word of the Prince's letter to Pitt mine. It was originally Burke's, altered a little, but not improved, by Sheridan and other critics. The answer made by the Prince yesterday to the Address of the two Houses was entirely mine, and done in a great hurry half an hour before it was to be delivered."

While it is with regret I give up the claim of Mr. Sheridan to this fine specimen of English composition, it but adds to my intense admiration of Burke—not on account of the beauty of the writing, for his fame required no such accession—but from that triumph of mind over temper which it exhibits—that forgetfulness of Self, the true, transmigrating power of genius, which enabled him thus to pass his spirit into the station of Royalty, and to assume all the calm dignity, both of style and feeling, that became it.

It was to be expected that the conduct of Lord Thurlow at this period should draw down upon him all the bitterness of those who were in the secret of his ambidextrous policy, and who knew both his disposition to desert, and the nature of the motives that prevented him. To Sheridan, in particular, such a result of a negotiation, in which he had been the principal mover and mediator, could not be otherwise than deeply mortifying. Of all the various talents with which he was gifted, his dexterity in political intrigue and management was that of which he appears to have been most vain; and this vanity it was that, at a later period of his life, sometimes led him to branch off from the main body of his party, upon secret and solitary enterprises of ingenuity, which—as may be expected from all such independent movements of a partisan—generally ended in thwarting his friends and embarrassing himself.

In the debate on that clause of the Bill, which restricted the Regent from granting places or pensions in reversion, Mr. Sheridan is represented as having attacked Lord Thurlow in terms of the most unqualified severity,—speaking of "the natural ferocity and sturdiness of his temper," and of "his brutal bluffness." But to such abuse, unseasoned by wit, Mr. Sheridan was not at all likely to have condescended, being well aware that, "as in smooth oil the razor best is set," so satire is whetted to its most perfect keenness by courtesy. His clumsy reporters have, in this, as in almost all other instances, misrepresented him.

With equal personality, but more playfulness, Mr. Burke, in exposing that wretched fiction, by which the Great Seal was converted into the Third Branch of the Legislature, and the assent of the King forged to a Bill, in which his incapacity to give either assent or dissent was declared, thus expressed himself:—"But what is to be done when the Crown is in a deliquium? It was intended, he had heard, to set up a man with black brows and a large wig, a kind of scare-crow to the two Houses, who was to give a fictitious assent in the royal name—and this to be binding on the people at large!" The following remarkable passage, too, in a subsequent Speech, is almost too well known to be cited:—"The other House," he said, "were not yet perhaps recovered from that extraordinary burst of the pathetic which had been exhibited the other evening; they had not yet dried their eyes, or been restored to their former placidity, and were unqualified to attend, to new business. The tears shed in that House on the occasion to which he alluded, were not the tears of patriots for dying laws, but of Lords for their expiring places. The iron tears, which flowed down Pluto's cheek, rather resembled the dismal bubbling of the Styx, than the gentle murmuring streams of Aganippe."

While Lord Thurlow was thus treated by the party whom he had so nearly joined, he was but coldly welcomed back by the Minister whom he had so nearly deserted. His reconciliation, too, with the latter was by no means either sincere or durable,—the renewal of friendship between politicians, on such occasions, being generally like that which the Diable Boiteux describes, as having taken place between himself and a brother sprite,—"We were reconciled, embraced, and have hated each other heartily ever since."

In the Regency, indeed, and the transactions connected with it, may be found the source of most of those misunderstandings and enmities, which broke out soon after among the eminent men of that day, and were attended with consequences so important to themselves and the country. By the difference just mentioned, between Mr. Pitt and Lord Thurlow, the ministerial arrangements of 1793 were facilitated, and the learned Lord, after all his sturdy pliancy, consigned to a life of ineffectual discontent ever after.

The disagreement between Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox, if not actually originating now—and its foundation had been, perhaps, laid from the beginning, in the total dissimilarity of their dispositions and sentiments—was, at least, considerably ripened and accelerated by the events of this period, and by the discontent that each of them, like partners in unsuccessful play, was known to feel at the mistakes which the other had committed in the game. Mr. Fox had, unquestionably, every reason to lament as well as blame the violence and virulence by which his associate had disgraced the contest. The effect, indeed, produced upon the public by the irreverent sallies of Burke, and by the too evident triumph, both of hate and hope, with which he regarded the calamitous situation of the King, contributed not a little to render still lower the already low temperature of popularity at which his party stood throughout the country. It seemed as if a long course of ineffectual struggle in politics, of frustrated ambition and unrewarded talents, had at length exasperated his mind to a degree beyond endurance; and the extravagances into which he was hurried in his speeches on this question, appear to have been but the first workings of that impatience of a losing cause— that resentment of failure, and disgust at his partners in it—which soon afterwards found such a signal opportunity of exploding.

That Mr. Burke, upon far less grounds, was equally discontented with his co-operators in this emergency, may be collected from the following passage of a letter addressed by him in the summer of this year to Lord Charlemont, and given by Hardy in his Memoirs of that nobleman:—

"Perpetual failure, even though nothing in that failure can be fixed on the improper choice of the object or the injudicious choice of means, will detract every day more and more from a man's credit, until he ends without success and without reputation. In fact, a constant pursuit even of the best objects, without adequate instruments, detracts something from the opinion of a man's judgment. This, I think, may be in part the cause of the inactivity of others of our friends who are in the vigor of life and in possession of a great degree of lead and authority. I do not blame them, though I lament that state of the public mind, in which the people can consider the exclusion of such talents and such virtues from their service, as a point gained to them. The only point in which I can find any thing to blame in these friends, is their not taking the effectual means, which they certainly had in their power, of making an honorable retreat from their prospect of power into the possession of reputation, by an effectual defence of themselves. There was an opportunity which was not made use of for that purpose, and which could scarcely have failed of turning the tables on their adversaries."

Another instance of the embittering influence of these transactions may be traced in their effects upon Mr. Burke and Mr. Sheridan—between whom there had arisen a degree of emulation, amounting to jealousy, which, though hitherto chiefly confined to one of the parties, received on this occasion such an addition of fuel, as spread it equally through the minds of both, and conduced, in no small degree, to the explosion that followed. Both Irishmen, and both adventurers in a region so much elevated above their original station, it was but natural that some such feeling should kindle between them; and that, as Burke was already mid-way in his career, when Sheridan was but entering the field, the stirrings, whether of emulation or envy, should first be felt by the latter. It is, indeed, said that in the ceremonial of Hastings's Trial, the privileges enjoyed by Burke, as a Privy-councillor, were regarded with evident uneasiness by his brother Manager, who could not as yet boast the distinction of Right Honorable before his name. As soon, however, as the rapid run of Sheridan's success had enabled him to overtake his veteran rival, this feeling of jealousy took possession in full force of the latter,—and the close relations of intimacy and confidence, to which Sheridan was now admitted both by Mr. Fox and the Prince, are supposed to have been not the least of those causes of irritation and disgust, by which Burke was at length driven to break with the party altogether, and to show his gigantic strength at parting, by carrying away some of the strongest pillars of Whiggism in his grasp.

Lastly, to this painful list of the feuds, whose origin is to be found in the times and transactions of which we are speaking, may be added that slight, but too visible cloud of misunderstanding, which arose between Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan, and which, though it never darkened into any thing serious, continued to pervade their intercourse with each other to the last—exhibiting itself, on the part of Mr. Fox, in a degree of distrustful reserve not natural to him, and, on the side of Sheridan, in some of those counter-workings of influence, which, as I have already said, he was sometimes induced by his love of the diplomacy of politics to practise.

Among the appointments named in contemplation of a Regency, the place of Treasurer of the Navy was allotted to Mr. Sheridan. He would never, however, admit the idea of certainty in any of the arrangements so sanguinely calculated upon, but continually impressed upon his impatient friends the possibility, if not probability, of the King's recovery. He had even refused to look at the plan of the apartments, which he himself was to occupy in Somerset House; and had but just agreed that it should be sent to him for examination, on the very day when the King was declared convalescent by Dr. Warren. "He entered his own house (to use the words of the relater of the anecdote) at dinner-time with the news. There were present,—besides Mrs. Sheridan and his sister,—Tickell, who, on the change of administration, was to have been immediately brought into Parliament,—Joseph Richardson, who was to have had Tickell's place of Commissioner of the Stamp-office,—Mr. Reid, and some others. Not one of the company but had cherished expectations from the approaching change—not one of them, however, had lost so much as Mr. Sheridan. With his wonted equanimity he announced the sudden turn affairs had taken, and looking round him cheerfully, as he filled a large glass, said,—'Let us all join in drinking His Majesty's speedy recovery.'"

The measures which the Irish Parliament adopted on this occasion, would have been productive of anomalies, both theoretical and practical, had the continued illness of the King allowed the projected Regency to take place. As it was, the most material consequence that ensued was the dismissal from their official situations of Mr. Ponsonby and other powerful individuals, by which the Whig party received such an accession of strength, as enabled them to work out for their country the few blessings of liberty that still remain to her. Among the victims to their votes on this question was Mr. Charles Sheridan, who, on the recovery of the King, was dismissed from his office of Secretary of War, but received compensation by a pension of 1200_l_. a year, with the reversion of 300_l_. a year to his wife.

The ready and ardent burst of devotion with which Ireland, at this moment, like the Pythagoreans at their morning worship, turned to welcome with her Harp the Rising Sun, was long remembered by the object of her homage with pride and gratitude,—and, let us trust, is not even yet entirely forgotten. [Footnote: This vain hope was expressed before the late decision on the Catholic question had proved to the Irish that, where their rights are concerned, neither public nor private pledges are regarded.]

It has already been mentioned that to Mr. Sheridan, at this period, was entrusted the task of drawing up several of the State Papers of the Heir-Apparent. From the rough copies of these papers that have fallen into my hands, I shall content myself with selecting two Letters—the first of which was addressed by the Prince to the Queen, immediately after the communication to her Majesty of the Resolution of the two Houses placing the Royal Household under her control.

"Before Your Majesty gives an answer to the application for your Royal permission to place under Your Majesty's separate authority the direction and appointment of the King's household, and thereby to separate from the difficult and arduous situation which I am unfortunately called upon to fill, the accustomed and necessary support which has ever belonged to it, permit me, with every sentiment of duty and affection towards Your Majesty, to entreat your attentive perusal of the papers which I have the honor to enclose. They contain a sketch of the plan now proposed to be carried into execution as communicated to me by Mr. Pitt, and the sentiments which I found myself bound in duty to declare in reply to that communication. I take the liberty of lodging these papers in Your Majesty's hands, confiding that, whenever it shall please Providence to remove the malady with which the King my father is now unhappily afflicted, Your Majesty will, in justice to me and to those of the Royal family whose affectionate concurrence and support I have received, take the earliest opportunity of submitting them to his Royal perusal, in order that no interval of time may elapse before he is in possession of the true motives and principles upon which I have acted. I here solemnly repeat to Your Majesty, that among those principles there is not one which influences my mind so much as the firm persuasion I have, that my conduct in endeavoring to maintain unimpaired and undivided the just rights, prerogatives, and dignity of the Crown, in the person of the King's representative, is the only line of conduct which would entitle me to His Majesty's approbation, or enable me to stand with confidence in his Royal presence on the happy day of his recovery;—and, on the contrary, that those who, under color of respect and attachment to his Royal person, have contrived this project for enfeebling and degrading the executive authority of the realm, will be considered by him as having risked the happiness of his people and the security of the throne itself, by establishing a fatal precedent which may hereafter be urged against his own authority, on as plausible pretences, or revived against the just rights of his family. In speaking my opinions of the motive of the projectors of this scheme, I trust I need not assure Your Majesty that the respect, duty, and affection I owe to Your Majesty have never suffered me for a single moment to consider you as countenancing, in the slightest degree, their plan or their purposes. I have the firmest reliance on Your Majesty's early declaration to me, on the subject of public affairs, at the commencement of our common calamity; and, whatever may be the efforts of evil or interested advisers, I have the same confidence that you will never permit or endure that the influence of your respected name shall be profaned to the purpose of distressing the government and insulting the person of your son. How far those, who are evidently pursuing both these objects, may be encouraged by Your Majesty's acceptance of one part of the powers purposed to be lodged in your hands, I will not presume to say. [Footnote: In speaking of the extraordinary imperium in imperio, with which the command of so much power and patronage would have invested the Queen, the Annual Register (Robinson's) remarks justly, "It was not the least extraordinary circumstance in these transactions, that the Queen could be prevailed upon to lend her name to a project which would eventually have placed her in avowed rivalship with her son, and, at a moment when her attention might seem to be absorbed by domestic calamity, have established her at the head of a political party."] The proposition has assumed the shape of a Resolution of Parliament, and therefore I am silent.

"Your Majesty will do me the honor to weigh the opinions I formed and declared before Parliament had entertained the plan, and, with those before you, your own good judgment will decide. I have only to add that whatever that decision may be, nothing will ever alter the interest of true affection and inviolable duty," &c. &c.

The second Letter that I shall give, from the rough copy of Mr. Sheridan, was addressed by the Prince to the King after his recovery, announcing the intention of His Royal Highness to submit to His Majesty a Memorial, in vindication of his own conduct and that of his Royal brother the Duke of York throughout the whole of the proceedings consequent upon His Majesty's indisposition.

"SIR,

"Thinking it probable that I should have been honored with your commands to attend Your Majesty on Wednesday last, I have unfortunately lost the opportunity of paying my duty to Your Majesty before your departure from Weymouth. The account? I have received of Your Majesty's health have given me the greatest satisfaction, and should it be Your Majesty's intention to return to Weymouth, I trust, Sir, there will be no impropriety in my then entreating Your Majesty's gracious attention to a point of the greatest moment to the peace of my own mind, and one in which I am convinced Your Majesty's feelings are equally interested. Your Majesty's letter to my brother the Duke of Clarence, in May last, was the first direct intimation I had ever received that my conduct, and that of my brother the Duke of York, during Your Majesty's late lamented illness, had brought on us the heavy misfortune of Your Majesty's displeasure. I should be wholly unworthy the return of Your Majesty's confidence and good opinion, which will ever be the first objects of my life, if I could have read the passage I refer to in that letter without the deepest sorrow and regret for the effect produced on Your Majesty's mind; though at the same time I felt the firmest persuasion that Your Majesty's generosity and goodness would never permit that effect to remain, without affording us an opportunity of knowing what had been urged against us, of replying to our accusers, and of justifying ourselves, if the means of justification were in our power.

"Great however as my impatience and anxiety were on this subject, I felt it a superior consideration not to intrude any unpleasing or agitating discussions upon Your Majesty's attention, during an excursion devoted to the ease and amusement necessary for the re-establishment of Your Majesty's health. I determined to sacrifice my own feelings, and to wait with resignation till the fortunate opportunity should arrive, when Your Majesty's own paternal goodness would, I was convinced, lead you even to invite your sons to that fair hearing, which your justice would not deny to the meanest individual of your subjects. In this painful interval I have employed myself in drawing up a full statement and account of my conduct during the period alluded to, and of the motives and circumstances which influenced me. When these shall be humbly submitted to Your Majesty's consideration, I may be possibly found to have erred in judgment, and to have acted on mistaken principles, but I have the most assured conviction that I shall not be found to have been deficient in that duteous affection to Your Majesty which nothing shall ever diminish. Anxious for every thing that may contribute to the comfort and satisfaction of Your Majesty's mind, I cannot omit this opportunity of lamenting those appearances of a less gracious disposition in the Queen, towards my brothers and myself, than we were accustomed to experience; and to assure Your Majesty that if by your affectionate interposition these most unpleasant sensations should be happily removed, it would be an event not less grateful to our minds than satisfactory to Your Majesty's own benign disposition. I will not longer. &c. &c.

"G. P."

The Statement here announced by His Royal Highness (a copy of which I have seen, occupying, with its Appendix, near a hundred folio pages), is supposed to have been drawn up by Lord Minto.

To descend from documents of such high import to one of a much humbler nature, the following curious memorial was presented this year to Mr. Sheridan, by a literary gentleman whom the Whig party thought it worth while to employ in their service, and who, as far as industry went, appears to have been not unworthy of his hire, Simonides is said to be the first author that ever wrote for pay, but Simonides little dreamt of the perfection to which his craft would one day be brought.

Memorial for Dr. W. T., [Footnote: This industrious Scotchman (of whose name I have only given the initials) was not without some share of humor. On hearing that a certain modern philosopher had carried his belief in the perfectibility of all living things so far, as to say that he did not despair of seeing the day when tigers themselves might be educated, Dr. T. exclaimed, "I should like dearly to see him in a cage with two of his pupils!"]

Fitzroy-street, Fitzroy-Chapel.

"In May, 1787, Dr. Parr, in the name of his political friends, engaged Dr. T. to embrace those opportunities, which his connections with booksellers and periodical publications might afford him, of supporting the principles of their party. Mr. Sheridan in August, 1787, gave two notes, 50_l_. each, to Dr. T. for the first year's service, which notes were paid at different periods—the first by Mr. Sheridan at Brookes's, in January, 1788, the second by Mr. Windham in May, 1788. Mr. Sheridan, in different conversations, encouraged Dr. T. to go on with the expectation of a like sum yearly, or 50_l_. half yearly. Dr. T. with this encouragement engaged in different publications for the purpose of this agreement. He is charged for the most part with the Political and Historical articles in the Analytic Review, and he also occasionally writes the Political Appendix to the English Review, of which particularly he wrote that for April last, and that for June last. He also every week writes an abridgment of Politics for the Whitehall Evening Post, and a Political Review every month for a Sunday paper entitled the Review and Sunday Advertiser. In a Romance, entitled 'Mammoth, or Human Nature Displayed, &c.,' Dr. T. has shown how mindful he is on all occasions of his engagements to those who confide in him. He has also occasionally moved other engines, which it would be tedious and might appear too trifling to mention. Dr. T. is not ignorant that uncommon charges have happened in the course of this last year, that is, the year preceding May, 1789. Instead of 100_l_., therefore, he will be satisfied with 50_l_ for that year, provided that this abatement shall not form a precedent against his claim of 100_l_. annually, if his further services shall be deemed acceptable. There is one point on which Dr. T. particularly reserved himself, namely, to make no attack on Mr. Hastings, and this will be attested by Dr. Parr, Mr. Sheridan, and, if the Doctor rightly recollects, by Mr. Windham.

"Fitzroy-street, 21st July, 1789."

Taking into account all the various circumstances that concurred to glorify this period of Sheridan's life, we may allow ourselves, I think, to pause upon it as the apex of the pyramid, and, whether we consider his fame, his talents, or his happiness, may safely say, "Here is their highest point."

The new splendor which his recent triumphs in eloquence had added to a reputation already so illustrious,—the power which he seemed to have acquired over the future destinies of the country, by his acknowledged influence in the councils of the Heir Apparent, and the tribute paid to him, by the avowal both of friends and foes, that he had used this influence in the late trying crisis of the Regency, with a judgment and delicacy that proved him worthy of it,—all these advantages, both brilliant and solid, which subsequent circumstances but too much tended to weaken, at this moment surrounded him in their newest lustre and promise.

He was just now, too, in the first enjoyment of a feeling, of which habit must have afterwards dulled the zest, namely, the proud consciousness of having surmounted the disadvantages of birth and station, and placed himself on a level with the highest and noblest of the land. This footing in the society of the great he could only have attained by parliamentary eminence;—as a mere writer, with all his genius, he never would have been thus admitted ad eundem among them. Talents, in literature or science, unassisted by the advantages of birth, may lead to association with the great, but rarely to equality;—it is a passport through the well-guarded frontier, but no title to naturalization within. By him, who has not been born among them, this can only be achieved by politics. In that arena, which they look upon as their own, the Legislature of the land, let a man of genius, like Sheridan, but assert his supremacy,—at once all these barriers of reserve and pride give way, and he takes, by storm, a station at their side, which a Shakspeare or a Newton would but have enjoyed by courtesy.

In fixing upon this period of Sheridan's life, as the most shining aera of his talents as well as his fame, it is not meant to be denied that in his subsequent warfare with the Minister, during the stormy time of the French Revolution, he exhibited a prowess of oratory no less suited to that actual service, than his eloquence on the trial of Hastings had been to such lighter tilts and tournaments of peace. But the effect of his talents was far less striking;—the current of feeling through England was against him;—and, however greatly this added to the merit of his efforts, it deprived him of that echo from the public heart, by which the voice of the orator is endued with a sort of multiplied life, and, as it were, survives itself. In the panic, too, that followed the French Revolution, all eloquence, but that from the lips of Power, was disregarded, and the voice of him at the helm was the only one listened to in the storm.

Of his happiness, at the period of which we are speaking, in the midst of so much success and hope, there can be but little doubt. Though pecuniary embarrassment, as appears from his papers, had already begun to weave its fatal net around him, there was as yet little more than sufficed to give exercise to his ingenuity, and the resources of the Drury-Lane treasury were still in full nightly flow. The charms, by which his home was embellished, were such as few other homes could boast; and, if any thing made it less happy than it ought to be, the cause was to be found in the very brilliancy of his life and attractions, and in those triumphs out of the sphere of domestic love, to which his vanity, perhaps, oftener than his feelings, impelled him.

Among his own immediate associates, the gaiety of his spirits amounted almost to boyishness. He delighted in all sorts of dramatic tricks and disguises; and the lively parties, with which his country-house was always filled, were kept in momentary expectation of some new device for their mystification or amusement. [Footnote: To give some idea of the youthful tone of this society, I shall mention one out of many anecdotes related to me by persons who themselves been ornaments of it. The ladies having one evening received the gentlemen in masquerade dresses, which with their obstinate silence, made it impossible to distinguish one from the other, the gentlemen, in their turn invited the ladies next evening, to a similar trial of conjecture on themselves; and notice being given that they were ready dressed, Mrs. Sheridan and her companions were admitted into the dining room, where they found a party of Turks, sitting silent and masked around the table. After a long course of the usual guesses, examinations, &c, &c., and each lady having taken the arm of the person she was most sure of, they heard a burst of laughter through the half open door, and looking there, saw the gentlemen themselves in their proper person—the masks upon whom they had been lavishing their sagacity being no other than the maid servants of the house, who had been thus dressed up to deceive them.] It was not unusual to dispatch a man and horse seven or eight miles for a piece of crape or a mask, or some other such trifle for these frolics. His friends Tickell and Richardson, both men of wit and humor, and the former possessing the same degree of light animal spirits as himself, were the constant companions of all his social hours, and kept up with him that ready rebound of pleasantry, without which the play of wit languishes.

There is a letter, written one night by Richardson at Tunbridge [Footnote: In the year 1790, when Mrs. Sheridan was trying the waters of Tunbridge for her health. In a letter to Sheridan's sister from this place, dated September 1790, she says: "I drink the waters once a day, and ride and drive all the forenoon, which makes me ravenous when I return. I feel I am in very good health, and I am in high beauty, two circumstances which ought and do put me in high good humor."] (after waiting five long hours for Sheridan,) so full of that mixture of melancholy and humor, which chequered the mind of this interesting man, that, as illustrative of the character of one of Sheridan's most intimate friends, it may be inserted here:—

"DEAR SHERIDAN,

"Half-past nine, Mount Ephraim.

"After you had been gone an hour or two I got moped damnably. Perhaps there is a sympathy between the corporeal and the mind's eye. In the Temple I can't see far before me, and seldom extend my speculations on things to come into any fatiguing sketch of reflection.—From your window, however, there was a tedious scope of black atmosphere, that I think won my mind into a sort of fellow-travellership, pacing me again through the cheerless waste of the past, and presenting hardly one little rarified cloud to give a dim ornament to the future;—not a star to be seen;—no permanent light to gild my horizon;—only the fading helps to transient gaiety in the lamps of Tunbridge;—no Law coffee-house at hand, or any other house of relief;—no antagonist to bicker one into a control of one's cares by a successful opposition, [Footnote: Richardson was remarkable for his love of disputation; and Tickell, when hard pressed by him in argument, used often, as a last resource, to assume the voice and manner of Mr. Fox, which he had the power of mimicking so exactly, that Richardson confessed he sometimes stood awed and silenced by the resemblance.

This disputatious humor of Richardson was once turned to account by Sheridan in a very characteristic manner. Having had a hackney-coach in employ for five or six hours, and not being provided with the means of paying it, he happened to espy Richardson in the street, and proposed to take him in the coach some part of his way. The offer being accepted, Sheridan lost no time in starting a subject of conversation, on which he knew his companion was sure to become argumentative and animated. Having, by well-managed contradiction, brought him to the proper pitch of excitement, he affected to grow impatient and angry, himself, and saying that "he could not think of staying in the same coach with a person that would use such language," pulled the check-string, and desired the coachman to let him out. Richardson, wholly occupied with the argument, and regarding the retreat of his opponent as an acknowledgment of defeat, still pressed his point, and even hollowed "more last words" through the coach-window after Sheridan, who, walking quietly home, left the poor disputant responsible for the heavy fare of the coach.] nor a softer enemy to soothe one into an oblivion of them.

"It is damned foolish for ladies to leave their scissors about;—the frail thread of a worthless life is soon snipped. I wish to God my fate had been true to its first destination, and made a parson of me;—I should have made an excellent country Joll. I think I can, with confidence, pronounce the character that would have been given of me:—He was an indolent good-humored man, civil at all times, and hospitable at others, namely, when he was able to be so, which, truth to say, happened but seldom. His sermons were better than his preaching, and his doctrine better than his life; though often grave, and sometimes melancholy, he nevertheless loved a joke,—the more so when overtaken in his cups, which, a regard to the faith of history compels us to subjoin, fell out not unfrequently. He had more thought than was generally imputed to him, though it must be owned no man alive ever exercised thought to so little purpose. Rebecca, his wife, the daughter of an opulent farmer in the neighborhood of his small living, brought him eighteen children; and he now rests with those who, being rather not absolutely vicious than actively good, confide in the bounty of Providence to strike a mild average between the contending negations of their life, and to allow them in their future state, what he ordained them in this earthly pilgrimage, a snug neutrality and a useless repose.—I had written thus far, absolutely determined, under an irresistible influence of the megrims, to set off for London on foot, when, accidentally searching for a cardialgic, to my great delight, I discovered three fugitive sixpences, headed by a vagrant shilling, immerged in the heap in my waistcoat pocket. This discovery gave an immediate elasticity to my mind; and I have therefore devised a scheme, worthier the improved state of my spirits, namely, to swindle your servants out of a horse, under the pretence of a ride upon the heath, and to jog on contentedly homewards. So, under the protection of Providence, and the mercy of footpads, I trust we shall meet again to-morrow; at all events, there is nothing huffish in this; for, whether sad or merry, I am always,

"Most affectionately yours,

"J. RICHARDSON.

"P.S. Your return only confirmed me in my resolution of going; for I had worked myself, in five hours solitude, into such a state of nervous melancholy, that I found I could not help the meanness of crying, even if any one looked me in the face. I am anxious to avoid a regular conviction of so disreputable an infirmity;—besides, the night has become quite pleasant."

Between Tickell and Sheridan there was a never-ending "skirmish of wit," both verbal and practical; and the latter kind, in particular, was carried on between them with all the waggery, and, not unfrequently, the malice of school-boys. [Footnote: On one occasion, Sheridan having covered the floor of a dark passage, leading from the drawing room, with all the plates and dishes of the house, ranged closely together, provoked his unconscious play-fellow to pursue him into the midst of them. Having left a path for his own escape, he passed through easily, but Tickell, falling at full length into the ambuscade, was very much cut in several places. The next day, Lord John Townshend, on paying a visit to the bed-side of Tickell, found him covered over with patches, and indignantly vowing vengeance against Sheridan for this unjustifiable trick. In the midst of his anger, however, he could not help exclaiming, with the true feeling of an amateur of this sort of mischief, "but how amazingly well done it was!"] Tickell, much less occupied by business than his friend, had always some political jeux d'esprit on the anvil; and sometimes these trifles were produced by them jointly. The following string of pasquinades so well known in political circles, and written, as the reader will perceive, at different dates, though principally by Sheridan, owes some of its stanzas to Tickel, and a few others, I believe, to Lord John Townshend. I have strung together, without regard to chronology, the best of these detached lampoons. Time having removed their venom, and with it, in a great degree, their wit, they are now, like dried snakes, mere harmless objects of curiosity.

"Johnny W—lks, Johnny W—lks, [1]
Thou greatest of bilks,
How chang'd are the notes you now sing!
Your fam'd Forty-five
Is Prerogative,
And your blasphemy, 'God save the King,'
Johnny W-lks,
And your blasphemy, 'God save the King.'"

"Jack Ch—ch—ll, Jack Ch—ch—ll,
The town sure you search ill,
Your mob has disgraced all your brags;
When next you draw out
Your hospital rout,
Do, prithee, afford them clean rags,
Jack Ch—ch—ll,
Do, prithee, afford them clean rags."

"Captain K—th, Captain K—th,
Keep your tongue 'twixt your teeth,
Lest bed-chamber tricks you betray;
And, if teeth you want more,
Why, my bold Commodore,—
You may borrow of Lord G—ll—y,
Captain K—th,
You may borrow of Lord G—ll—y."

[2]"Joe M—wb—y, Joe M—wb—y,
Your throat sure must raw be,
In striving to make yourself heard;
But it pleased not the pigs.
Nor the Westminster Whigs,
That your Knighthood should utter one word,
Joe M—wb—y,
That your Knighthood should utter one word."

"M—ntm—res, M—ntm—res,
Whom nobody for is,
And for whom we none of us care;
From Dublin you came—
It had much been the same
If your Lordship had staid where you were,
M—ntm—res,
If your Lordship had staid where you were."

"Lord O—gl—y, Lord O—gl—y,
You spoke mighty strongly—
Who you are, tho', all people admire!
But I'll let you depart,
For I believe in my heart,
You had rather they did not inquire,
Lord O—gl—y,
You had rather they did not inquire."

"Gl—nb—e, Gl—nb—e,
What's good for the scurvy?
For ne'er be your old trade forgot—
In your arms rather quarter
A pestle and mortar,
And your crest be a spruce gallipot,
Gl—nb—e,
And your crest be a spruce gallipot."

"Gl—nb—e, Gl—nb—e,
The world's topsy-turvy,
Of this truth you're the fittest attester;
For, who can deny
That the Low become High,
When the King makes a Lord of Silvester,
Gl—nb—e,
When the King makes a Lord of Silvester."

"Mr. P—l, Mr. P—l,
In return for your zeal,
I am told they have dubb'd you Sir Bob;
Having got wealth enough
By coarse Manchester stuff,
For honors you'll now drive a job,
Mr. P—l,
For honors you'll now drive a job."

"Oh poor B—ks, oh poor B—ks,
Still condemned to the ranks,
Nor e'en yet from a private promoted;
Pitt ne'er will relent,
Though he knows you repent,
Having once or twice honestly voted,
Poor B—ks,
Having once or twice honestly voted."

"Dull H—l—y, dull H—l—y,
Your audience feel ye
A speaker of very great weight,
And they wish you were dumb,
When, with ponderous hum,
You lengthened the drowsy debate,
Dull H—l—y,
You lengthened the drowsy debate."

[Footnote 1: In Sheridan's copy of the stanzas written by him in this metre at the time of the Union, (beginning "Zooks, Harry! zooks, Harry!") he entitled them, "An admirable new ballad, which goes excellently well to the tune of

"Mrs. Arne, Mrs. Arne,
It gives me concern," &c.]

[Footnote 2: This stanza and, I rather think, the next were by Lord John
Townshend.]

There are about as many more of these stanzas, written at different intervals, according as new victims, with good names for rhyming, presented themselves,—the metre being a most tempting medium for such lampoons. There is, indeed, appended to one of Sheridan's copies of them, a long list (like a Tablet of Proscription), containing about fifteen other names marked out for the same fate; and it will be seen by the following specimen that some of them had a very narrow escape:

"Will C—rt—s…."

"V—ns—t—t, V—ns—t—t,—for little thou fit art."

"Will D—nd—s, Will D—nd—s,—were you only an ass."

"L—ghb—h,—thorough."

"Sam H—rsl—y, Sam H—rsl—y, … coarsely."

"P—ttym—n, P—ttym—n,—speak truth, if you can."

But it was not alone for such lively purposes [Footnote: As I have been mentioning some instances of Sheridan's love of practical jests, I shall take this opportunity of adding one more anecdote, which I believe is pretty well known, but which I have had the advantage of hearing from the person on whom the joke was inflicted.

The Rev. Mr. O'B—— (afterwards Bishop of ——) having arrived to dinner at Sheridan's country-house, near Osterley, where, as usual, a gay party was collected, (consisting of General Burgoyne, Mrs. Crewe, Tickell, &c.) it was proposed that on the next day (Sunday) the Rev. Gentleman should, on gaining the consent of the resident clergyman, give a specimen of his talents as a preacher in the village church. On his objecting that he was not provided with a sermon, his host offered to write one for him, if he would consent to preach it; and, the offer being accepted, Sheridan left the company early, and did not return for the remainder of the evening. The following morning Mr. O'B—— found the manuscript by his bed-side, tied together neatly (as he described it) with riband;—the subject of the discourse being the "Abuse of Riches." Having read it over and corrected some theological errors, (such as "it is easier for a camel, as Moses says," &c.) he delivered the sermon in his most impressive style, much to the delight of his own party, and to the satisfaction, as he unsuspectingly flattered himself, of all the rest of the congregation, among whom was Mr. Sheridan's wealthy neighbor Mr. C——

Some months afterwards, however, Mr. O'B—— perceived that the family of Mr. C——, with whom he had previously been intimate, treated him with marked coldness; and, on his expressing some innocent wonder at the circumstance, was at length informed, to his dismay, by General Burgoyne, that the sermon which Sheridan had written for him was, throughout, a personal attack upon Mr. C——, who had at that time rendered himself very unpopular in the neighborhood by some harsh conduct to the poor, and to whom every one in the church, except the unconscious preacher, applied almost every sentence of the sermon.] that Sheridan and his two friends drew upon their joint wits; they had also but too much to do with subjects of a far different nature)—with debts, bonds, judgments, writs, and all those other humiliating matters of fact, that bring Law and Wit so often and so unnaturally in contact. That they were serviceable to each other, in their defensive alliance against duns, is fully proved by various documents; and I have now before me articles of agreement, dated in 1787, by which Tickell, to avert an execution from the Theatre, bound himself as security for Sheridan in the sum of 250_l_.,—the arrears of an annuity charged upon Sheridan's moiety of the property. So soon did those pecuniary difficulties, by which his peace and character were afterwards undermined, begin their operations.

Yet even into transactions of this nature, little as they are akin to mirth, the following letter of Richardson will show that these brother wits contrived to infuse a portion of gaiety:

"DEAR SHERIDAN,

"Essex-Street, Saturday evening.

"I had a terrible long batch with Bobby this morning, after I wrote to you by Francois. I have so far succeeded that he has agreed to continue the day of trial as we call it (that is, in vulgar, unlearned language, to put it off) from Tuesday till Saturday. He demands, as preliminaries, that Wright's bill of 500_l_. should be given up to him, as a prosecution had been commenced against him, which, however, he has stopped by an injunction from the Court of Chancery. This, if the transaction be as he states it, appears reasonable enough. He insists, besides, that the bill should undergo the most rigid examination; that you should transmit your objections, to which he will send answers, (for the point of a personal interview has not been yet carried,) and that the whole amount at last, whatever it may be, should have your clear and satisfied approbation:—nothing to be done without this—almighty honor!

"All these things being done, I desired to know what was to be the result at last:—'Surely, after having carried so many points, you will think it only common decency to relax a little as to the time of payment? You will not cut your pound of flesh the nearest from the merchant's heart?' To this Bobides, 'I must have 2000_l_. put in a shape of practicable use, and payment immediately;—for the rest I will accept security.' This was strongly objected to by me, as Jewish in the extreme; but, however, so we parted. You will think with me, I hope, that something has been done, however, by this meeting. It has opened an access to a favorable adjustment, and time and trust may do much. I am to see him again on Monday morning at two, so pray don't go out of town to-morrow without my seeing you. The matter is of immense consequence. I never knew till to-day that the process had been going on so long. I am convinced he could force you to trial next Tuesday with all your infirmities green upon your head; so pray attend to it.

"R. B. Sheridan, Esq.

"Yours ever,

"Lower Grosvenor-Street.

"J. RICHARDSON."

This letter was written in the year 1792, when Sheridan's involvements had begun to thicken around him more rapidly. There is another letter, about the same date, still more characteristic,—where, after beginning in evident anger and distress of mind, the writer breaks off, as if irresistibly, into the old strain of playfulness and good humor.

"DEAR SHERIDAN,

"Wednesday, Essex-Street, July 30.

"I write to you with more unpleasant feelings than I ever did in my life. Westly, after having told me for the last three weeks that nothing was wanting for my accommodation but your consent, having told me so, so late as Friday, sends me word on Monday that he would not do it at all. In four days I have a cognovit expires for 200_l_. I can't suffer my family to be turned into the streets if I can help it. I have no resource but my abilities, such as they are. I certainly mean to write something in the course of the summer. As a matter of business and bargain I can have no higher hope about it than that you won't suffer by it. However, if you won't take it somebody else must, for no human consideration will induce me to leave any means untried, that may rescue my family from this impending misfortune.

"For the sake of convenience you will probably give me the importance of construing this into an incendiary letter. I wish to God you may, and order your treasurer to deposit the acceptance accordingly; for nothing can be so irksome to me as that the nations of the earth should think there had been any interruption of friendship between you and me; and though that would not be the case in fact, both being influenced, I must believe, by a necessity which we could not control, yet the said nations would so interpret it. If I don't hear from you before Friday, I shall conclude that you leave me in this dire scrape to shift for myself.

"R. B. Sheridan, Esq.

"Yours ever,

"Isleworth, Middlesex.

"J. RICHARDSON."

Diben, Friday, 22d.

virgins, to keep the fire burning.

V.1.137 (210,6) [important letters]Important seems to be for importunate. (1773)

V.i.298 (216,2) [time's deformed hand Have written strange defeatures in my face] Defeature is the privative of feature. The meaning is, time hath cancelled my features.

V.i.406 (220,7) [After so long grief such nativity!] We should surely read. After so long grief, such festivity.

Nativity lying so near, and the termination being the same of both words, the mistake was easy.

I.i.27 (226,3) [no faces truer] That is, none honester, none more sincere.

I.i.40 (227,7) [challenged Cupid at the flight] The disuse of the bow makes this passage obscure. Benedick is represented as challenging Cupid at archery. To challenge at the flight is, I believe, to wager who shall shoot the arrow furthest without any particular mark. To challenge at the bird-bolt, seems to mean the same as to challenge at children's archery, with snail arrows such as are discharged at birds. In Twelfth Night Lady Olivia opposes a bird-bolt to a cannon-bullet, the lightest to the heaviest of missive weapons.

I.i.66 (228,9) [four of his five wits] In our author's time wit was the general term for intellectual powers. So Davies on the Soul.

Wit, seeking truth from cause to cause ascends.
And never rests till it the first attain;
Will, seeking good, finds many middle ends,
But never stays till it the last do gain.

And in another part,

But if a phrenzy do possess the brain,
It so disturbs and blots the form of things,
As fantasy proves altogether vain,
And to the wit, no true relation brings.
Then doth the wit, admitting all for true,
Build fond conclusions on those idle grounds;—

The wits seem to have reckoned five, by analogy to the five senses, or the five inlets of ideas.

I.i.79 (229,4) [the gentleman is not in your books] This is a phrase used, I believe, by more than understand it. To be in one's books is to be in one's codicils or will, to be among friends set down for legacies.

I.i.82 (230,5) [young squarer] A squarer I take to be a cholerick, quarrelsome fellow, for in this sense Shakespeare uses the word to square. So in Midsummer Night's Dream it is said of Oberon and Titalia, that they never meet but they square. So the sense may be, Is there no hot-blooded youth that will keep him company through all his mad pranks?

I.i.103 (231,6) [You embrace your charge] That is your burthen, your incumbrunce.

I.i.185 (233,7) [to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder] I know not whether I conceive the jest here intended. Claudio hints his love of Hero. Benedick asks whether he is serious, or whether he only means to jest, and tell them that Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter. A man praising a pretty lady in jest, may shew the quick sight of Cupid, but what has it to do with the carpentry of Vulcan? Perhaps the thought lies no deeper than this, Do you mean to tell us as new what we all know already?

I.i.200 (234,8) [wear his cap with suspicion?] That is, subject his head to the disquiet of jealousy.

I.i.217 (235,1) [Claud. If this were so, so were it uttered] This and the three next speeches I do not well understand; there seems something omitted relating to Hero's consent, or to Claudio's marriage, else I know not what Claudio can wish not to be otherwise. The copies all read alike. Perhaps it may be better thus,

Claud. If this were so, so were it.
Bene. Uttered like the old tale, &c.

Claudio gives a sullen answer, if it is so, so it is. Still there seems something omitted which Claudio and Pedro concur in wishing.

I.i.243 (236,3) [but that I will have a recheate winded in my forehead] That is, I will wear a horn on my forehead which the huntsman may blow. A recheate is the sound by which dogs are called back. Shakespeare had no mercy upon the poor cuckold, his horn is an inexhaustible subject of merriment.

1.1.258 (236,4) [notable argument] An eminent subject for satire.

1.1.259 (237,5) [Adam] Adam Bell was a companion of Robin Hood, as may be seen in Robin Hood's Garland; in which, if I do not mistake, are these lines,

For he brought Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough,
And William of Cloudeslea,
To shoot with this forester for forty marks,
And the forester beat them all three.

(see 1765, III,182,2)

I.i.290 (238,4) [ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience] Before you endeavour to distinguish yourself any more by antiquated allusions, examine whether you can fairly claim them for your own. This, I think is the meaning; or it may be understood in another sense, examine, if your sarcasms do not touch yourself.

I.iii.14 (241,6) [I cannot hide what I am] This is one of our authour's natural touches. An envious and unsocial mind, too proud to give pleasure, and too sullen to receive it, always endeavours to hide its malignity from the world and from itself, under the plainness of simple honesty, or the dignity of haughty independence.

I.iii.19 (241,7) [claw no man in his humour] To claw is to flatter.
So the pope's claw-backs, in bishop Jewel, are the pope's flatterers.
The sense is the same in the proverb, Mulus mulum scabit.

I.iii.28 (242,8) [I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose in his grace] A canker is the canker rose, dog-rose, cynosbatus, or hip. The sense is, I would rather live in obscurity the wild life of nature, than owe dignity or estimation to my brother. He still continues his wish of gloomy independence. But what is the meaning of the expression, a rose in his grace? if he was a rose of himself, his brother's grace or favour could not degrade him. I once read thus, I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose in his garden; that is, I had rather be what nature makes me, however mean, than owe any exaltation or improvement to my brother's kindness or cultivation. But a less change will be sufficient: I think it should be read, I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose by his grace.

II.i.3 (244,1) [I never can see him, but I am heart-burn'd an hour after] The pain commonly called the heart-burn, proceeds from an acid humour in the stomach, and is therefore properly enough imputed to tart looks.

II.i.53 (245,3) [Well then, go you into hell] Of the two next speeches Mr. Warburton says, All this impious nonsense thrown to the bottom is the players, and foisted in without rhyme or reason. He therefore puts them in the margin. They do not deserve indeed so honourable a place, yet I am afraid they are too much in the manner of our authour, who is sometimes trying to purchase merriment at too dear a rate. (see 1765, III,190,9)

II.i.73 (246,4) [if the prince be too important] Important here, and in many other places, is importunate.

II.i.99 (247,6) [My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove] [T: house is love] This amendation, thus impressed with all the power of his eloquence and reason, Theobald found in the quarto edition of 1600, which he professes to have seen; and in the first folio, the l and the I are so much alike, that the printers, perhaps, used the same type for either letter. (1773)

II.i.143 (249,2) [his gift is in devising impossible slanders] [W: impassible] Impossible slanders are, I suppose, such slanders as, from their absurdity and impossibility, bring their own confutation with them.

II.i.195 (251,4) [usurer's chain] I know not whether the chain was, in our authour's time, the common ornament of wealthy citizens, or whether he satirically uses usurer and alderman as synonymous terms.

II.i.214 (252,5) [It is the base, the bitter disposition of Beatrice, that puts the world into her person] That is, It is the disposition of Beatrice, who takes upon her to personate the world, and therefore represents the world as saying what she only says herself.

Base, tho bitter. I do not understand how base and bitter are inconsistent, or why what is bitter should not be base. I believe, we may safely read, It is the base, the bitter disposition.

II.i.253 (253,8) [such impossible conveyance] [W: impassible] I know not what to propose. Impossible seems to have no meaning here, and for impassible I have not found any authority. Spenser uses the word importable in a sense very congruous to this passage, for insupportable, or not to be sustained.

Both him charge on either side,
With hideous strokes and importable power,
Which forced him his ground to traverse wide.

It may be easily imagined, that the transcribers would change a word so unusual, into that word most like it, which they could readily find. It must be however confessed, that importable appears harsh to our ears, and I wish a happier critick may find a better word.

Sir Tho. Hammer reads impetuous, which will serve the purpose well enough, but is not likely to have been changed to impossible.

Importable was a word not peculiar to Spenser, but used by the last translators of the Apocrypha, and therefore such a word as Shakespeare may be supposed to have written. (1773) II.i.330 (256,2) [Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sun-burn'd] What is it, to go the world? perhaps, to enter by marriage into a settled state: but why is the unmarry'd lady sun-burnt? I believe we should read, Thus goes every one to the wood but I, and I am sun-burnt_. Thus does every one but I find a shelter, and I am left exposed to wind and sun. The nearest way to the wood, is a phrase for the readiest means to any end. It is said of a woman, who accepts a worse match than those which she had refused, that she has passed through the wood, and at last taken a crooked stick. But conjectural criticism has always something to abate its confidence. Shakespeare, in All's well that Ends well, uses the phrase, to go to the world, for marriage. So that my emendation depends only on the opposition of wood to sun-burnt.

II.i.380 (258,4) [to bring signior Benedick, and the lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection, the one with another] A mountain of affection with one another is a strange expression, yet I know not well how to change it. Perhaps it was originally written, to bring Benedick into a mooting of affection; to bring them not to any more mootings of contention, but to a mooting or conversation of love. This reading is confirmed by the preposition with; a mountain with each other, or affection with each other, cannot be used, but a mooting with each other is proper and regular.

II.iii.104 (265,7) [but, that she loves him, with an enraged affection, it is past the infinite of thought] [W: the definite of] Here are difficulties raised only to shew how easily they can be removed. The plain sense is, I know not what to think otherwise, but that she loves him with an enraged affection: It (this affection) [is past the infinite of thought. Here are no abrupt stops, or imperfect sentences. Infinite may well enough stand; it is used by more careful writers for indefinite; and the speaker only means, that thought, though in itself unbounded, cannot reach or estimate the degree of her passion.

II.iii.146 (267,8) [O, she tore the letter into a thousand half-pence] [i.e. into a thousand pieces of the same bigness.] This is farther explained by a passage in As you Like it.

—_There were none principal; they were all like one

another as_ half-pence are. [Theobald.] How the quotation explains the passage, to which it is applied, I cannot discover.

II.iii.188 (268,9) [contemptible spirit] That is, a temper inclined to scorn and contempt. It has been before remarked, that our authour uses his verbal adjectives with great licence. There is therefore no need of changing the word with sir T. Hammer to contemptuous.

III.i.52 (273,3) [Misprising] Despising, contemning.

III.i.96 (275,8) [argument] This word seems here to signify discourse, or, the powers of reasoning. III.i.104 (275,7) [She's lim'd] She is ensnared and entangled as a sparrow with birdlime.

III.i.107 (275,9) [Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand] This image is taken from falconry. She had been charged with being as wild as haggards of the rock; she therefore says, that wild as her heart is, she will tame it to the hand.

III.ii.31 (277,2) [There is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be a fancy that he hath to strange disguises] Here is a play upon the word fancy, which Shakespeare uses for love as well as for humour, caprice, or affectation.

III.ii.71 (278,3) [She shall be buried with her face upwards] [T: heels upwards] This emendation, which appears to me very specious, is rejected by Dr. Warburton. The meaning seems to be, that she who acted upon principles contrary to others, should be buried with the same contrariety.

III.iii.43 (282,5) [only have a care that your bills be not stolen] A bill is still carried by the watchmen at Litchfield. It was the old weapon of the English infantry, which, says Temple, gave the most ghastly and deplorable wounds. It may be called securis falcata.

III.iv.44 (289,3) [Light o' love] A tune so called, which has been already mentioned by our authour.

III.iv.49 (290,4) [you'll look he shall lack no burns] A quibble between barns, repositories of corn, and bairns, the old word for children.

III.iv.56 (290,5) [For the letter that begins them all, H] This is a poor jest, somewhat obscured, and not worth the trouble of elucidation.

Margaret asks Beatrice for what she cries, hey ho; Beatrice answers, for an H, that is, for an ache or pain.

III.iv.57 (290,6) [turn'd Turk] [i.e. taken captive by love, and turned a renegade to his religion. Warburton.] This interpretation is somewhat far-fetched, yet, perhaps, it is right.

III.iv.78 (291,7) [some morel] That is, some secret meaning, like the moral of a fable.

III.iv.89 (291,8) [he eats his meat without grudging] I do not see how this is a proof of Benedick's change of mind. It would afford more proof of amourosness to say, he eats not his meat without grudging; but it is impossible to fix the meaning of proverbial expressions: perhaps, to eat meat without grudging, was the same as, to do as others do, and the meaning is, he is content to live by eating like other mortals and will be content, notwithstanding his boasts, like other mortals, to have a wife.

III.v.15 (293,9) [I am as honest as any man living, that is an old man, and no honester than I] [There is much humour, and extreme good sense under the covering of this blundering expression. It is a sly insinuation that length of years, and the being much hacknied in the ways of men, as Shakespeare expresses it, take off the gloss of virtue, and bring much defilement on the manners. Warburton.] Much of this is true, but I believe Shakespeare did not intend to bestow all this reflection on the speaker.

III.v.40 (294,1) [an two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind] This is not out of place, or without meaning. Dogberry, in his vanity of superiour parts, apologizing for his neighbour, observes, that of two men on an horse, one must ride behind. The first place of rank or understanding can belong but to one, and that happy one ought not to despise his inferiour.

IV.i.22 (296,2) [Interjections? Why, then some be of laughing] This is a quotation from the Accidence.

IV.i.42 (296,3) [luxurious bed] That is, lascivious. Luxury is the confessor's term for unlawful pleasures of the sex.

IV.i.53 (297,5) [word too large] So he uses large jests in this play, for licentious, not restrained within due bounds.

IV.i.57 (297,6) [I will write against it] [W: rate against] As to subscribe to any thing is to allow it, so to write against is to disallow or deny.

IV.i.59 (297,7) [chaste as is the bud] Before the air has tasted its sweetness.

IV.i.75 (298,8) [kindly power] That is, natural power. Kind is nature.

IV.i.93 (298,9) [liberal villain] Liberal here, as in many places of these plays, means, frank beyond honesty or decency. Free of tongue. Dr. Warburton unnecessarily reads, illiberal.

IV.i. 101 (299,1) [O Hero! What a Hero hadst thou been] I am afraid here is intended a poor conceit upon the word Hero.

IV.i.123 (300,2) [The story that is printed in her blood?] That is, the story which her blushes discover to be true.

IV.i.128 (300,3) [Griev'd I, I had but one? Chid I for that at frugal nature's frame?] [W: nature's 'fraine] Though frame be not the word which appears to a reader of the present time most proper to exhibit the poet's sentiment, yet it may as well be used to shew that he had one child, and no more, as that he had a girl, not a boy, and as it may easily signify the system of things, or universal scheme, the whole order of beings is comprehended, there arises no difficulty from it which requires to be removed by so violent an effort as the introduction of a new word offensively mutilated.

IV.i.137 (301,4) [But mine, and mine I lov'd, and mine I prais'd, And mine that I was proud on] [W: "as mine" in three places] Even of this small alteration there is no need. The speaker utters his emotion abruptly, But mine, and mine that I loved, &c. by an ellipsis frequent, perhaps too frequent, both in verse and prose.

IV.i.187 (303,6) [bent of honour] Bent is used by our authour for the utmost degree of any passion, or mental quality. In this play before Benedick says of Beatrice, her affection has its full bent. The expression is derived from archery; the bow has its bent, when it is drawn as far as it can be.

IV.i.206 (304,8) [ostentation] Show; appearance.

IV.i.251 (305,1) [The smallest twine nay lead me] This is one of our author's observations upon life. Men overpowered with distress, eagerly listen to the first offers of relief, close with every scheme, and believe every promise. He that has no longer any confidence in himself, is glad to repose his trust in any other that will undertake to guide him.

IV.ii.70 (311,6) [Sexton. Let them be in hand] There is nothing in the old quarto different in this scene from the common copies, except that the names of two actors, Kempe and Cowley, are placed at the beginning of the speeches, instead of the proper words, (see 1765, III,249,7)

V.i.15 (313,7)

[If such a one will smile and stroke his beard;
And, sorrow wag! cry; hem, when he should groan]

Sir Thomas Hammer, and after him Dr. Warburton, for wag read
waive, which is, I suppose, the same as, put aside or shift off.
None of these conjectures satisfy me, nor perhaps any other reader.
I cannot but think the true meaning nearer than it is imagined.
I point thus,

If such an one will smile, and stroke his beard,
And, sorrow wag! cry; hem, when he should groan;

That is, If he will smile, and cry sorrow be gone, and hem instead of groaning. The order in which and and cry are placed is harsh, and this harshness made the sense mistaken. Range the words in the common order, and my reading will be free from all difficulty.

If such an one will smile, and stroke his beard,
Cry, sorrow, wag! and hem when he should groan.

V.i.32 (314,8) [My griefs cry louder than advertisement] That is, than admonition, than moral instruction.

V.i.102 (318,4) [we will not wake your patience] [W: wrack] This emendation is very specious, and perhaps is right; yet the present reading may admit a congruous meaning with less difficulty than many other of Shakespeare's expressions.

The old men have been both very angry and outrageous; the prince tells them that he and Claudio will not wake their patience; will not any longer force them to endure the presence of those whom, though they look on them as enemies, they cannot resist.

V.i.138 (319,6) [to turn his girdle] We have a proverbial speech, If he be angry, let him turn the buckle of his girdle. But I do not know its original or meaning.

V.i.166 (320,7) [a wise gentleman] This jest depending on the colloquial use of words is now obscure; perhaps we should read, a wise gentle man, or a man wise enough to be a coward. Perhaps wise gentleman was in that age used ironically, and always stood for silly fellow.

V.i.231 (322,9) [one meaning well suited] That is, one meaning is put into many different dresses; the prince having asked the same question in four modes of speech.

V.ii.9 (326,3) [To have no man come over me? why, shall I always keep below stairs?] [T: above] I suppose every reader will find the meaning of the old copies.

V.ii.l7 (327,4) [I give thee the bucklers] I suppose that to give the bucklers is, to yield, or to lay by all thoughts of defence, so clipeum abjicere. The rest deserves no comment.

V.iii.13 (330,7) [Those that slew thy virgin knight] Knight, in its original signification, means follower or pupil, and in this sense may be feminine. Helena, in All's well that Ends well, uses knight in the same signification.