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coarse vigor which still keeps The Rehearsal alive, we are conscious that he has another power of his own; Sir Henry Irving found it in his "play of human nature"; Mr. Sichel speaks of his sympathy-"a sympathy that Congreve lacked." It is that surely that gives his comedy its peculiar glow. It does not spring from insight, or from any unusual profundity. It lies rather in his power to get on with ordinary people to come into a room full of men and women who know him for the cleverest man of his time, and to set them at once at their ease. dramatists would treat such a character as Charles Surface with condescension, for a blockhead, or with uneasy respect, because of his courage and muscle; but Sheridan liked him heartily; he was his "ideal of a good fellow." This humanity-it was part of his charm as a man-still warms his writing; and it has another quality which also appeals to us. He reminds us sometimes of our modern dramatists in his power to see accepted conventions in a fresh light. He tests the current view of honor; he derides the education that was given to women; he was for reforming the conventions of the stage. His interest in ideas was only a faint forecast of our own obsession; and he was too true an artist to make any character the slave of a theory. A great fastidiousness was one of the many gifts that were half-failings, and the more he wrote the less possible it became to make the drama an instrument of reform. The School for Scandal was polished and polished again; "after nineteen years he had been unable to satisfy himself" with his style. The excessive care was fatal; it helped to dry up his vein before he had fully explored it, and his last comedy Affectation has dwindled to a few careful sentences, very neatly written in a small copy-book.

An acute sense of comedy does not seem compatible with a reformer's zeal; and, when the success of his plays and the charm of his wife brought him into touch with the rulers of the country, the chance of acting among them proved irresistible. His success with the great ladies who came to his wife's drawing room showed him what kind of power might be his-he might lead human beings. From the first, too, he had had the political instinct-a sense of distress among the people and a desire to make their lives better by improving the laws of the land. "Government for the people, through the people, and by the people" was the creed with which he started bis career under the guidance of Fox. A boyish essay shows how natural it was to him to think of man as a free being oppressed by the laws. ". all laws at present are Tyranny. All Liberty consists in the Probability of not being oppressed. What assurance have we that we shall not be taxed at eight shillings in the pound? No more than the colonies have." of the first causes that attracted him was the cause of the American colonies, and he urged passionately their right to independence. He resolved to "sacrifice every other object" to politics, and to "force myself into business, punctuality, and information."

One

But it is not necessary to trace Sheridan's Parliamentary career. Mr. Sichel proves, if one can separate them, that it was more important than his career as a man of letters, and for this reason his second volume is even more interesting than his first. What is interesting, of course, is the spectacle of a man who tries to give some shape to his beliefs, and has great opportunities. He had to do what he could with questions like that of the American colonists, of the Irish Union, of Indian government, of the French Revolution, which sprang up one after

the other. They have come to be facts now, lying sunk beneath a head of results; but they were then in the making, composed of the united wills of individuals and shaped by the wills of individuals. This is one.source of interest, but it happens very often that we lose sight of the aim in amazement at the spectacle. When Sheridan entered Parliament, Burke and Pitt and Fox, to take the leaders only, gave every question an extraordinary depth and complexity. It seems that we are

not tracing ideas, but watching a gigantic drama, like those old Homeric combats where the motive may be the sack of Troy, but in which the episodes represent every phase of human life. Sometimes the vast range of the fight narrows itself to the will of one man; the central figure is undraped; and we have to contemplate the absurd or touching spectacle of a gentleman afflicted with the gout-"a poor, bare, forked animal," touched in his mind, too, who for the moment represents humanity. There are strange anecdotes in the Duchess of Devonshire's diary. The King began to go mad. and said "the Prince of Wales was dead, so women may be honest." He made Sir George Baker go down on his knees to look at the stars; he ordered a "tye wig, and danc'd with Dr. Reynolds"; the courtiers had to pretend that he could play chess when he could only play draughts, and that they had all been a little mad and worn strait waistcoats themselves. Such contrasts abound, but if we know enough there appears to be some order in the tumult; it is shaped something after a human form. We need only observe out of what elements the conduct of a public man is made.

Sheridan, in spite of his vanity and irresponsibility, had an unwavering sense of something more stable than any private advantage. He could look beyond his own life, and judge clearly LIVING AGE. VOL. XLVI. 2394

of things to come. Again and again we find him on the side of reform, courageous and "unpurchaseable," a statesman whose views grew wider as he aged. And yet, how strangely little traits of character, small vices unchecked since boyhood, assert themselves and corrupt his actions! The speech upon the Begums of Oude, which made great men tremble and women cry with ecstasy, lacks something essential, for all its thunder of eloquence. Years afterwards he met Warren Hastings, shook his hand, and begged him to believe that "political necessity" had inspired some of his rage. When Hastings "with great gravity" asked him to make that sentence public, he could only "mutter," and get out of it as best he might. It is the same with his friendship for the Regent; he could not care for anything for its own sake. The man was a Prince, girt about with romance, and hung with stars and ribbons; Mrs. Fitzherbert was a woman, beautiful and in distress; his sympathies were volatile, and he moved in a world of gems and decorations, which might be had for the asking. Yet gold was too gross to tempt him; he craved for love. confidence, and demonstrative affection in the face of the world. What he asked he could not get, or perhaps he asked it of the wrong people. From the first an uneasy note sounds beneath the rest. The beautiful Mrs. Sheridan implored him, when they began to rise, to let his friends know of their poverty. He had not the courage to do it, and she was led on to bet and to flirt. "Oh, my own," she wrote him, “'ee can't think how they beat me every night." He condoned her frailties with the tact of a perfect gentleman. But once in the race there was no standing still. The Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Bessborough, Lady Elizabeth Foster-all the great ladies and the brilliant young men were there

What an interval has passed since. and scarcely one promise that I then made to my own soul have I attempted to fulfil. The irregularity of all my life and pursuits, the restless. contriving temper with which I have persevered in wrong pursuits and passions makes [some words erased, of which "errors" is legible] reflexion worse to me than even to those who have acted worse.

He thought he could foresee the "too probable conclusion," but even his imagination, though made intense by sorrow, could hardly have foreseen the end. Perhaps it was the humor of it that he could not have foreseen. He became "Old Sherry" to the younger generation, and was to be met "half seas over," a disreputable figure, but still talking divinely, a battered OrThe Times.

pheus, but still a very polite gentleman, a little bewildered by the course of events, and somewhat disappointed by his lot. He fell into sponging houses, escaped ingeniously from the "two strange men" who had followed him all his life, and begged as eloquently as ever, with a touch of Irish brogue in his voice. "They are going to put the carpets out of window, and break into Mrs. Sheridan's room, and take me" he wrote, but was sanguine on the morrow. Then he lay dying, and the prescriptions were unopened in the bare parlor, and "there were strange people in the hall." But so long as life promised adventures Sheridan had a part to act, and could welcome a future. It is not in any event that his tragedy lay, for there is something ludicrous in the stupidity of fate which never fits the fortune to the desert and blunts our pain in wonder. The tragedy lies in making promises, and seeing possibilities, and in the sense of failure. There at least the pain is without mixture. But one does not fail so long as one sees possibilities still, and the judgment on our failure is that which Byron murmured when he heard that Sheridan was dead, and praised his gifts and greatness-"But, alas, poor human nature!"

Phanuel Hippisley, for instance, had a darling hobby which he had bestridden almost from his childhood. At a tender age the curiosity of the boy had been aroused by finding strips of undecipherable vellum in the inner bindings of old books, and whilst his schoolfellows, after the manner of boys, were achieving great and permanent effects with hoops, marbles, and tops, he was wasting his time in puzzling out longextinct scripts. The craze grew upon him; throughout a longish life he had begged, or bought every scrap of antique parchment that crossed his path, and was long since, albeit he knew it not, one of the first of living palæographers.

The man could have told you at a glance (as a matter of fact, he was not particularly communicative) the age of a mediæval document. "This is a piece of pre-Conquest work," he would say, "and this Plantagenet; and this, by its poor penmanship, will be subsequent to the Black Death." Moreover. as a collector should, he not only recognized a good thing when he had it in his hand, but knew what to look for, and where it was likely to be found. He neither expected nor desired great things, six inches by two were enough for him as a rule.

I,

For the centuries differ in their ways of doing things. We of the twentieth are diffuse, or inclining thereto. myself. for example (a humble instance, but the first that comes to hand), propose to run to 400 pages. I could not turn myself round in fewer, whilst in a really important matter, calling for the use of parchment, a popular auditor of a Board of Guardians, shall we say, if he have pulled the strings discreetly, may look to be illuminatively addressed upon his retirement from office on six to ten quartos of 9 by 5 vellum, the initial page a compliment gloriously embellished, those following thick with signatures,

gratefully commemorative of his genial laxity, the whole Grolier-bound and suitably cased.

Other times, other manners. In the eighth century an East Anglian king, taking thought for the health of his soul, would grant five manors to a certain Pandulphus, abbas of some house long since secularized, to have and to hold, and all this and more, mind you, upon a thin scrap of waxy stuff not one third the area of that half-sheet of notepaper which a modern prime minister has said is sufficient to contain the statement of his views, so transparently plain are those views, so obvious to all men.

But Hippisley had got past charters, toys he held them; they had amused his callow youth and he had put away childish things. For thirty years past he had been digging at manor-rolls and convent books of account, not for their obvious contents-the day of Thorold Rogers was still afar-but for the decipherment of the occasional, cloudy, half-obliterated characters which crossed and underlay the bold, clear, monastic Latin, a script of an earlier day, and Greek, may it please you.

Fifteen lines of an unpublished ode of Pindar had rewarded his search, certain fragments of Sappho, and, what he valued more, three sections of an unknown gospel, heretical doubtless. for he detected gnostic tendencies, but a find worth living for all the same.

This sort of thing pursued by candlelight is hard upon the eyes, and it fell upon a certain evening that Friend Phanuel found himself in need of a stronger lens than the one in hand, and crossed the landing to his chamber to fetch it.

Rubbing his eyes, he went, and muttering a Greek text to himself, walking by the sense of locality rather than by sight and thus, or ever he was aware, ran full up against some one who was already in the room, Susan Tighe, in

short, with her back to the door, humming to herself, her arm to the elbow in one of her host's stockings, her fingers working at the inside heel, where she suspected a hole.

The girl turned with a start, the low lulling tune without words died upon her lips: its presence was automatic. She was aware that music was interdicted in that Quaker household, but what was within her welled forth at times unbidden and without her knowledge.

"Oh, Mr. Hippisley, sir!" she exclaimed, dropping into the address of her earlier use ('twould have been "Phanuel Hippisley," had she taken a moment's thought). "What can I do for you?"

"Nay, what art thou doing for me?— not this?"

"Indeed, but I am; they are all in holes, those that are not working thin. I must run some at the heel and darn the worst."

Her master and host returned to his room and to his chair, but stood with his hands upon its back; had it been Jemima whom he had called to confer with him he would have sate without scruple. There must have been some indescribable aura of race in the poise of the bright young head and the carriage of the figure which kept the man upon his feet. Yet she seemed the simplest of creatures: her hands folded before her, one still within the stocking, a small finger-tip peeping through a new-found aperture; so helpful, so feminine. Ah, it sent a novel pang to the heart of the old man to see her

thus; he bent his brows upon her, moistening his lips, and spoke.

"Thou art really leaving us, Susan Tighe?"

The girl's eyes shone in the candlelight: 'twas of her voyage that she had been singing, although she was unaware of it. There are children and women to whom music is the natural expression of their well-being; are they happy? they sing-anything, nothing reproducible, wordless airs, unconscious impromptus, heart and throat in happy co-operation whilst eye and hand carry forward the business of life. So Sue. "Yes, indeed, I am going, sir-Phanuel Hippisley, I would say-if thou and Thomas Furley will so favor me," she smiled.

""Tis a long voyage and a great uncertainty, Susan. The man whom thou believest to be thy husband has thrown thee upon the world, and has left the country under another name,another name, Susan."

"He must have had his reasons, sir." "I do not doubt it. But the ceremony-that marriage ceremony-was, I grieve to tell thee, almost certainly illegal. Yes, there is no such clerk in orders as this Octavius Baskett, none that can be traced, Susan."

"But, sir, your Friends are married without a parson, as I hear—”

"True enough, Susan, but we are under an especial Act, and thou are not One of Us; nor, if thou hadst been, couldst thou have been married by night, nor outside the walls of one of our Meeting-houses. No, my young friend, 'tis a sad business. I deplore it. But thou wilt hardly mend matters by following abroad the man who has wronged thee."

"Sir! I am his wife in the sight of God! I pray you not to say a word against my husband. I could not bear it, indeed I could not." Her throat worked, her lovely eyes filled, but she would not let herself give way. "Ye