Volume 2

The book of days : a miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar / edited by Robert Chambers.

  • Chambers, Robert, 1802-1871.
Date:
1879-1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The book of days : a miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar / edited by Robert Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    an opportunity of turning it to account, in a reply, I believe, to Mr Dundas, in the House of Commons, when, with the most extemporaneous air, he brought it forth, in the following compact and pointed form :— The right honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.'* sheridan's funeral. The brilliant assemblage at Westminster Abbey on the day of Sheridan's funeral bore testimony to the estimation in which genius was held, apart from the special merit or usefulness of the pur- poses to which the genius had been applied. Those who looked to the dramatic career of Kichard Brinsley Sheridan recognised in him the most brilliant writer of comedy that had appeared since the days of Congreve and Farquhar. Sheridan takes rank among those who belie their school-day reputation by their after-career. Both at Dublin and at Harrow, where he received his education, he was pronounced to be an ' impenetrable dunce,' with whom neither severity nor indulgence would avail; yet this was the 1 dunce' who produced The Rivals in 1775, The Duenna and St Patrick's Day in 1776, The School for Scandal and Tlie Trip to Scar- borough in 1777, and The Critic in 1778 ; and then passed through a political career which spread over the period from 1780 to 1816. His celebrated Begum Speech, in connection with the trial of Warren Hastings, is ranked among the most brilliant orations ever known; and there can be little doubt that he might have risen to a high position among statesmen had he been true to himself. But his moral character was weak, even depraved. Though he sometimes aided the Whig party by his eloquence, he gradually degenerated into a mere amusing speaker, much enjoyed and much admired, but winning for himself very little esteem. His life, by degrees, became an ineffectual struggle against poverty. He borrowed from all who would lend to him, and had neither the will nor the power to redeem the debts. The Prince of Wales welcomed him to Carlton House as long as his flashes of brilliant wit were ready to enliven the assembled guests ; but when Sheridan began to fail in health and spirits, the doors were closed against him. The like occurred at other mansions where he had been admired but never really esteemed. He was steeped in poverty for some time before his death. Leigh Hunt mentions that Sheridan on one occasion burst into tears at the degradation of being touched by a bailiff when arrested ; while all the time he was callous to the moral degradation involved in that conduct which led to the arrest. When he was dead, some of those in high places regretted that they had deserted the brilliant wit during his declining years of poverty; while others, knowing that he had not really deserved their esteem, wished, nevertheless, to honour the memory of a man of undoubted though ill-regulated genius. A public funeral was resolved upon. The body was removed from Sheridan's house, in Saville Kow, to Mr Peter Moore's residence in Great George Street, West- minster ; and on the 13th of July, a funeral pro- cession walked from thence to the abbey. Arrived * Moore's Life of Sheridan, ii. 471. at the chief entrance at the west end of the nave, the procession was received by the dignitaries of the abbey, who preceded it to the place of sepul- ture in that celebrated nook of the abbey known as Poet's Corner. The pall was supported by the Duke of Argyle, the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, Lord Mulgrave, Lord Holland, and the bishop of London. lThe chief mourner, as repre- senting the family, was Mr Charles Sheridan ; while among the other mourners were their Royal Highnesses the Dukes of York and Sussex, the Marquis of Anglesea, the Earl of Rosslyn, the Earl of Harrington, the Earl of Bessborough, Earl Gower, the Earl of Yarmouth, Lord Sidmouth, Lord Grenville, Lord Lynedoch, Lord Erskine, Lord George Cavendish—together with Canning, Romilly, and others, who belonged rather to the aristocracy of intellect than to that of birth. A small space was found between the monuments of Shakspeare and Addison, and close to the grave of Garrick. There lies Sheridan, under the roof of the venerable building which contains the bones of Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Canning, Chaucer, Spenser, Ben Jonson, Congreve, Addison, Rowe, Gay, Betterton, Garrick, Purcell, Handel, Newton, Johnson, Barrow, South, Camden, Usher, and many others known to fame. THE MACAKONIS. In all periods and countries there have been persons, and even groups or classes of people, who sought to attract attention by eccentricities in dress. In England, during the last two centuries, we have had gallants, bloods, bucks, beaux, fribbles, macaronis, fops, monstrosities, Corinthians, dandies, exquisites, and swells. Reeves, in his God's Plea for Niniveh, gives a curious vocabulary of dandyism in his account of a 'gallant' of the seventeenth century. ' He is, indeed,' says our Puritan author, ' the buffoon and baboon of the times. His mind is wholly set upon cuts and slashes, knots and roses, patchings and pinkings, jaggings and lag- gings, borderings and brimmings ; half-shirts, half- arms, yawning breasts, gaping knees, arithmetical middles, geometrical sides, mathematical waists, musical heels, and logical toes.' Amongst the dress-eccentricities of the eighteenth