No More Learning

Assume thy wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng! "
Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth,
Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright.
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous earth;
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might
Satiate the void circumference: then shrink
Even to a point within our day and night;
And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.
Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre-
Oh! not of him, but of our joy: 'tis naught


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13287
That ages, empires, and religions there
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend,- they borrow not
Glory from those who made the world their prey:
And he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
-
- at once the paradise,
Go thou to Rome,-
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress
The bones of desolation's nakedness,
Pass till the spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread,
And gray walls molder round, on which dull time
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand:
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in heaven's smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.
Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,
Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb:
What Adonais is, why fear we to become?
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. - Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled! -Rome's azure sky,


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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart?
Thy hopes are gone before; from all things here
They have departed: thou shouldst now depart!
A light is past from the revolving year,
And man, and woman; and what still is dear
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.
The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near;
'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,
No more let life divide what death can join together.
That light whose smile kindles the universe,
That beauty in which all things work and move,
That benediction which the eclipsing curse
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining love
Which, through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst,- now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.
The breath whose might I have invoked in song.
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and spherèd skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY
THE
HE awful shadow of some unseen power
Floats though unseen amongst us,- visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,-


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Like clouds in starlight widely spread,-
Like memory of music fled,-
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
――
Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,- where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,- why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?
No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given;
Therefore the names of demon, ghost, and heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavor,-
Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see,
Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone-like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream—
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
Love, hope, and self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal and omnipotent
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes-
Thou that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came,
Depart not-lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.


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13290
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard - I saw them not-
When, musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at the sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,
Sudden thy shadow fell on me
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!
-
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatched with me the envious night;
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery;
That thou, O awful Loveliness,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express
The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past; here is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself and love all human-kind.


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13291
OZYMANDIAS
MET a traveler from an antique land
I
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,-
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! "
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare '
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
THE INDIAN SERENADE
ARISE from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright;
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me- who knows how! -
To thy chamber window, Sweet!
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream
And the Champak odors fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart-
As I must on thine,
O beloved as thou art!
Oh, lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
-
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
Oh, press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last!


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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
O
ODE TO THE WEST WIND
I
WILD West Wind, thou breath of autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow and black and pale and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes; O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:
Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver - hear, O hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst- O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,


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13293
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves-O hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed
Scarce seemed a vision,-I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And by the incantation of this verse,


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13294
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind,
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?
THE SENSITIVE PLANT
PART FIRST
SENSITIVE PLANT in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the kisses of night.
A
And the spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the spirit of love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness,
Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want,
As the companionless Sensitive Plant.
The snowdrop, and then the violet,
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
And their breath was mixed with fresh odor, sent
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness;
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale,
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;
And the hyacinth, purple and white and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odor within the sense;


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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare;
And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,
As a Mænad, its moonlight-colored cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime,—
Grew in that garden in perfect prime.
And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was prankt under boughs of embowering blossom,
With golden and green light, slanting through
Their heaven of many a tangled hue,
Broad water-lilies lay tremulously,
And starry river-buds glimmered by,
And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.
And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss,
Which led through the garden along and across,
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,
Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells,
As fair as the fabulous asphodels;
And flowrets which drooping as day drooped too
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,
To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.
And from this undefiled Paradise
The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),
When heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them,
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,
Shone smiling to heaven, and every one
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;
13295
For each one was interpenetrated
With the light and the odor its neighbor shed;


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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear,
Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.
But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,
Received more than all; it loved more than ever,
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver:
For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower;
Radiance and odor are not its dower:
It loves even like Love, its deep heart is full;
It desires what it has not, the beautiful!
The light winds which from unsustaining wings
Shed the music of many murmurings;
The beams which dart from many a star
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;
The plumèd insects swift and free,
Like golden boats on a sunny sea,
Laden with light and odor, which pass
Over the gleam of the living grass;
The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,
Then wander like spirits among the spheres,
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;
The quivering vapors of dim noontide,
Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide,
In which every sound and odor and beam
Move, as reeds in a single stream,-
―
Each and all like ministering angels were
For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear,
Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by
Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky.
And when evening descended from heaven above,
And the earth was all rest, and the air was all love,
And delight, though less bright, was far more deep,
And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep,
And the beasts and the birds and the insects were drowned
In an ocean of dreams without a sound,-
Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress
The light sand which paves it, consciousness,-
-
---


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(Only overhead the sweet nightingale
Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,
And snatches of its Elysian chant
Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant,)
The Sensitive Plant was the earliest
Upgathered into the bosom of rest;
A sweet child weary of its delight,
The feeblest and yet the favorite,
Cradled within the embrace of night.
XXIII-832
THE CLOUD
BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits.
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills and the crags and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The spirit he loves remains:
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.


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13298
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardors of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn :
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-colored bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.


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13299
I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die,
For after the rain, when with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
TO A SKYLARK
AIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
H
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel, that it is there.


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13300
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
What thou art we know not:
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not;
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace-tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower;
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view;
Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingèd thieves.
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.


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13301
Chorus hymeneal,
Or triumphal chaunt,
Matched with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields or waves or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be;
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,-
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,—
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.


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13302
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
A
ARETHUSA
RETHUSA arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains:
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;·
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing
She went, ever singing,
In murmurs as, soft as sleep:
The earth seemed to love her,
And heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.
Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold,
With his trident the mountains strook,
And opened a chasm.
In the rocks; - with the spasm
All Erymanthus shook.
And the black south wind
It concealed behind
The urns of the silent snow,
And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below.
The beard and the hair
Of the River-god were
Seen through the torrent's sweep,
As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph's flight
To the brink of the Dorian deep.
"Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
And bid the deep hide me,
For he grasps me now by the hair! "


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13303
The loud Ocean heard,
To its blue depth stirred,
And divided at her prayer:
And under the water
The Earth's white daughter
Fled like a sunny beam;
Behind her descended
Her billows, unblended
With the brackish Dorian stream;
Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main
Alpheus rushed behind,-
As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin
Down the streams of the cloudy wind.
――
Under the bowers
Where the Ocean Powers
Sit on their pearlèd thrones,
Through the coral woods
Of the weltering floods,
Over heaps of unvalued stones;
Through the dim beams
Which amid the streams
Weave a network of colored light;
And under the caves,
Where the shadowy waves
Are as green as the forest's night;
Outspeeding the shark,
And the sword-fish dark,
Under the ocean foam,
And up through the rifts
Of the mountain clifts,
They past to their Dorian home.
-
And now from their fountains
In Enna's mountains,
Down one vale where the morning basks,
Like friends once parted
Grown single-hearted,
They ply their watery tasks.
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep
In the cave of the shelving hill;


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13304
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of Asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore;·
Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more.
HYMN OF PAN
ROM the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
F
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was
Listening to my sweet pipings.
Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.
I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the dædal earth,
And of heaven,- and the giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth,
And then I changed my pipings,-
――


## p. 13305 (#107) ##########################################

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13305
Singing how down the vale of Menalus
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:
All wept, as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood,
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
TO NIGHT
WIFTLY walk over the western wave,
SWIFTLY Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where all the long and lone daylight
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear-
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o'er city and sea and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand-
Come, long sought!
When I arose and saw the dawn,
I sighed for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.
Thy brother Death came, and cried,
Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noontide bee,
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me? . And I replied,
No, not thee!
-
Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon;


## p. 13306 (#108) ##########################################

13306
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Sleep will come when thou art fled:
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night-
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!
ΤΟ
NE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it.
ON
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the heavens reject not,—
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?


## p. 13307 (#109) ##########################################

13307
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
(1714-1763)
URNING over the pages of a certain eighteenth-century an-
nual, the reader comes upon a brown and yellow engraving
of a landscape garden: of walks in undulating curves, mini-
ature lakes, little white cascades, Greek temples, pines and cypresses
Aquatic birds peer from out the reeds, and
Beneath the picture is written:-
cut in grotesque shapes.
doves flutter in the trees.
"Oh, may that genius which secures my rest,
Preserve this villa for a friend that's near.
Ne'er make my vintage glad the sordid breast,
Ne'er tinge the lip that dares be insincere. »

The villa referred to, were it visible, would,
according to the owner's biographer, prove
to be "mean; for he did not improve it.
When he came home from his walks, he
might find the floors flooded by a shower
through the broken roof, but could spare no
money for its reparation. »
Would that the artist of the engraving
of Leasowes, famous in song and story, had
introduced that biographer and his subject
into the picture,- Shenstone, "larger than the middle size, somewhat
clumsy in his form, decked in crimson waistcoat and white breeches,
his gray hair streaming on his shoulders," leading the wheezy, sneez-
ing Johnson in front of some simpering Italian divinity set in a damp
grotto, and bidding him admire her! But Shenstone, like most minor
poets of whom Johnson wrote, was unfortunate in having Johnson
for a critic. There was no possible sympathy between the two. John-
son hated the country, hated affectation, hated a poseur. Shenstone
was the child of his time, whose literary progenitors were poets of
fashionable society: the child of the time when the changes were
rung on Damons, Melissas, Philomels, and Cynthias; when Phoebus
was invoked, and Delia's eyebrows inspired a sonnet. Coming close
on the heels of a generation of poetasters, Shenstone could think of
no better way of realizing Pope's ideal in the 'Ode to Solitude' than
to retire to his country seat, and seek the admiration of the world as
SHENSTONE


## p. 13308 (#110) ##########################################

13308
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
an Arcadian hermit. He owes his distinction to his choice of sub-
jects and his peculiarity of life, as much as to his verses.
No poet
of the same pretension is so well known by his residence. Without
Leasowes, the Elegies' might have lain on the dustiest of book-
shelves, and The Schoolmistress' have scarcely sustained enough
vitality to survive. But through Leasowes, Shenstone lives. In his
day, landscape gardening was a novelty; and in adorning his little
estate he gratified his taste, his innocent vanity, and his indolence.
The feet of his stanzas are as ingeniously varied as the walks.
through his domain. The flights of his Muse were bounded by the
limits of his estate; but they were not less inventive and fantastic
than the little surprises and turns of wood and waterfall, nor less
musical than the songs of his birds. The deaths of his friends were
commemorated by Grecian urns under weeping willows, and then by
elegies inspired by the urns.
The revolution which has taken place in English poetry has flat-
tened Shenstone's verses; and to realize the reaction from the ex-
treme of artificial pathos to straightforward, manly expression, one
has but to read his once popular 'Jemmy Dawson,' and 'The Dying
Kid,' and then Hood's Eugene Aram,' and Wordsworth's 'White
Doe of Rylstone' which, but for the feeble ballads of the Leasowes
poet, might never have been written.
Johnson's criticism of the Pastoral Ballad' is not less interesting
as betraying his notion of the province of poetry than as a criticism
of Shenstone. "I cannot but regret that it is pastoral: an intelligent
reader, acquainted with the scenes of real life, sickens at the mention
of the crook, the pipe, the sheep, and the kids, which it is not neces-
sary to bring forward to notice; for the poet's art is selection, and he
ought to show the beauties without the grossness of country life. "
But the volume Johnson scorned, beguiled many of Shenstone's
cultivated contemporaries by its mellifluous seesaw, and its jingling
resonance comes back to the reader of to-day.
―――――――
"I have found out a gift for my fair:
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.
"
The elegiac form and triple rhythm please the fancy in the still
remembered
"Yet time may diminish the pain. "
Shenstone made no mean rank for himself, in the time when
people were reading Pope's Homer, Addison's Cato,' and Dodsley's
'Economy of Human Life,' - the 'Proverbial Philosophy' of his day.
'The Schoolmistress' is a sketch drawn from life, and in versification
and style closely imitated Spenser. Goldsmith and Gray both knew


## p. 13309 (#111) ##########################################

WILLIAM SHENSTONE
13309
it; and profited by its beauties and its faults when they wrote 'The
Deserted Village' and 'The Elegy in a Country Church-yard. '
Shenstone's 'Essays' are quiet moralizings about Leasowes; though
he could be playfully humorous now and then, as when he said:-
"I have an alcove [his villa], six elegies, a seat, two eulogies (one on
myself), four songs, and a serpentine river, to show you when you
come. "
He had a queer vanity to be thought a scholar; which made him
keep his name on the Oxford books (Pembroke was his college) for
ten years, though he never studied enough to take a degree. Gray
ridiculed his love of the great, and his affected pose as a recluse; but
one can fancy the proud, shy creature peeping through some high
latticed window when the guests from Hagley, Lord Lyttelton's estate,
arrived, maddened, as one of Shenstone's commentators remarks, if
they took the wrong direction, and frantic lest the exclamations he
heard were in derision, not pleasure.
-
He was born at Leasowes in November 1714, and died there of a
"putrid fever," — as Dr. Johnson describes it, not without some satis-
faction as a fit ending for so ill-regulated a life,- February 11th, 1763.
The great man's opinion of our poet is however fairly just, and not
unkindly.
"His good qualities are earnestness and simplicity. Had his mind
been better stored with knowledge, whether he would have been a
great man or not, I know not: he certainly would have been agree-
able. "
He published 'Miscellanies' (1737), 'The Judgment of Hercules'
(1740), The Schoolmistress' (1742); and Elegies; Songs, and Pas-
toral Ballads' (1743), edited by his friend Dodsley. His 'Letters and
Essays' appeared in 1750.
PASTORAL BALLAD
SINC
INCE Phyllis vouchsafed me a look,
I never once dreamt of my vine:
May I lose both my pipe and my crook,
If I knew of a kid that was mine!
I prized every hour that went by,
Beyond all that had pleased me before;
But now they are past, and I sigh;
And I grieve that I prize them no more.
But why do I languish in vain;
Why wander thus pensively here?


## p. 13310 (#112) ##########################################

WILLIAM SHENSTONE
13310
Oh! why did I come from the plain
Where I fed on the smiles of my dear?
They tell me my favorite maid,
The pride of that valley, is flown:
Alas! where with her I have strayed,
I could wander with pleasure alone.
When forced the fair nymph to forego,
What anguish I felt at my heart!
Yet I thought-but it might not be so-
'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
She gazed as I slowly withdrew,-
My path I could hardly discern:
So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.
The pilgrim that journeys all day
To visit some far distant shrine,
If he bear but a relic away
Is happy, nor heard to repine.
Thus widely removed from the fair
Where my vows, my devotion, I owe,—
Soft Hope is the relic I bear,
And my solace wherever I go.
SONG
TOLD my nymph, I told her true,
I
My fields were small, my flocks were few;
While faltering accents spoke my fear
That Flavia might not prove sincere.
Of crops destroyed by vernal cold,
And vagrant sheep that left my fold,-
Of these she heard, yet bore to hear:
And is not Flavia then sincere?
-
How, changed by Fortune's fickle wind,
The friends I loved became unkind,
She heard, and shed a generous tear:
And is not Flavia then sincere?
How, if she deigned my love to bless,
My Flavia must not hope for dress,-
-
1


## p. 13311 (#113) ##########################################

WILLIAM SHENSTONE
13311
This too she heard, and smiled to hear:
And Flavia, sure, must be sincere.
Go shear your flocks, ye jovial swains!
Go reap the plenty of your plains;
Despoiled of all which you revere,
I know my Flavia's love sincere.
DISAPPOINTMENT
From A Pastoral'
YⓇ
E SHEPHERDS! give ear to my lay,
And take no more heed of my sheep:
They have nothing to do but to stray,
I have nothing to do but to weep.
Yet do not my folly reprove:
She was fair-and my passion begun;
She smiled- and I could not but love;
She is faithless - and I am undone.
Perhaps I was void of all thought;
Perhaps it was plain to foresee
That a nymph so complete would be sought
By a swain more engaging than me.
Ah! love every hope can inspire:
It banishes wisdom the while,
And the lip of the nymph we admire
Seems forever adorned with a smile.
She is faithless, and I am undone:
Ye that witness the woes I endure,
Let reason instruct you to shun
What it cannot instruct you to cure.
Beware how you loiter in vain
Amid nymphs of a higher degree:
It is not for me to explain
How fair and how fickle they be.
Alas! from the day that we met,
What hope of an end to my woes,
When I cannot endure to forget
The glance that undid my repose?
Yet time may diminish the pain;
The flower, and the shrub, and the tree,


## p. 13312 (#114) ##########################################

13312
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
f
Which I reared for her pleasure in vain,
In time may have comfort for me.
The sweets of a dew-sprinkled rose,
The sound of a murmuring stream,
The peace which from solitude flows,
Henceforth shall be Corydon's theme.
High transports are shown to the sight,
But we're not to find them our own:
Fate never bestowed such delight
As I with my Phyllis had known.
O ye woods, spread your branches apace!
To your deepest recesses I fly;
I would hide with the beasts of the chase,
I would vanish from every eye.
Yet my reed shall resound through the grove
With the same sad complaint it begun :
How she smiled, and I could not but love!
Was faithless, and I am undone!
MY
HOPE
From A Pastoral'
Y BANKS they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep;
My grottoes are shaded with trees,
And my hills are white over with sheep.
I seldom have met with a loss,
Such health do my fountains bestow,-
My fountains, all bordered with moss,
Where the harebells and violets grow.
Not a pine in my grove is there seen
But with tendrils of woodbine is bound;
Not a beech's more beautiful green
But a sweetbrier entwines it around;
Not my fields, in the prime of the year,
More charms than my cattle unfold;
Not a brook that is limpid and clear,
But it glitters with fishes of gold.
One would think she might like to retire
To the bower I have labored to rear;


## p. 13313 (#115) ##########################################

WILLIAM SHENSTONE
13313
Not a shrub that I heard her admire,
But I hasted and planted it there.
Oh, how sudden the jessamine strove
With the lilac to render it gay!
Already it calls for my love
To prune the wild branches away.
XXII-833
From the plain, from the woodlands and groves,
What strains of wild melody flow!
How the nightingales warble their loves
From thickets of roses that blow!
And when her bright form shall appear,
Each bird shall harmoniously join
In a concert so soft and so clear
As she may not be fond to resign.
I have found out a gift for my fair:
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed -—
But let me that plunder forbear,
She will say 'twas a barbarous deed:
For he ne'er could be true, she averred,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
And I loved her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.
I have heard her with sweetness unfold
How that pity was due to—a dove;
That it ever attended the bold,
And she called it the sister of Love.
But her words such a pleasure convey,
So much I her accents adore,-
Let her speak, and whatever she say,
Methinks I should love her the more.
Can a bosom so gentle remain
Unmoved when her Corydon sighs?
Will a nymph that fond of the plain,
These plains and this valley despise?
Dear regions of silence and shade!
Soft scenes of contentment and ease!
Where I could have pleasingly strayed -
If aught in her absence could please.
But where does my Phyllida stray?
And where are her grots and her bowers?


## p. 13314 (#116) ##########################################

WILLIAM SHENSTONE
13314
Are the groves and the valleys as gay,
And the shepherds as gentle as ours?
The groves may perhaps be as fair,
And the face of the valleys as fine;
The swains may in manners compare,
But their love is not equal to mine.
MUCH TASTE AND SMALL ESTATE
From The Progress of Taste'
SE
EE yonder hill, so green, so round,
Its brow with ambient beeches crowned!
'Twould well become thy gentle care
To raise a dome to Venus there:
Pleased would the nymphs thy zeal survey;
And Venus, in their arms, repay.
'Twas such a shade, and such a nook
In such a vale, near such a brook
From such a rocky fragment springing,
That famed Apollo chose, to sing in.
There let an altar wrought with art
Engage thy tuneful patron's heart:
How charming there to muse and warble
Beneath his bust of breathing marble!
With laurel wreath and mimic lyre
That crown a poet's vast desire.
Then, near it, scoop the vaulted cell
Where Music's charming maids may dwell;
Prone to indulge thy tender passion,
And make thee many an assignation.
Deep in the grove's obscure retreat
Be placed Minerva's sacred seat;
There let her awful turrets rise
(For Wisdom flies from vulgar eyes):
There her calm dictates shalt thou hear
Distinctly strike thy listening ear;
And who would shun the pleasing labor
To have Minerva for his neighbor? . .
But did the Muses haunt his cell?
Or in his dome did Venus dwell?
Did Pallas in his counsels share?
The Delian god reward his prayer?
Or did his zeal engage the fair?


## p. 13315 (#117) ##########################################

WILLIAM SHENSTONE
A
When all the structures shone complete,—
Not much convenient, wondrous neat;
Adorned with gilding, painting, planting,
And the fair guests alone were wanting,—
Ah me! ('twas Damon's own confession),
Came Poverty and took possession.
FROM THE SCHOOLMISTRESS>
RUSSET stole was o'er her shoulders thrown,
A russet kirtle fenced the nipping air;
'Twas simple russet, but it was her own:
'Twas her own country bred the flock so fair;
'Twas her own labor did the fleece prepare:
And sooth to say, her pupils, ranged around,
Through pious awe did term it passing rare;
For they in gaping wonderment abound,
And think, no doubt, she been the greatest wight on ground!
Albeit ne flattery did corrupt her truth,
Ne pompous title did debauch her ear;
Goody, good-woman, gossip, n'aunt, forsooth,
Or dame, the sole additions she did hear:
13315
Yet these she challenged, these she held right dear;
Ne would esteem him act as mought behove,
Who should not honored eld with these revere:
For never title yet so mean could prove,
But there was eke a mind which did that title love.
One ancient hen she took delight to feed,
The plodding pattern of the busy dame;
Which ever and anon, impelled by need,
Into her school, begirt with chickens, came!
Such favor did her past deportment claim:
And if Neglect had lavished on the ground
Fragment of bread, she would collect the same;
For well she knew, and quaintly could expound,
What sin it were to waste the smallest crumb she found.
Herbs too she knew, and well of each could speak,
That in her garden sipped the silvery dew,
Where no vain flower disclosed a gaudy streak;
But herbs for use and physic not a few,
Of gray renown, within these borders grew,—


## p. 13316 (#118) ##########################################

13316
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
The tufted basil, pun-provoking thyme,
Fresh balm, and marygold of cheerful hue,
The lowly gill that never dares to climb:
And more I fain would sing, disdaining here to rhyme.
Yet euphrasy may not be left unsung,
That gives dim eyes to wander leagues around;
And pungent radish, biting infant's tongue;
And plantain ribbed, that heals the reaper's wound;
And marjoram sweet, in shepherd's posie found;
And lavender, whose spikes of azure bloom
Shall be erewhile in arid bundles bound,
To lurk amid the labors of her loom,
And crown her kerchiefs clean with mickle rare perfume.
And here trim rosemarine, that whilom crowned
The daintiest garden of the proudest peer,
Ere, driven from its envied site, it found
A sacred shelter for its branches here,
Where edged with gold its glittering skirts appear.
O wassel days! O customs meet and well!
Ere this was banished from its lofty sphere!
Simplicity then sought this humble cell,
Nor ever would she more with thane and lordling dwell.


## p. 13316 (#119) ##########################################



## p. 13316 (#120) ##########################################


RICHARD BRINSLEY
SHERIDAN.


## p. 13316 (#121) ##########################################

་''
I


## p. 13316 (#122) ##########################################



## p. 13317 (#123) ##########################################

13317
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
(1751-1816)
BY BRANDER MATTHEWS
RS
ICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN was the most distinguished mem-
ber of a distinguished family. His grandfather was Dr.
Sheridan, the friend and correspondent of Swift. His father
was Thomas Sheridan, elocutionist, actor, manager, and lexicographer.
His mother was Frances Sheridan, author of the comedy of 'The
Discovery' (acted by David Garrick), and of the novel 'Miss Sidney
Biddulph' (praised by Samuel Johnson). His three granddaughters,
known as the beautiful Sheridans, became, one the Duchess of Som-
erset, another the Countess of Dufferin, and the third the Hon. Mrs.
Norton (afterward Lady Stirling-Maxwell). His great-grandson is
Lord Dufferin, author and diplomatist. Thus, in six generations
of the family, remarkable power of one kind or another has been
revealed.
Richard Brinsley was born in Dublin, Ireland, in September 1751.
Before he was ten the family moved to England; and he was pres-
ently sent to Harrow. Later he received from his father lessons in
elocution, which he was destined to turn to account in Parliament.
Before he was nineteen the family settled in Bath, then the resort of
fashion. Here the young man observed life, wrote brilliant bits of
verse, and fell in love with Miss Linley. The Linleys were all musi-
cians: Miss Elizabeth Linley was a public singer of great promise;
she was not seventeen when Sheridan first met her. She was beset
by suitors, with one of whom, a disreputable Captain Mathews (who
was the author of a good book on whist), the future dramatist fought
two duels. Sheridan eloped with Miss Linley to France; and after
many obstacles, the course of true love ran smooth at last and the
young pair were married. Although he was wholly without fortune,
the husband withdrew his wife from the stage.
Sheridan's education had been fragmentary, and he lacked serious
training. But he had wit and self-confidence; and he determined to
turn dramatist. His father was an actor, his mother had written
plays, and his father-in-law was a composer; and so the stage door
swung wide open before him. His first piece, the five-act comedy
the 'Rivals,' was brought out at Covent Garden Theatre, January


## p. 13318 (#124) ##########################################

13318
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
17th, 1775; and it then failed blankly, as it did again on a second
performance. Withdrawn and revised, it was soon reproduced with
approval. A similar experience is recorded of the 'Barber of Seville,'
the first comedy of Beaumarchais, whose career is not without points
of resemblance to Sheridan's. The 'Rivals' and the 'Barber of Se-
ville' are among the few comedies of the eighteenth century which
will survive into the twentieth.
In gratitude to the actor who had played Sir Lucius O'Trigger,
Sheridan improvised the farce of St. Patrick's Day; or, The Scheming
Lieutenant'; brought out May 2d, 1775, and long since dropped out of
the list of acting plays. During the summer he wrote the book of a
comic opera, the 'Duenna,' for which his father-in-law Linley pre-
pared the score, and which was produced at Covent Garden Novem-
ber 21st, 1775,- making three new plays which the young dramatist
had brought out within the year.
The great actor, David Garrick, who had managed Drury Lane
Theatre with the utmost skill for many years, was now about to
retire. He owned half of the theatre, and this half he sold to Sheri-
dan and to some of Sheridan's friends; and a little later Sheridan
was able to buy the other half also, paying for it not in cash, but
by assuming mortgages and granting annuities. It was in the middle
of 1776 that David Garrick was succeeded in the management of
Drury Lane Theatre by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was then not
yet twenty-five years old.
The first new play of the new manager was only an old comedy
altered. A Trip to Scarborough,' acted February 24th, 1777, was a
deodorized version of Vanbrugh's 'Relapse'; rather better than most
of the revisions of old plays, and yet a disappointment to the play-
goers who were awaiting a new comedy. The new comedy came at
last in the spring, and those who had high expectations were not dis-
appointed. It was on May 8th, 1777, that the School for Scandal'
was acted for the first time, with immense success,- a success which
bids fair to endure yet another century and a quarter. With a stronger
dramatic framework than the 'Rivals,' and a slighter proportion of
broad farce, the 'School for Scandal' is as effective in the acting as
its predecessor, while it repays perusal far better.
When Garrick died, early in 1779, Sheridan wrote a 'Monody,' to
be recited at the theatre the incomparable actor had so long directed.
And in the fall of that year, on October 30th, 1779, he brought out
the brightest of farces and the best of burlesques, 'The Critic; or,
A Tragedy Rehearsed'; a delightful piece of theatrical humor,—
suggested by Buckingham's 'Rehearsal,' no doubt, but distinctly
superior. The 'Critic,' like the 'Rivals' and the School for Scandal,'
continues to be acted both in Great Britain and the United States.


## p. 13319 (#125) ##########################################

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
13319
"
Sheridan's best plays have revealed a sturdy vitality, and a faculty of
readaptation to changing theatrical conditions. After the production
of the Critic,' Sheridan did not again appear before the public as
an original dramatist. Perhaps he was jealous of his reputation; and,
aware of the limit of his powers, he knew that he could not sur-
pass the School for Scandal. ' Just as Molière used to talk about his
'Homme de Cour,' which he had not begun when he died, so Sheridan
used to talk about a comedy to be called 'Affectation,' for which he
had done no more than jot down a few stray notes and suggestions.
Thereafter he confined himself to the outlining of plots for pan-
tomimes, and to improving the plays of other authors. Thus the
'Stranger' indubitably owed some of its former effectiveness in Eng-
lish to his adroit touch. Perhaps it was the success of the 'Stranger'
which led him to rework another of Kotzebue's plays into a rather
turgid melodrama with a high-patriotic flavor. This, Pizarro,' was
produced on May 24th, 1799; and it hit the temper of the time so
skillfully that it filled all the theatres in England for many months.
But long before this, Sheridan had entered into political life. He
took his seat in Parliament in 1780,- being then not yet thirty. His
first speech was a failure, as his first play had been.
But he per-
severed; and in time he became as completely master of the platform
as he was of the stage. He was a Whig; and when Fox and North
drove out Shelburne, Sheridan was Secretary of the Treasury: but
the Whigs went out in 1783. When Burke impeached Warren Hast-
ings, Sheridan was one of the managers of the prosecution; and in
the course of the proceedings he delivered two speeches, the recorded
effect of which was simply marvelous.
In 1792 Sheridan's wife died, and from that hour the fortune that
had waxed so swiftly waned as surely. He neglected the theatre for
politics, and his debts began to harass him. He married again in
1795; but it may be doubted whether this second marriage was not
a mistake. In 1809 Drury Lane was burnt to the ground; and Sher-
idan had rebuilt it at enormous cost only fifteen years before. This
fire ruined him. In 1812 he made his last speech in Parliament. In
1815 he suffered the indignity of arrest for debt. He died on July
7th, 1816.
Sheridan's indebtedness was found to be less than £5,000: that
it had not been paid long before was due to his procrastination, his
carelessness, and his total lack of business training. He seems to
have allowed himself to be swindled right and left. In other ways
also is his character not easy to apprehend aright. In his political
career he unhesitatingly sacrificed place to patriotism; and during the
mutiny at the Nore he put party advantage behind him, and came
forward to urge the course of conduct best for the country as a whole.


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13320
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
In his private life he was not altogether circumspect; but he lived in
days when it was thought no disgrace for a statesman to be over-
taken with wine. In all things he was his own worst enemy.
It is as a writer of comedies that Sheridan claims admission into
this work; and here his position is impregnable. Of the four comic
dramatists of the Restoration, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Wycherley, and
Farquhar, only one, Congreve, was Sheridan's superior as a wit; and
Sheridan is the superior of every one of the four as a playwright, as
an artist in stage effect, as a master of the medium in which they
all of them worked. His only later rival is his fellow-Irishman,
Oliver Goldsmith: but of Goldsmith's two comedies, one, the 'Good-
Natured Man,' has always been a failure, when first acted and when-
ever a revival has been attempted; and the other, 'She Stoops to
Conquer,' delightful as it is, is what its hostile critics called it when
it was first seen, a farce,- - it has the arbitrary plot of a farce, though
its manner is the manner of comedy. Neither in the library nor in
the theatre does 'She Stoops to Conquer' withstand the comparison
with the School for Scandal'; and Sheridan has still to his credit
the 'Rivals' and the 'Critic. ' (It is true that Goldsmith has to his
credit the Vicar of Wakefield' and his poems and his essays; but it
is of his plays that a comparison is here made. )
Sheridan is not of course to be likened to Molière: the Frenchman
had a depth and a power to which the Irishman could not pretend.
But a comparison with Beaumarchais is fair enough, and it can be
drawn only in favor of Sheridan; for brilliant as the 'Marriage of
Figaro' is, it lacks the solid structure and the broad outlook of the
'School for Scandal. ' Both the French wit and the Irish are masters
of fence, and the dialogue of these comedies still scintillates as steel
crosses steel. Neither of them put much heart into his plays; and
perhaps the School for Scandal' is even more artificial than the
'Marriage of Figaro,' but it is wholly free from the declamatory
shrillness which to-day mars the masterpiece of Beaumarchais.
It is curious that the British novelists have often taken up their
task in the maturity of middle age, and that the British dramatists
have often been young fellows just coming into man's estate. One
might say that Farquhar and Vanbrugh, Congreve and Sheridan, all
composed their comedies when they were only recently out of their
'teens. Lessing has told us that the young man just entering on the
world cannot possibly know it. He may be ingenious, he may be
clever, he may be brilliant,- but he is likely to lack depth and
breadth. Here is the weak spot in Sheridan's work. Dash he had,
and ardor, and dexterity, and wit; but when his work is compared
with the solid and more human plays of Molière, for example, its
relative superficiality is apparent. And yet superficiality is a harsh
P
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RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
13321
word, and perhaps misleading. What is not to be found in Sheridan's
comedies is essential richness of inspiration. Liveliness there is, and
dramaturgic skill, and comic invention, and animal spirits, and hearty
enjoyment: these are gifts to be prized.