| AND THOMAS SHERIDAN. | 281 |
I shall describe these dramas in the order in which, both from the handwriting and from internal evidence, they seem to have been written.
At present the burlesque burletta (as it is called) of Midas stands alone in our dramatic literature; for
though the Tom Thumb of Fielding, the Bombastes Furioso, and even the pleasant and elegant
extravaganzas of Planché, and the inelegant and un-pleasant ones of other people, may be
said to belong to the same family, they have scarcely any characteristic features in common
with the glorious old original of the uproarious Irish humourist, Kane O’Hara. But should the extraordinary drama now
to be partially introduced to the reader ever see the light in its entirety, it will
certainly offer no exception to Byron’s saying
about the supremacy of Sheridan over all other men
in all that he
| 282 | RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. |
And this leads me to remark of Sheridan’s genius (if indeed genius can be predicated in such a
case), that it was not what is called an “original” one; that is to say, he has
in no case done anything for which there was not a previous model existing. Yet he
unquestionably fulfilled the main condition of genius—that of doing what no other man had
previously done or could have done. Whether (Midas notwithstanding) this will be admitted of him by
those who shall hereafter read Ixion,
remains to be seen. In the meantime, as genius is as perfectly indicated in small things as
in great ones, the critical reader is asked to say whether anything short of original
genius could have produced the following couplets, which form one of a score of similar
effusions in the remarkable work about to be described in detail. They consist of a duet
between Mercury and Nubilis
| AND THOMAS SHERIDAN. | 283 |
|
“DUET.
Mercury and Nubilis.
Merc. The sun at Tyburn shall be hung—
Nub. The man i’ th’ moon grow sick—
Merc. The stars like bugles shall be strung—
Both. Ere I my sweetheart trick.
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Nub. The ox shall carve the butcher up—
Merc. The whitebait eat the trout;—
Nub. And sparrows spawn, and fishes pup,—
Both. Ere we will once fall out.”
|
If there is anything else in our language, within the same compass, that, for perfect originality of conception, startling strangeness of imagery, and breadth of humorous comicality, equals this, I have not met with it in a pretty extensive reading of such matters.
| 284 | RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. |
As will be guessed from what has been said in introducing the above verses, this piece turns on the well-known propensity of the Father of the Gods to occasionally disport himself (in flirtations and something worse) among the mere flesh-and-blood divinities of earth; and the fact (which had better be stated plainly at the outset) that it contains not a few passages, not merely of equivocal morality, but disfigured by a coarseness of expression not at present tolerated by “ears polite,” would alone be sufficient to prove that it belongs to a very early period of Sheridan’s literary career; for all his other works—even those which must have been written before he was one-and-twenty—are remarkably free from any offence in either of these particulars, and his great works—the two comedies—most so of all.* The charac-
* Whether, in “stripping vice of its coarseness,” and thus “depriving it of half its deformity,” Sheridan diminished either its prevalence or its danger, may be doubted. As a matter of taste merely, the school of dramatic writing to which the “School for Scandal” belongs, and of which it is incomparably the best specimen, was a vast improvement on that which preceded it. But those who are old enough to remember the atrocious system of |
| AND THOMAS SHERIDAN. | 285 |
|
inuendo and double-entendre which marked so profusely all the successful specimens of the later era of that school, will scarcely dispute that, of the two, the open profligacy of Congreve and Wycherley was less dangerous to the social morality of the times respectively, and even less offensive to their good taste: for the brilliant seductions of the one might be guarded against or avoided; but the insidious approach and blighting influence of the other were more or less fatal wherever they penetrated. |
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