THE LITERARY CLUB. 341 There shall his fame, if own'd to-night, survive, referring at once to Johnson's life of his friend Savage and to his great Dictionary. It was Savage, you remember, with whom Johnson in his days of starvation was wont to walk the streets all night, neither of them being able to pay for a lodging, and with whom, walking one night round and round St. James's Square, he kept up his own and his companion's spirits by inveighing against the minister, and declaring that they would "stand by their country." Doubtless the Doctor felt as much pleasure at the meed awarded to his old companion in misery as at the high compliment to himself. Anyhow he pronounced that Sheridan "had written the two best comedies of his age," and therefore proposed him as a member of the Literary Club. This celebrated gathering of wit and whimsicality, founded by Johnson himself in conjunction with Sir J. Reynolds, was the Helicon of London Letters, and the temple which the greatest talker of his age had built for himself, and in which he took care to be duly worshiped. It met at the Turk's Head in Gerrald Street, Soho, every Friday; and from seven in the evening to almost any hour of night was the scene of such talk, mainly on literature and learning, as has never been heard since in this country. It consisted at this period of twenty-six members, and there is scarcely one among them whose name is not known to-day as well as any in the history of our literature. Besides the high-priests, Reynolds and Johnson, there came Edmund Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and many another of less note, to represent the senate: Goldsmith, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Malone, Dr. Burney, Percy, Nugent, Sir William Jones, three Irish bishops, and a host of others, crowded in from the ranks of learning and literature. Garrick and George Colman found here an indulgent audience; and the light portion of the company comprised such men as Topham Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, Vesey, and a dozen of lords and baronets. In short, they were picked men, and if their conversation was not always witty, it was because they had all wit, and frightened one another. Among them the bullying Doctor rolled in majestic grumpiness; scolded, dogmatized, contradicted, pished and pshawed, and made himself generally disagreeable; yet, hail the omen, Intellect! such was the force, such the fame of his mind, that the more he snorted, the more they adored him— the more he bullied, the more humbly they knocked under. He was quite "His Majesty" at the Turk's Head, and the courtiers waited for his coming with anxiety, and talked of 342 ANECDOTE OF GARRICK'S ADMITTANCE. him till he came in the same manner as the lackeys in the anteroom of a crowded monarch. Boswell, who, by the way, was also a member-of course he was, or how should we have had the great man's conversations handed down to us?-was sure to keep them up to the proper mark of adulation if they ever flagged in it, and was as servile in his admiration in the Doctor's absence as when he was there to call him a fool for his pains. Thus, on one occasion while "King Johnson" tarried, the courtiers were discussing his journey to the Hebrides and his coming away "willing to believe the second sight." Some of them smiled at this, but Bozzy was down on them with more than usual servility. "He is only willing to believe," he exclaimed. "I do believe. The evidence is enough for me, though not for his great mind. What will not fill a quart bottle will fill a pint bottle. I am filled with belief." Are you?" said Colman, slyly; "then cork it up." As a specimen of Johnson's pride in his own club, which always remained extremely exclusive, we have what he said of Garrick, who, before he was elected, carelessly told Reynolds he liked the club, and "thought he would be of them." "He'll be of us!" roared the Doctor indignantly, on hearing of this. "How does he know we will permit him? The first duke in England has no right to hold such language!" It can easily be imagined that when "His Majesty" expressed his approval of Richard Brinsley, then a young man of eight-and-twenty, there was no one who ventured to blackball him, and so Sheridan was duly elected. The fame of "The School for Scandal" was a substantial one for Richard Brinsley, and in the following year he extended his speculation by buying the other moiety of Drury Lane. This theatre, which took its name from the old Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane, where Killigrew acted in the days of Charles II., is famous for the number of times it has been rebuilt. The first house had been destroyed in 1674; and the one in which Garrick acted was built by Sir Christopher Wren, and opened with a prologue by Dryden. In 1793 this was rebuilt. In 1809 it was burnt to the ground; and on its reopening the Committee advertised a prize for a prologue, which was supposed to be tried for by all the poets and poetasters then in England.* Horace Smith and his brother seized the opportunity to parody the style of the most celebrated in their delightful "Rejected Addresses." Drury Lane has always been grand in its prologue, for besides Dryden and * None of the addresses sent in having given satisfaction, Lord Byron was requested to write one, which he did. NEW FLIGHTS.-POLITICAL AMBITION. 343 Byron, it could boast of Sam. Johnson, who wrote the address when Garrick opened the theatre in 1747. No theatre ever had more great names connected with its history. It was in 1778, after the purchase of the other moiety of this property, that Sheridan set on its boards "The Critic." Though this was denounced as itself as complete a plagiarism as any Sir Fretful Plagiary could make, and though undoubtedly the idea of it was borrowed, its wit, so truly Sheridanian, and its complete characters, enhanced its author's fame, in spite of the disappointment of those who expected higher things from the writer of "The School for Scandal." Whether Sheridan would have gone on improving, had he remained true to the drama, "The Critic" leaves us in doubt. But he was a man of higher ambition. Step by step, unexpectedly, and apparently unprepared, he had taken by storm the outworks of the citadel he was determined to capture, and he seems to have cared little to garrison these minor fortresses. He had carried off from among a dozen suitors a wife of such beauty that Walpole thus writes of her in 1773: "I was at the ball last night, and have only been at the opera, where I was infinitely struck with the Carrara, who is the prettiest creature upon earth. Mrs. Hartly I find still handsomer, and Miss Linley is to be the superlative degree. The king admires the last, and ogles her as much as he dares in so holy a place as an oratorio, and at so devout a service as Alexander's Feast." Yet Sheridan did not prize Betsy as he should have done, when he had once obtained her. Again he had struck boldly into the drama, and in four years had achieved that fame as a play-writer to which even Johnson could testify so handsomely. He now quitted this, and with the same innate power-the same consciousness of success-the same readiness of geniustook a higher, far more brilliant flight than ever. Yet had he garrisoned the forts he captured, he would have been a better, happier, and more prosperous man. Had he been true to the Maid of Bath, his character would not have degenerated as it did. Had he kept up his connection with the drama, he would not have lost so largely by his speculation in Drury Lane. His genius became his temptation, and he hurried on to triumph and to fall. Public praise is a siren which the young sailor through life can not resist. Political life is a fine aim, even when its seeker starts without a shred of real patriotism to conceal his personal ambition. No young man of any character can think, without a thrill of rapture, on the glory of having his name-now obscure-written in capitals on the page of his country's history. 344 THE GAMING MANIA. A true patriot cares nothing for fame; a really great man is content to die nameless, if his acts may but survive him. Sheridan was not really great, and it may be doubted if he had any sincerity in his political views. But the period favored the rise of young men of genius. In former reigns a man could have little hope of political influence without being first a courtier; but by this time liberalism had made giant strides. The leaven of revolutionary ideas, which had leavened the whole lump in France, was still working quietly and less passionately in this country, and being less repressed, displayed itself in the last quarter of the eighteenth century in the form of a strong and brilliant opposition. It was to this that the young men of ambition attached themselves, rallying under the standard of Charles James Fox, since it was there only that their talents were sufficient to recommend them. 66 To this party, Sheridan, laughing in his sleeve at the extravagance of their demands-so that when they clamored for a parliament once a year, or oftener if need be," he pronounced himself an "Oftener-if-need-be" man-was introduced, when his fame as a literary man had brought him into contact with some of its hangers-on. Fox, after his first interview with him, affirmed that he had always thought Hare and Charles Townsend the wittiest men he had ever met, but that Sheridan surpassed them both; and Sheridan was equally pleased with the Man of the People." 66 The first step to this political position was to become a member of a certain club, where its leaders gambled away their money, and drank away their minds-to wit, Brookes's. Pretty boys, indeed, were these great Whig patriots when turned loose in these precincts. The tables were for stakes of twenty or fifty guineas, but soon ran up to hundreds. What did it matter to Charles James Fox, to the Man of the People, whether he lost five, seven, or ten thousand of a night, when the one half came out of his father's, the other out of Hebrew, pockets-the sleek, thick-lipped owners of which thronged his Jerusalem chamber, as he called his back sitting-room, only too glad to "oblige" him to any amount? The rage for gaming at this pandemonium may be understood from a rule of the club, which it was found necessary to make to interdict it in the eating-room, but to which was added the truly British exception, which allowed two members of Parliament in those days, or two "gentlemen" of any kind, to toss up for what they had ordered. This charming resort of the dissipated was originally established in Pall Mall in 1764, and the manager was that same Almack who afterward opened a lady's club in the rooms now |