The Dead Man Arrested.

135 last hours the late Professor Smythe wrote an admirable and most touching account, a copy of which was circulated in manuscript. The Professor, hearing of Sheridan's condition, asked to see him, with a view, not only of alleviating present distress, but of calling the dying man to repentance. From his hands the unhappy Sheridan received the Holy Communion; his face, during that solemn rite,-doubly solemn when it is performed in the chamber of death, 'expressed,' Smythe relates, 'the deepest awe.' That phrase conveys to the mind impressions not easy to be defined, not soon to be forgotten.

Peace! there was not peace even in death, and the creditor pursued him even into the 'waste wide,'-even to the coffin. He was lying in state, when a gentleman in the deepest mourning called, it is said, at the house, and introducing himself as an old and much-attached friend of the deceased, begged to be allowed to look upon his face. The tears which rose in his eyes, the tremulousness of his quiet voice, the pallor of his mournful face, deceived the unsuspecting servant, who accompanied him to the chamber of death, removed the lid of the coffin, turned down the shrowd, and revealed features which had once been handsome, but long since rendered almost hideous by drinking. The stranger gazed with profound emotion, while he quietly drew from his pocket a bailiff's wand, and touching the corpse's face with it, suddenly altered his manner to one of considerable glee, and informed the servant that he had arrested the corpse in the king's name for a debt of £500. It was the morning of the funeral, which was to be attended by half the grandees of England, and in a few minutes the mourners began to arrive. But the corpse was the bailiff's property, till his claim was paid, and nought but the money would soften the iron capturer. Canning and Lord Sidmouth agreed to settle the matter, and over the coffin the debt was paid.

Poor corpse! was it worth £500-diseased, rotting as it was, and about to be given for nothing to mother earth? Was it worth the pomp of the splendid funeral and the grand hypocrisy of grief with which it was borne to Westminster Abbey? Was not rather the wretched old man, while he yet struggled on in life, worth this outlay, worth this show of sympathy?

136

The Stories fixed on Sheridan.

Folly; not folly only-but a lie! What recked the dead of the four noble pall-bearers--the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, Earl Mulgrave, and the Bishop of London? What good was it to him to be followed by two royal highnesses-the Dukes of York and Sussex-by two marquises, seven earls, three viscounts, five lords, a Canning, a lord mayor, and a whole regiment of honourables and right honourables, who now wore the livery of grief, when they had let him die in debt, in want, and in misery? Far more, if the dead could feel, must he have been grateful for the honester tears of those two untitled men, who had really befriended him to the last hour and never abandoned him, Mr. Rogers and Dr. Bain. But peace; let him pass with nodding plumes and well-dyed horses to the great Walhalla, and amid the dust of many a poet let the poet's dust find rest and honour, secure at last from the hand of the bailiff. There was but one nook unoccupied in Poet's Corner, and there they laid him. A simple marble was afforded by another friend without a title-Peter Moore.

To a life like Sheridan's it is almost impossible to do justice in so narrow a space as I have here. He is one of those men who, not to be made out a whit better or worse than they are, demand a careful investigation of all their actions, or reported actions-a careful sifting of all the evidence for or against them, and a careful weeding of all the anecdotes told of them. This requires a separate biography. To give a general idea of the man, we must be content to give that which he inspired in a general acquaintance. Many of his mots,' and more of the stories about him, may have been invented for him, but they would scarcely have been fixed on Sheridan, if they had not fitted more or less his character: I have therefore given them. I might have given a hundred more, but I have let alone those anecdotes which did not seem to illustrate the character of the man. Many another good story is told of him, and we must content ourselves with one or two. Take one that is characteristic of his love of fun.

Sheridan is accosted by an elderly gentleman, who has forgotter. the name of a street to which he wants to go, and who informs him precisely that it is an out-of-the-way name.

Extempore Wit and Inveterate Talkers.

137

'Perhaps, sir, you mean John Street ?' says Sherry, all in

nocence.

'No, an unusual name.'

'It can't be Charles Street ?'

Impatience on the part of the old gentleman.

'King Street ?' suggests the cruel wit.

'I tell you, sir, it is a street with a very odd name!'

'Bless me, is it Queen Street?'

Irritation on the part of the old gentleman.

'It must be Oxford Street ?' cries Sheridan as if inspired.

'Sir, I repeat,' very testily, 'that it is a very odd name. Every one knows Oxford Street!'

Sheridan appears to be thinking.

'An odd name! Oh! ah! just so; Piccadilly, of course?' Old gentleman bounces away in disgust.

'Well, sir,' Sheridan calls after him, 'I envy you your admirable memory!'

His wit was said to have been prepared, like his speeches, and he is even reported to have carried his book of mots in his pocket, as a young lady of the middle class might, but seldom does, carry her book of etiquette into a party. But some of his wit was no doubt extempore.

When arrested for non-attendance to a call in the House, soon after the change of ministry, he exclaimed, 'How hard to be no sooner out of office than into custody!'

He was not an inveterate talker, like Macaulay, Sydney Smith, or Jeffrey: he seems rather to have aimed at a striking effect in all that he said. When found tripping he had a clever knack of getting out of the difficulty. In the Hastings speech he complimented Gibbon as a luminous' writer; questioned on this, he replied archly, 'I said vo-luminous.'

I cannot afford to be voluminous on Sheridan, and so I quit him.

BEAU BRUMMELL.

Two popular Sciences.-'Buck Brummell' at Eton.-Investing his Capital.Young Cornet Brummell.-The Beau's Studio.-The Toilet.-' Creasing Down.'-Devotion to Dress.-A Great Gentleman.-Anecdotes of Brummell.-'Don't forget, Brum: Goose at Four !'-Offers of Intimacy resented. -Never in love.- Brummell out Hunting. -Anecdote of Sheridan and Brummell.-The Beau's Poetical Efforts.-The Value of a Crooked Sixpence. The Breach with the Prince of Wales. -'Who's your Fat Friend?' -The Climax is reached. -The Black-mail of Calais.-George the Greater and George the Less.--An Extraordinary Step.-Down the Hill of Life.— A Miserable Old Age.-In the Hospice Du Bon Sauveur.-O Young Men of this Age, be warned!

T is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things high art has been applied, and with what suc cess. It is the vice of high civilization to look for it and reverence it, where a ruder age would only laugh at its eraployment. Crime and cookery, especially, have been raised inio sciences of late, and the professors of both received the amount of honour due to their acquirements. Who would be so naïve as to sneer at the author of 'The Art of Dining?' or who so ungentlemanly as not to pity the sorrows of a pious baronet, whose devotion to the noble art of appropriation was shamefully rewarded with accommodation gratis on board one of Her Majesty's transport-ships? The disciples of Ude have left us the literary results of their studies, and one at least, the graceful Alexis Soyer, is numbered among our public benefactors. We have little doubt that as the art, vulgarly called ' embezzlement,' becomes more and more fashionable, as it does every day, we shall have a work on the Art of Appropriation.' It is a pity that Brummell looked down upon literature: poor literature! it had a hard struggle to recover the slight, for we are convinced there is not a work more wanted than the 'Art

of Dressing,' and 'George the Less' was almost the last professor of that elaborate science.

If the maxim, that 'whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well,' hold good, Beau Brummell must be regarded in the light of a great man. That dressing is worth doing at all, everybody but a Fiji Islander seems to admit, for everybody does it. If, then, a man succeeds in dressing better than anybody else, it follows that he is entitled to the most universal admiration.

But

But there was another object to which this great man conde scended to apply the principles of high art-I mean affectation. How admirably he succeeded in this his life will show. can we doubt that he is entitled to our greatest esteem and heartiest gratitude for the studies he pursued with unremitting patience in these two useful branches, when we find that a prince of the blood delighted to honour, and the richest, noblest, and most distinguished men of half a century ago were proud to know him? We are writing, then, of no common man, no mere beau, but of the greatest professor of two of the most popular sciences-Dress and Affectation. Let us speak with reverence of this wonderful genius.

George Brummell was a self-made man.' That is, all that nature, the tailors, stags, and padding had not made of him, he made for himself-his name, his fame, his fortune, and his friends--and all these were great. The author of 'Self-help' has most unaccountably omitted all mention of him, and most erroneously, for if there ever was a man who helped himself, and no one else, it was, 'very sincerely yours, George Brummell.'

The founder of the noble house of Brummell, the grandfather of our hero, was either a treasury porter, or a confectioner, or something else.* At any rate he let lodgings in Bury Street, and whether from the fact that his wife did not purloin her lodgers' tea and sugar, or from some other cause, he managed to ingratiate himself with one of them-who afterwards became Lord Liverpool-so thoroughly, that through his influence he obtained for his son the post of Private Secretary to Lord

Mr. Jesse says that the Beau's grandfather was a servant of Mr. Charles Monson, brother to the first Lord Monson.