The School for Scandal

Introduction

Early in the spring of 1776 Richard Brinsley Sheridan succeeded David Garrick as the manager of Drury Lane Theatre. Within a little more than a year Sheridan had brought out the Rivals a comedy in five acts, St. Patrick’s Day, a farce in one act, and the Duenna, an opera in three acts. Great expectations were excited by the announcement of his first play at his own theatre. The production of the Trip to Scarborough in February, 1777, was only a temporary disappointment, for it was soon noised abroad that a more important comedy in five acts was in preparation. At last, on May 8, 1777, the School for Scandal was acted for the first time on any stage.

Garrick had read the play, and he thought even more highly of it than he had thought of Mrs. Sheridan’s Discovery many years before. He aided the author with much practical advice, and volunteered to write the prologue, a form of composition for which his lively fancy and neat versification were particularly suited. The great hopes excited for the comedy barely escaped disappointment—for on the night before the first performance, as Sheridan told the House of Commons many years later, he was informed that it could not be performed, as a license was refused. It happened at this time there was the famous city contest for the office of chamberlain, between Wilkes and Hopkins. The latter had been charged with some practices similar to those of Moses, the Jew, in lending money to young men under age, and it was supposed that the character of the play was levelled at him, in order to injure him in his contest, in which he was supported by the ministerial interest. In the warmth of a contested election, the piece was represented as a factious and seditious opposition to a court candidate. The author, however, went to Lord Hertford, then lord chamberlain, who laughed at the affair and gave the license. Sheridan told Lord Byron that the next night, after the grand success of the School for Scandal, he was knocked down and taken to the watch-house, for making a row in the street, and being found intoxicated by the watchman.

Perhaps this was only a bit of Hibernian hyperbole, though a man’s head might well reel under a triumph so overwhelming. There seems to have been hardly a dissenting voice. Merry—Della-Cruscan Merry, the future husband of Miss Brunton, who, under his name, was afterward the leading actress of America did, it is true, object to the great scandal-scene. “Why do not the dramatis persona,” he said, “stop talking, and let the play go on?” The comedy was a success from the rising of the curtain, but it was the falling of the screen—although Garrick thought the actors stood a little too long without moving—which raised the audience to the highest degree of enthusiasm. Reynolds, the dramatist, relates that as he was passing about nine on this evening through the pit-passage, “I heard such a tremendous noise over my head that, fearing the theatre was proceeding to fall about it, I ran for my life; but found the next morning that the noise did not arise from the falling of the house, but from the falling of the screen in the fourth act, so violent and tumultuous were the applause and laughter.”

The singular success of the School for Scandal seems to have been greatly aided by the unusual excellence of the acting. Charles Lamb says, “No piece was ever so completely cast in all its parts as this manager’s comedy.” Sheridan chose his performers, and modified his play, if needed, to suit their peculiarities, with the same shrewdness that he showed in all such matters. When reproached with not having written a love-scene for Charles and Maria, he said that it was because neither Mr. Smith nor Miss P. Hopkins (who played the parts) was an adept at stage lovemaking. King, the original Lord Ogleby in the Clandestine Marriage—a part written by Garrick himself—was Sir Peter; and Mrs. Abington was Lady Teazle. No one was better suited than John Palmer, from whom Sheridan may well have derived some hints of Joseph Surface; Boaden relates a characteristic interview between him and the manager, when he returned to the theatre after an escapade. “My dear Mr. Sheridan,” began the actor, with clasped hands and penitent humility, “if you could but know what I feel at this moment here!” laying one hand upon his heart. Sheridan, with his usual quickness, stopped him at once: “Why, Jack, you forgot I wrote it!” Palmer declared that the manager’s wit cost him something, “for I made him add three pounds per week to the salary I had before my desertion.” The other actors were hardly inferior to King and Palmer. Parsons, afterward the original Sir Fretful Plagiary, was Crabtree; and Dodd, who has been called “the Prince of Pink Heels and Soul of Empty Eminence,” was Sir Benjamin Backbite. The various characters fitted the actors who played them with the most exact nicety; and the result was a varied and harmonious performance of the entire comedy. The acting showed the smoothness, and the symmetry, and the due subordination of the parts to the whole, which is the highest, and, alas! the rarest of dramatic excellences. Walpole has noted that there were more parts better played in the School for Scandal than he almost ever remembered to have seen in any other play; and Charles Lamb thought it “some compensation for growing old, to have seen the School for Scandal in its glory.”

Dr. Watkins, in his unnecessary biography of Sheridan, saw fit to insinuate therein that Sheridan was not the real author of the School for Scandal, but that it was the composition of a young lady, daughter of a merchant in Thames Street, who had left it with Sheridan for his judgment as a manager, “soon after which the fair writer, who was then in a state of decline, went to Bristol Hot-Wells, where she died.”

Pope well knew the type to which this Dr. Watkins belonged (“with him most authors steal their works or buy; Garth did not write his own Dispensary”); and the story which Pope crippled, as if by anticipation, Moore readily brought to ground by the publication of the earlier and inchoate suggestions from which Sheridan finally formed the finished play. With the evidence of these growing and gathering fragments before us, we can trace the inception of the idea, and the slow accretion by which it got rounded at last into its present complex symmetry. Moore fills page after page of his life of Sheridan with extracts from the notes and drafts of two distinct plays one containing the machinery of the scandalous college, to have been called possibly the Slanderers, and the other setting before us the Teazles and the Surfaces. This latter was, perhaps, the two-act comedy which Sheridan announced to Mr. Linley in 1775, as being in preparation for the stage. The gradual amalgamation of these two distinct plots, the growth of the happy thought of using the malevolent tittle-tattle of the first play as a background to set off the intrigues of the second, can be clearly traced in the extracts given by Moore. In the eyes of some small critics this revelation of Sheridan’s laborious method of working, this exhibition of the chips of his workshop has had a lowering effect on their opinion of Sheridan’s ability. It is, perhaps, his own fault, for he affected laziness and sought the reputation of an offhand wit. But the School for Scandal is obviously not a spontaneous improvisation. Its symmetrical smoothness and perfect polish cost great labour. It did not spring full armed from the brain of Jove;—Jupiter was a god, and mere mortals must cudgel their poor brains long years to bring forth wisdom. No masterpiece was ever dashed off hurriedly. The power of hard work, and the willingness to take pains, are among the attributes of the highest genius. Balzac had them; he spent the whole of one long winter night on a single sentence. So had Sheridan; he told Ridgeway, to who he had sold the copyright of this very play, and who asked for the manuscript again and again in vain, that he had been for nineteen years endeavouring to satisfy himself with the style of the School for Scandal but had not yet succeeded. A diamond of the first water, like this, is worth careful cutting—and even the chips are of value. Those given to the world by Moore are curious in themselves, independent of their use in disproving the charge of literary larceny preferred by Dr. Watkins.

Since the publication of these extracts, those who seek to discredit Sheridan’s originality have shifted their ground, and content themselves with drawing attention to the singular similarity of Joseph and Charles to Tom Jones and Blifil. They also remark upon the likeness of the scandal-scene to a satirical episode in the Misanthrope of Molière, and on the likeness of Joseph Surface to Tartuffe. Taine, who seems sometimes to speak slightingly of Sheridan, puts this accusation into most effective shape: “Sheridan took two characters from Fielding, Blifil and Tom Jones, two plays of Molière, Le Misanthrope and Tartuffe, and from his puissant materials, condensed with admirable cleverness, he has constructed the most brilliant fireworks imaginable.”

A glance at the play itself will show this to be a most exaggerated statement. The use of Molière and Fielding is far slighter than alleged; and at most to what does it all amount? But little more than the outline and faint colouring of two characters, and of a very few incidents. While the play could not exist without them, they are far from the most important. Lady Teazle and Sir Peter, the screenscene and the auction-scene—these are what made the success of the School for Scandal, and not what Sheridan may have derived from Fielding and Molière. Nor is this borrowing at all as extensive as it may seem. Joseph is a hypocrite—so is Tartuffe, so is Blifil; but there are hypocrites, and hypocrites, and the resemblance can scarcely be stretched much farther. The rather rustic and—if the word may be risked—vulgar Tom Jones is as unlike as may be to that light and easy gentleman Charles. Yet it seems probable that Sheridan found in Tom Jones the first idea of the contrasted brothers of the School for Scandal. Boaden has even seen the embryonic suggestion of the fall of the screen in the dropping of the rug in Molly Seagrim’s room, discovering the philosopher Square. Now, Sheridan had a marvellous power of assimilation. He extended a ready welcome to all floating seeds of thought; and in his fertile brain they would speedily spring up, bringing forth the best they could. But to evolve from the petty discomfiture of Square the almost unequalled effect of the screen-scene—to see in the one the germs of the other—were a task worthy even of Sheridan’s quick eye. The indebtedness to Molière is even less than to Fielding. We may put on one side Sheridan’s ignorance of French—for in Colley Cibber’s Non-Juror, or in Bickerstaff’s Hypocrite, he could find Molière’s Tartuffe; and the scandal-loving Celimene of the Misanthrope, he might trace in Wycherley’s Plain-Dealer. If Sheridan had borrowed from Molière he was only following in the footsteps of his father, whose sole play, Captain O’Blunder, is based on Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. But Sheridan’s indebtedness to Molière is barely visible. It is almost as slight, indeed, as the borrowing from the School for Scandal of which Madame de Girardin was guilty for her fine comedy, Lady Tartuffe. In any case, Sheridan’s indebtedness is less to the Misanthrope than to Tartuffe—and even here there is little resemblance beyond the generic likeness of all hypocrites. This resemblance, such as it is, the French adapters of the School for Scandal chose to emphasize by calling their version the Tartuffe des Moeurs.

Although Sheridan was in general original in incident, he unhesitatingly made use of any happy phrases or effective locutions which struck his fancy in the course of his readings. He willingly distilled the perfume from a predecessor’s flower; and it was with pleasure that he cut and set the gem which an earlier writer may have brought to light. Witty himself, he could boldly conquer and annex the wit of others, sure to increase its value by his orderly government. This can perhaps be justified on the ground that the rich can borrow with impunity; or, deeming wit his patrimony, Sheridan may have felt that, taking it, he was but come into his own again; as Molière said, “I take my own where I find it.” In the preface to the Rivals, however, Sheridan has chosen to meet the charge of plagiarism. “Faded ideas,” he said, “float in the fancy like half-forgotten dreams, and the imagination in its fullest enjoyments becomes suspicious of its offspring, and doubts whether it has created or adopted.” It is a curious coincidence that this very passage is quoted by Burgoyne to explain his accidental adoption, in the Heiress, of an image of Ariosto’s and Rousseau’s, which Byron did not scruple to use again in his monody on Sheridan himself:—

“Sighing that Nature formed but one such man,
And broke the die in moulding Sheridan.”

In the School for Scandal the construction, the ordering of the scenes, the development of the elaborate plot, is much better than in the comedies of any of Sheridan’s contemporaries. A play in those days need not reveal a complete and self-contained plot. Great laxity of episode was not only permitted, but almost praised; and that Sheridan, with a subject which lent itself so readily to digression, should have limited himself as he did, shows his exact appreciation of the source of dramatic effect. But it must be confessed that the construction of the School for Scandal when measured by our modern standards, seems a little loose—a little diffuse, perhaps. It shows the welding of the two distinct plots. There can hardly be seen in it the ruling of a dominant idea, subordinating all the parts to the effect of the whole. But, although the two original motives have been united mechanically, although they have not flowed and fused together in the hot spurt of homogeneous inspiration, the joining has been so carefully concealed, and the whole structure has been overlaid with so much wit, that few people after seeing the play would care to complain. The wit is ceaseless; and wit like Sheridan’s would cover sins of construction far greater than those of the School for Scandal. It is “steeped in the very brine of conceit, and sparkles like salt in the fire.”

In his conception of character Sheridan was a wit rather than a humorist. He created character by a distinctly intellectual process; he did not bring it forth out of the depths, as it were, of his own being. His humour—fine and dry as it was—was the humour of the wit. He had little or none of the rich and juicy, nay, almost oily humour of Falstaff, for instance. His wit was the wit of common-sense, like Jerrold’s or Sydney Smith’s; it was not wit informed with imagination, like Shakespeare’s wit. But this is only to say again that Sheridan was not one of the few worldwide and all-embracing geniuses. He was one of those almost equally few who in their own line, limited though it may be, are unsurpassed. It has been said that poets—among whom dramatists are entitled to stand—may be divided into three classes: those who can say one thing in one way—these are the great majority; those who can say one thing in many ways—even these are not so many as they would be reckoned generally; and those who can say many things in many ways—these are the chosen few, the scant half-dozen who hold the higher peak of Parnassus. In the front rank of the second class stood Sheridan. The one thing he had was wit—and of this in all its forms he was master. His wit in general had a metallic smartness and a crystalline coldness; it rarely lifts us from the real to the ideal; and yet the whole comedy is in one sense, at least, idealized; it bears, in fact, the resemblance to real life that a well-cut diamond has to a drop of water.

Yet, the play is not wholly cold. Sheridan’s wit could be genial as well as icy—of which there could be no better proof than the success with which he has enlisted our sympathies for the characters of his comedy. Sir Peter Teazle is an old fool, who has married a young wife; but we are all glad when we see a prospect of his future happiness. Lady Teazle is flighty and foolish; and yet we cannot help but like her. Charles we all wish well; and as for Joseph, we feel from the first so sure of his ultimate discomfiture, that we are ready to let him off with the light punishment of exposure. There are, it is true, here and there blemishes to be detected on the general surface, an occasional hardness of feeling, an apparent lack, at times, of taste and delicacy—for instance, the bloodthirsty way in which the scandalmongers pounce upon their prey, the almost brutal expression by Lady Teazle of her willingness to be a widow, the ironical speech of Charles after the fall of the screen; but these are more the fault of the age than of the author.

The great defect of the School for Scandal—the one thing which shows the difference between a comic writer of the type of Sheridan and a great dramatist like Shakespeare is the unvarying wit of the characters. And not only are the characters all witty, but they all talk alike. Their wit is Sheridan’s wit, which is very good wit indeed; but it is Sheridan’s own, and not Sir Peter Teazle’s, or Backbite’s, or Careless’s, or Lady Sneerwell’s. It is one man in his time playing many parts. It is the one voice always; though the hands be the hands of Esau, the voice is the voice of Jacob. And this quick wit and ready repartee is not confined to the ladies and gentlemen; the master is no better off than the man, and Careless airs the same wit as Charles. As Sheridan said in the Critic, he was “not for making slavish distinctions in a free country, and giving all the fine language to the upper sort of people.” It is a fact that the characters all talk too well; the comedy would be far less entertaining if they did not. The stage is not life, and it is not meant to be; a mere transcript of ordinary talk would be insufferable. Condensation is necessary; and selection also, and a heightening and brightening of talk. No doubt Sheridan pushed this license to its utmost limit—at times even beyond it; but in consequence his comedy, if a little less artistic in the reading, is far more lively in the acting. It has been said that in Shakespeare we find not the language we would use in the situations, but the language we should wish to use—that we should talk so if we could. We cannot all of us be as witty as the, characters of the School for Scandal but who of us would not if he could?

Wit of this kind is not to be had without labour. Because Sheridan sometimes borrowed, it does not follow that he was incapable of originating; or, because he always prepared when possible, that he was incapable of impromptu. But he believed in doing his best on all occasions. If caught unawares, his natural wit was ready; if, however, he had time for preparation, he spared no pains. He grudged no labour. He was willing to heat and hammer again and again—to file, and polish, and adjust, and oil, until the delicate machinery ran smoothly, and to the satisfaction even of his fastidious eye. Even in his early youth Sheridan had the faculty of toiling over his work to his immediate improvement; his friend Halhed complimented him on this in a letter written in 1770. As Sheridan himself said in two lines of Clio’s Protest, published in 1770 a couplet often credited to Rogers:

“You write with ease, to show your breeding,
But easy writing ’s curst hard reading.”

The School for Scandal was not easy writing then, and it is not hard reading now. Not content with a wealth of wit alone—for he did not hold with the old maxim which says that jests, like salt, should be used sparingly; he salted with a lavish hand, and his plays have perhaps been preserved to us by this Attic salt—he sought the utmost refinement of language. An accomplished speaker himself, he smoothed every sentence till it ran trippingly on the tongue. His dialogue is easy to speak as his songs are easy to sing. To add in any way to the lustre and brilliance of the slightest sentence of the School for Scandal, to burnish a bit of dialogue, or brighten a soliloquy, could never cost Sheridan, lazy though he was, too much labour. “This kind of writing,” as M. Taine says, “artificial and condensed as the satires of La Bruyere, is like a cut vial, into which the author has distilled, without reservation, all his reflections, his reading, his understanding.” That this is true of Sheridan is obvious. In the School for Scandal he has done the best he could; he put into it all he had in him; it is the complete expression of his genius; beyond it he could not go.

After its first great success, the School for Scandal was not long in crossing to America; and its usual luck followed it to these shores. Ireland, in his admirable Records of the New York Stage, which it is always a duty and a pleasure to praise, noted what was probably its first performance in New York, on the evening of December 16, 1785, and on this occasion the comedy was cast to the full strength of the best company which had been then seen in America. Its success was instant and emphatic; and from that day to this it has never ceased to hold a first place among acting plays. It became at once the standard by which other successful plays were to be measured. Comedies were announced as “equal to the School for Scandal, or to any play of the century, the School for Scandal not excepted.” This sort of “odorous comparison” continued to obtain for many years, and when some indiscreet admirer likened Mrs. Mowatt’s Fashion to Sheridan’s comedy, Poe took occasion to point out that the general tone of Fashion was adopted from the School for Scandal, to which, however, it bore, he said, just such affinity as the shell of the locust to the locust that tenants it, “as the spectrum of a Congreve rocket to the Congreve rocket itself.” It does not, however, need a cruel critic to show us how unfair it was to compare Mrs. Mowatt’s pretty but pretentious play with the Congreve rockets and the Congreve wit of Sheridan’s masterpiece. That the School for Scandal was the favourite play of Washington, who was fond of the theatre, has been recorded by Mrs. Whitelock (the sister of Sarah Siddons and of John Kemble, and for a time the leading tragic actress of America). And in one point in particular are these last-century performances in this country of especial interest to the student of American dramatic literature. On April 16, 1786, was first acted in this city the Contrast, a comedy in five acts, by Royal Tyler, afterward Chief Justice of Vermont. It was the first American play performed on the public stage by professional comedians. It contained in Jonathan, acted by Wignell, the first of stage Yankees, and the precursor, therefore, of Asa Trenchard, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, and Judge Bardwell Slote. Perhaps a short extract from the play, which was published in 1790, will show its connection with the School for Scandal. Jonathan, green and innocent, and holding the theatre to be the “devil’s drawing room,” gets into it, however, in the belief that he is going to see a conjurer:—

It was in America also that two of the most noteworthy incidents in the career of the School for Scandal occurred. One took place during a visit to this country of Macready, who, early accustomed to enact the heavy villains of the stage, took a fancy to the part of Joseph, and, not finding it as prominent as he liked, sought to rectify this defect by boldly cutting down the other characters; and thus with the excision of the scandal-scene, the picturescene, and several other scenes, the School for Scandal, reduced to three acts, was played as an afterpiece, with Macready, very imperfect in the words of the part, as Joseph, dressed in the black coat and trousers of the nineteenth century. It may be remembered that Macready’s greater predecessor as the chief of English tragedians, John Philip Kemble, was also wont to act in the School for Scandal; but he chose to appear as the more jovial and younger of the Surfaces, and his performance of the careless hero was known as “Charles’s Martyrdom.”

The second noteworthy incident was the performance of the School for Scandal, on the centenary of its first production, on May 8, 1877, at the Grand Opera House, Toronto, in the presence of the Governor General of Canada, Lord Dufferin, the greatgrandson of the author.

In the same year that this memorable performance took place in a former French province, Miss Genevieve Ward, an American actress, appeared as Lady Teazle in Paris in a French version; and the foremost of Parisian dramatic critics, Francisque Sarcey seized the opportunity for a most interesting appreciation of the play. He considered it one of the best of the second class, and, as in his view the first class would contain few plays but those of Shakespeare and Molière, this is high praise. He ranked the School for Scandal with the Mariage de Figaro, and instituted the comparison of Sheridan with Beaumarchais, which Taine had already attempted. But Sarcey held a more just as well as a more favourable opinion of the School for Scandal than Taine. An earlier French critic, Villemain, who edited a close translation of the play for the series of foreign masterpieces, declared it to be one of the most amusing and most wittily-comic plays which can anywhere be seen, and he hit upon one of its undoubted merits when he pointed out that its “wit is so radically comic that it can be translated, which, as all know, is the most perilous trial for wit possible.” Sarcey informed us that the School for Scandal is now and has been for years, used as a textbook in French schools, and that he himself was taught to read English out of Sheridan’s play. Such was also the opinion of M. Hégésippe Cler, who published a French translation of the School for Scandal in 1879, with a preface, in which he declared that Sheridan’s comedy, was particularly French, nay, even Parisian, and that it is absolutely harmless and fitted exactly for use in teaching in schools for girls. Oddly enough this is the exact reverse of the opinion of the French critics of a century ago. In 1788 the auction and screen scenes had been introduced into a little piece called the Deux Neveux; a year later a translation in French by Delille, with the permission, apparently, of Sheridan himself, was published in London. Certain episodes were utilized in the Portraits de Famille, the Deux Cousins and Valsain et Florville; and finally, in 1789, a version of the whole play by Pluteau was acted as L’Homme Sentimental—but the subject was too risky, and the scenes were too broad for the fastidious taste of the Parisians. Even Grimm was shocked by it and one would think it took much to shock Grimm. A second adaptation was produced at the Theatre Francais; it was called the Tartuffe des Moeurs. A few years later, yet another version, L’Ecole du Scandale., by two melodramatic writers, Crosnier and Jouslin de la Salle, was acted at the Porte St.-Martin Theatre, with the pathetic Mme. Dorval as Milady Tizlé. Oddly enough it was Mme. Dorval’s husband, Merle, who was the cause of the first performance in France of the School for Scandal in English by English actors. Merle was one of the managers of the Port St.-Martin Theatre in 1822; and he arranged for a series of performances by the company of the Brighton Theatre, then managed by Mr. Penley. The British comedians opened their season with Othello; but it was only seven years after Waterloo, and Shakespeare was stormily received. For the second performance Sheridan took Shakespeare’s place, and the School for Scandal was announced for Friday, August 2, 1822. But the day was unlucky, and the mob which took possession of the theatre would not allow the English comedy to be acted at all. It is interesting to note the change which took place in France in the short space of five years. In 1827, when the Covent Garden company appeared at the Odeon Theatre, they met with a cordial welcome; and they began their season with Sheridan’s other comedy, the Rivals.

The Germans were not behind the French in the enjoyment of the School for Scandal. Shröder, the actor and author, went from Vienna to London—no small journey, in the eighteenth century—expressly for the purpose of seeing it acted. He understood English well, and attended every performance of the piece while he was in England. On his return to Vienna, he produced an adaptation—for it is such, and not a translation, though the spirit of the original is well preserved—which has held the German stage ever since. The texture of the School for Scandal, its solidity of situation, its compact and easily comprehensible plot, and its ceaseless play of wit, “a sort of El Dorado of wit,” as Moore calls it, “where the precious metal is thrown about by all classes as carelessly as if they had not the least idea of its value,” these were all qualities sure to commend it to German audiences as to French. Macready records himself as having seen in Venice an Italian version of the play that by Carpani, probably which could hardly have followed the original as closely as was to be desired; but the strength of the situations and the contrast of the characters would always carry the piece through in any language and in spite of any alterations. There are translations of the School for Scandal in many other languages. In 1877 it was acted with success in Dutch at the Hague; and in 1884 a Gujarati version, adapted to modern Parsee life by Mr. K. N. Kabrajee, was produced, also with success, at the Esplanade Theatre in Bombay.

Tell me, ye prim adepts in Scandal’s school,
Who rail by precept, and detract by rule,
Lives there no character, so tried, so known,
So deck’d with grace, and so unlike your own,
That even you assist her fame to raise,
Approve by envy, and by silence praise!
Attend!—a model shall attract your view—
Daughters of calumny, I summon you!
You shall decide if this a portrait prove,
Or fond creation of the Muse and Love.
Attend, ye virgin critics, shrewd and sage,
Ye matron censors of this childish age,
Whose peering eye and wrinkled front declare
A fixt antipathy to young and fair;
By cunning, cautious; or by nature, cold,
In maiden madness, virulently bold!—
Attend! ye skilled to coin the precious tale,
Creating proof, where innuendos fail!
Whose practised memories, cruelly exact,
Omit no circumstance, except the fact!—
Attend, all ye who boast—or old or young—
The living libel of a slanderous tongue!
So shall my theme as far contrasted be,
As saints by fiends, or hymns by calumny.
Come, gentle Amoret (for ’neath that name,
In worthier verse is sung thy beauty’s fame);
Come—for but thee who seeks the Muse? and while
Celestial blushes check thy conscious smile,
With timid grace, and hesitating eye,
The perfect model, which I boast, supply:—
Vain Muse! couldst thou the humblest sketch create
Of her, or slightest charm couldst imitate—
Could thy blest strain in kindred colours trace
The faintest wonder of her form and face—
Poets would study the immortal line,
And Reynolds own his art subdued by thine;
That art, which well might added lustre give
To Nature’s best and Heaven’s superlative:
On Granby’s cheek might bid new glories rise,
Or point a purer beam from Devon’s eyes!
Hard is the task to shape that beauty’s praise,
Whose judgment scorns the homage flattery pays!
But praising Amoret we cannot err,
No tongue o’ervalues Heaven, or flatters her!
Yet she, by Fate’s perverseness—she alone
Would doubt our truth, nor deem such praise her own!
Adorning Fashion, unadorn’d by dress,
Simple from taste, and not from carelessness;
Discreet in gesture, in deportment mild,
Not stiff with prudence, nor uncouthly wild:
No state has Amoret; no studied mien;
She frowns no goddess, and she moves no queen.
The softer charm that in her manner lies
Is framed to captivate, yet not surprise;
It justly suits th’ expression of her face—
’Tis less than dignity, and more than grace!
On her pure cheek the native hue is such,
That, form’d by Heaven to be admired so much,
The hand divine, with a less partial care,
Might well have fix’d a fainter crimson there,
And bade the gentle inmate of her breast—
Inshrined Modesty—supply the rest.
But who the peril of her lips shall paint?
Strip them of smiles—still, still all words are faint,
But moving Love himself appears to teach
Their action, though denied to rule her speech;
And thou who seest her speak and dost not hear,
Mourn not her distant accents ’scape thine ear;
Viewing those lips, thou still may’st make pretence
To judge of what she says, and swear ’tis sense:
Cloth’d with such grace, with such expression fraught,
They move in meaning, and they pause in thought!
But dost thou farther watch, with charm’d surprise,
The mild irresolution of her eyes,
Curious to mark how frequent they repose,
In brief eclipse and momentary close—
Ah! seest thou not an ambush’d Cupid there,
Too tim’rous of his charge, with jealous care
Veils and unveils those beams of heavenly light,
Too full, too fatal else, for mortal sight?
Nor yet, such pleasing vengeance fond to meet,
In pard’ning dimples hope a safe retreat.
What though her peaceful breast should ne’er allow
Subduing frowns to arm her alter’d brow,
By Love, I swear, and by his gentle wiles,
More fatal still the mercy of her smiles!
Thus lovely, thus adorn’d, possessing all
Of bright or fair that can to woman fall,
The height of vanity might well be thought
Prerogative in her, and Nature’s fault.
Yet gentle Amoret, in mind supreme
As well as charms, rejects the vainer theme;
And, half mistrustful of her beauty’s store,
She barbs with wit those darts too keen before:—
Read in all knowledge that her sex should reach,
Though Greville, or the Muse, should deign to teach,
Fond to improve, nor timorous to discern
How far it is a woman’s grace to learn;
In Millar’s dialect she would not prove
Apollo’s priestess, but Apollo’s love,
Graced by those signs which truth delights to own,
The timid blush, and mild submitted tone:
Whate’er she says, though sense appear throughout,
Displays the tender hue of female doubt;
Deck’d with that charm, how lovely wit appears,
How graceful science, when that robe she wears!
Such too her talents, and her bent of mind,
As speak a sprightly heart by thought refined:
A taste for mirth, by contemplation school’d,
A turn for ridicule, by candour ruled,
A scorn of folly, which she tries to hide;
An awe of talent, which she owns with pride!
Peace, idle Muse! no more thy strain prolong,
But yield a theme thy warmest praises wrong;
Just to her merit, though thou canst not raise
Thy feeble verse, behold th’ acknowledged praise
Has spread conviction through the envious train,
And cast a fatal gloom o’er Scandal’s reign!
And lo! each pallid hag, with blister’d tongue,
Mutters assent to all thy zeal has sung—
Owns all the colours just—the outline true;
Thee my inspirer, and my model—Crewe!