At twenty-four this favorite of fortune had written that play which drew all London to see Captain Absolute; at twenty-five he had become half owner of that great theatre of Drury Lane, from whose till the hands of Garrick had drawn out a great fortune, and from which Richard Sheridan was to draw, often--more than was fairly in it. Meantime he had inspired, and, in connection with his father-in-law, had composed, the comic opera of the _Duenna_, whose success was enormous, and whose bouncing bits of lyrical jingle have come quivering through all the _couloirs_ of intervening days, to ours: instance,-- {199} "I ne'er could any lustre see In eyes that would not look on me. Is her hand so soft and pure? I must press it to be sure." Then comes the _School for Scandal_, and--two years later--the _Critic_; and always the steaming suppers and the singing of many sirens, and deeper thrusts into the till of Old Drury; stockholders may wince and creditors too; but who shall gainsay or doubt the imperial genius who is winged with victory? Garrick, whose days of conquest are nearly over--is his friend; so is Burke, won by his wit, and by his rolling Irish r's; Goldsmith acknowledges his sovereignty: Dr. Johnson veils dislike of his radicalism and of his tirades against taxation, as he welcomes him to the Club. In 1780, while still under thirty, he entered Parliament (for Stafford) and posed there for new conquests. There came frequent occasions for the interjection of his witty collocation of apothegms, lighted by his brilliant elocution; but there was not much in his parliamentary career to attract national attention until the debates opened with reference to the Warren Hastings impeachment. {200} These offered topics which appealed to his emotional nature, and under the indoctrination and the coaching of Burke, he made such appeal for the far-off, down-trodden princesses of India as electrified the nation. "Whatever the acuteness of the bar, the dignity of the Senate, or the morality of the pulpit could furnish [in eloquence] had not been equal to it." This was the verdict of so good a judge as Burke. Yet, reading this speech--or so much of it as the records show--or those others which followed,[7] when the great trial had opened in Westminster Hall, we find it hard to understand the enthusiasm of the old plaudits. There is wit, indeed, in whatever work warms him to a glow; old truisms get a setting in his oratorio reaches which make them gleam like diamonds; but there is none of that logical method {201} which wraps one around with convictions; but in place of it a beautiful mass of rhetorical spray, that delights and refreshes and passes--like a summer cloud.