The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-11-29 00:00:00

ESTIMATE OP SiIERIDAN'S OHARA CTEE.

Sheridan came forth originally under the most un-
favourable auspices. He was the son of a ranting, strolling
manager---half elocutionist, half player—the most un-
fortunate of hybrids, whose memory now lives entirely
through Boswell, and through the gifted race who have
sprung from him. Young Sheridan had no patrimony—
not a shilling, indeed, all his life that he could call his
own. He had a very imperfect education ; although this,
indeed, was partly his own fault, for his master was Parr.
But he was forced, at the age of 18, through his father's
embarrassments, to quit school for ever; and then, with
nothing but his wits, and without moneyicredit,learning,
character, paternal prestige, or moral -training, he was
flung a very orphan upon the world, to battle with or to
trick it as he best could. He had not the heroism or per-
severance to try the first : he determined on the latter ;
and, like Napoleon in his campaign of 1814—who gained
victories without an army, and made manoeuvres supply
the lack of men—Sheridan for forty-six years lived upon
stratagem, cajolery, cleverness, and impudence. His life
resembled French cookery, by the skill of which a nettle
or two, a bone or two, sometimes supply materials for
splendid dinners, and are made to feed large and hungry
companies. So Sheridan, without a sixpence, contrived
to spend thousands ; without much original wit, passed
for the first comic writer of his century ; without any
political science, managed to embroil all the parties in the
country ; without an atom of imagination, got the credit
of being a genius • with no conversational power, became
celebrated as a talker ; and with only the faculty of simu-
lating sympathy, was rated, as an orator, above Fox,
Pitt, and Burke.
Most dexterous of charlatans, most magnificent of
mimics, certainly Sheridan wert thou! In all-sided
similation, thou didst stand unrivalled and alone ! Thou
wouldst have volunteered to do (and could 4 have in a
measure done) anything: construe a Greek play, without
a word of Greek ; give a Latin oration, or quote Lucretius,
without having ever advanced farther than the rudiments ;
preach a sermon on any subject at an hour's notice; solve
any problem in "'Euclid," or in " Newton's Fluxions,"
without having ever crossed the Pons Asinorum ; plead a
complicated cause, as that of Hastings, "without a bag"
(trusting to thy power of " abusing Ned Law, ridiculing
Plumer's long orations, making the court laugh, and
pleasing the women !"); and support both sides of any
question according to whim, and without understanding
either ;—such, or similar, feats were easy to thee, un-
ballasted as thou wert by an atom of conscience, and filled
as thy sails were by the breath of boundless assurance and
the unmeasured spirit of wine ! What a pity that this
world had been anything else than a jest and a gala-day,
then thou hadst completely filled thy sphere, and gained
laurels inferior only to those of Momus, or of Bacchus, as
he returned from the conquest of India ! But, alas !it is
a " serious thing to live, as well as to die," and men will
sometimes say of laughter, "it is mad," and of mirth,
" what doth it profit ?"
The above estimate of poor Sheridan is greatly
overcharged with gall ; his genius, it must be and
will readily be admitted, was not of the towering
and impressive character which stamps its own
features on the age, or which gives a peculiar turn
to men's thoughts. Still he was a man of great
and readily applicable talent ; of wonderful versa-
tility, and boundless resource. The feeling of over-
severity displayed throughout the article appears
even to have weighed upon the writer's own sense
of justice, and he endeavours to atone for it in the
following strictures upon