Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, a distinguished dramatist and politician, was born at Dublin in the month of September 1757, and baptized in St Mary’s Church on the fourth of the following month. His grandfather and father each attained a celebrity, by the friendship with which the former was honoured by Swift, and by the competition, and even rivalry, which the latter so long maintained with Garrick. His mother, too, was a woman of considcrable talents. Her affecting novel, Sidney Biddulph, could boast amongst its panegyrists Mr Fox and Lord North; and in the tale of Nourjahad she employed the graces of oriental fiction to deceive her readers into a taste for true happiness and virtue.

At the age of seven years, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was, with his eldest brother Charles Francis, placed under the tuition of Mr Samuel Whyte of Grafton Street, Dublin; and after being little more than a year under his care, they were removed to England, where Mr and Mrs Sheridan had lately gone to reside. In the year 1762, Richard was sent to Harrow, Charles being kept at home as a fitter subject for the instructions of the father. At that time, Dr Sumner was at the head of the school, and Dr Parr, who to the massy erudition of a former age joined the free and enlightened intelligence of the present, was one of the under masters. Both he and Dr Sumner endeavoured, by all possible means, to awaken in Sheridan a consciousness of those powers which he manifestly possessed; but remonstrance and encouragement were equally thrown away upon the good-humoured indifference of their pupil. One of the most valuable acquisitions he derived from Harrow, however, was that friendship with Dr Parr, which lasted throughout his life, and which identity of political opinion tended not a little to invigorate.

On his leaving Harrow, where he continued until about his eighteenth year, he was brought home by his father, who, with the elder son, Charles, had lately returned from France, and taken a house in London. Here the two brothers for some time received private tuition from Mr Lewis Kerr, an Irish gentleman, who had formerly practised as a physician; and they also attended the fencing and riding schools of Mr Angelo, at the same time receiving from their father instructions in English grammar and oratory. Of this advantage, however, the elder son appears alone to have availed himself; and Richard, determined to owe all to nature, was found as impracticable a pupil at home as at school. But, however inattentive to his studies he may have been at Harrow, it is evident, from a letter of his school-fellow, Mr Halhed, that he had already distinguished himself in poetry, and, in conjunction with his friend, had translated the seventh Idyl, and many of the lesser poems of Theocritus. In the year 1770, when Halhed was at Oxford, and Sheridan with his father at Bath, they commenced a correspondence (of which Halhed’s share only remains), and, with all the hope and spirit of young adventurers, began and prosecuted several works, of which none but their translation of Aristaenetus ever saw the light.

In this copartnership of genius, their first joint production was a play in three acts, called Jupiter, written in imitation of the burletta of Midas. Of this piece Halhed, who had furnished the burlesque scenes, entertained great hopes; nor were those of Sheridan less earnest and sanguine; yet that habit of dilatoriness, which is too often attendant upon genius, and which, throughout life, was remarkable in the character of Mr Sheridan, prevailed so far, that though he received from his friend the sketch of this piece in 1770, it was not till May next year that the probability of the arrival of the manuscript was announced to Mr Foote. Another of their projects was a periodical miscellany, the idea of which originated with Sheridan. The title intended by him for this paper was Herman’s Miscellany, to which Halhed objected, and proposed The Reformer, as a newer and better name. But this paper, for want of auxiliaries, never proceeded beyond the first number, which was written by Sheridan. It is the characteristic of fools to be always beginning; and this is not the only point in which folly and genius resemble each other. Amongst the many literary works projected by Sheridan at this period, were a collection of Occasional Poems, and a volume of Crazy Tales, to the former of which Halhed suggests, that “the old things they did at Harrow, out of Theocritus,” might form a useful contribution. But neither of these came to any thing; and the translation of Aristaenetus was the only fruit of their literary alliance that, as we have already stated, ever arrived at sufficient maturity for publication.

The passion, however, that now began to take possession of his heart was little favourable to his advancement in serious studies. In the neighbourh∞d of Miss Linley, the arts and the sciences were suffered to fall asleep, and even the translation of Aristaenetus itself proceeded but slowly. After various fortune, however, it at length made its appearance in August 1771, contrary to the advice of the bookseller, and, as it might have been expected, from the unpropitious season at which it appeared, complete failure was the consequence. The disappointment of the authors was no doubt proportioned to the sanguine expectations they had indulged. But as to Mr Sheridan, he sought for consolation in the society of Miss Linley, who had now become the star of his attraction, and the centre round which revolved all his hopes. This lady, indeed, notwithstanding the drawback of her profession as a singer, appears to have spread her gentle conquests to an extent almost unparalleled in the annals of beauty. “Her personal charms, the exquisiteness of her musical talents, and the full light of publicity which her profession threw upon both,” says Mr Moore, “naturally attracted round her a crowd of admirers, in whom the sympathy of common pursuit soon kindled into rivalry, till she became at length an object of vanity as well as of love. Her extreme youth, too (for she was little more than sixteen when Sheridan first met her), must have removed, even from minds the most fastidious and delicate, that repugnance they might have justly felt to her profession, if she had lived much longer under its tarnishing influence, or lost, by frequent exhibitions before the public, that fine gloss of feminine modesty, for whose absence not all the talents and accomplishments of the whole sex can atone.”[7:20:201] Even at this early age, she had been on the point of marriage with Mr Long, an old gentleman of considerable fortune in Wiltshire; but, on her secretly representing to him, that she never could be happy as his wife, he generously took upon himself the whole blame of breaking off the alliance, and even indemnified the father by settling L.3000 upon his daughter. Mr Sheridan, who owed to this liberality not only the possession of the woman he loved, but the means of supporting her during the first years of their marriage, uniformly spoke of Mr Long with all the kindness and respect which such a disinterested character merited. Meanwhile, in love, as in all besides, the power of a mind like Sheridan’s made itself felt through all obstacles; and he won the entire affections of the Syren, though the number and wealth of his rivals, amongst whom were a brother and friend, the ambitious views of the father, and the temptations to which she was hourly exposed, kept his fears and jealousies continually on the watch. But, whilst this was the case, a new and unexpected difficulty awaited him.

Captain Mathews, a married man, and intimate with Miss Linley’s family, had for some time harassed her with those discreditable addresses, which it is equally painful to disclose and intolerable to endure. To the threat of self-destruction, he is said to have added the still more unmanly menace of ruining her reputation, if he could not undermine her virtue. Terrified by his perseverance, she confided her distresses to Sheridan, who lost no time in expostulating with him upon the cruelty, libertinism, and hopelessness of his pursuit. Such a remonstrance, however, was but little calculated to conciliate the forbearance of this professed man of gallantry; so that, early in 1772, Miss Linley adopted the resolution of flying to France, and taking refuge in a convent. At this time Sheridan was little more than twenty, and Miss Linley just entering her eighteenth year. Landing at Dunkirk, they proceeded to Lisle, where they procured an apartment in a convent, with the intention of remaining there until Sheridan should have the means of supporting her as his wife. On the first discovery of the elopement, Mathews busied himself making inquiries into the affair. During the four or five weeks that the young couple «’ere absent, he never ceased to haunt the Sheridan family with all sorts of exaggerated rumours; and at length, urged on by the restlessness of revenge, he inserted a violent and inflammatory advertisement in the Bath Chronicle, in which he publicly posted Mr Sheridan as a scoundrel and a liar. The consequences of this were such as might have been expected. The party now returned from the Continent, and, without loss of time, Sheridan called out Mathews. His second on the occasion was Mr Ewart, and the particulars of the duel, which was fought with swords, are stated by himself in a letter addressed to Captain Knight, the second of Mathews. From this it appears that Mathews, being worsted, was obliged to beg his life; after which he signed an ample apology, in which he retracted the expressions he had made use of, as “the effects of passion and misrepresentation,” and begged pardon for his advertisement in the Bath Chronicle.

With the odour of this transaction fresh about him, Mr Mathews retired to his estate in Wales, and there found himself universally shunned. An apology may be, according to circumstances, either the noblest effort of manliness, or the last resource of fear; and, from the reception which this gentleman everywhere experienced, it is evident that to the latter class of cases his late retraction had been referred. In this crisis, a Mr Barnett, who had but lately come to reside in his neighbourhood, took upon himself the duty of urging a second meeting with Sheridan, as the only means of removing the stigma left by the first; offering, at the same time, to be the bearer of the challenge. This offer was accepted, and the parties met at Kingsdown, where a desperate encounter ensued, in which Mr Sheridan’s sword was broken, and himself severely wounded. A narrative of this affair, drawn up by Mr Barnett, and sanctioned by the concurrence of Captain Paumier (Sheridan’s friend) in the truth of its material facts, was soon afterwards published; whilst the comments which Sheridan thought it necessary to make have been found in an unfinished state amongst his papers. As soon as Sheridan was sufficiently recovered of his wounds, bis father sent him to pass some months at Waltham Abbey, Essex, where he continued, with but a few short intervals of absence, from August or September

1772, till the spring of the following year.

During this period, he evinced considerable industry, particularly in an abstract which he made of the History of England, and in a collection of remarks on Sir William Temple’s works, especially his essay on Popular Discontents, on which his observations are tasteful and just. Still his situation was at this lime singularly perplexing. He had won the heart, and even the hand, of the woman he loved, yet saw his hopes of possessing her farther off than ever. He had twice risked his life against an unworthy antagonist, yet found the vindication of his honour incomplete. He felt within himself all the proud consciousness of genius, yet, thrown upon the world without a profession, he looked in vain for a channel through which to direct its energies. Even the precarious hope which his father’s favour held out had been purchased by an act of duplicity, which his conscience condemned; for he not only had promised that he would instantly abandon the pursuit, but had even taken an oath that he would never marry Miss Linley. To a mind so young and so ardent, the pressure of these various anxieties must, of course, have been great; in fact they could only have been adequately described by him who felt them; and there still exist some letters, written by him during this time, which betray a sadness and despondency, sometimes breaking out into aspirings of ambition, sometimes rising even into a tone of cheerfulness, that ill concealed the melancholy underneath. But it was impossible that Sheridan could be always under a cloud. Misunderstandings there no doubt were, arising probably from those paroxysms of jealousy into which he must have been continually thrown; but reconcilement was with no great difficulty effected; and at length Mr Linley, convinced that it was impossible to keep them much longer asunder, consented to their union, which took place on the 13th of April

1773.

A few weeks previous to his marriage, Sheridan had been entered a student of the Middle Temple. It was not to be expected, however, that talents like his would submit to toil for the distant and dearly-earned emoluments which a life of labour in this profession might secure; nor, indeed, did his circumstances admit of any such patient speculation. A part of the sum which Mr Long had settled upon Miss Linley, and occasional assistance from her father, were now the only resources left him, besides his own talents. Mrs Sheridan’s celebrity as a singer was a ready source of wealth, and offers of the most advantageous kind were pressed upon them by the managers of concerts, both in town and country. But her husband at once rejected all thoughts of allowing her to re-appear in public, and, instead of profiting by the display of his wife’s talents, adopted the manlier resolution of seeking independence by his own. How decided his mind was upon the subject, appears by a letter written to Mr Linley about a month after the marriage. At East Burnham, whence this letter is dated, they were no«· living in a small cottage, to which they had retired immediately on their marriage; and to it they often looked back with a sigh, in after times, when they were more prosperous and less happy. Towards winter they went to lodge for a short time with Storace, the intimate friend of Mr Linley, and in the following year attained that first step[7:20:202] towards independence, a house to themselves. During the summer of 1774, they passed some time at Mr Canning’s and Lord Coventry’s; but so little did these visits interfere with the literary industry of Mr Sheridan, that he had not only at that time finished his play of the Rivals, but was on the point of “sending a book to press.”

On the 17th of January 1775, the comedy of the Rivals was brought out at Covent Garden. This play failed on its first representation, chiefly owing to the bad acting of Mr Lee in Sir Lucius O’Trigger. Another actor was, however, substituted in his stead, and the play being lightened of this and some other incumbrances, rose at once in public favour and patronage. The best comment on this lively play is to be found in the many smiling faces that are lighted up whenever it appears. With much less wit, it exhibits more humour than the School for Scandal, and the dialogue is more natural, as coming nearer the current of ordinary conversation. The characters, however, are not such as occur very commonly in the world, and for our knowledge of them we are indebted to their confessions rather than to their actions. Lydia Languish, in proclaiming the extravagance of her own romantic notions, prepares us for events much more ludicrous and eccentric than those in which she is concerned; in the composition of Sir Lucius O’Trigger, his love of fighting is the only characteristic strongly brought out; and the wayward, captious jealousy of Falkland, though so highly coloured in his own representation, is productive of nothing answerable to such an announcement. The character of Sir Anthony Absolute is perhaps the best sustained and most natural of any, and the scenes between him and Captain Absolute are genuinely dramatic. Mrs Malaprop’s mistakes have often been objected as improbable from a woman in her rank of life; but though some of them are extravagant and farcical, they are almost all amusing; and the luckiness of her simile, “as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile,” has been acknowledged by all whose taste is not too refined to be moved by the genuine comic.

Mr Sheridan now employed the summer recess in writing the Duenna, whilst his father-in-law, Mr Linley, assisted in selecting and composing the music for it. In hands so willing, the work made speedy progress, and, on the 21 st November, the Duenna was performed at Covent Garden. The run of this opera has, we believe, no parallel in the annals of the drama. The Beggar’s Opera had a career of sixty-three nights; but the Duenna, more fortunate, was acted no less than seventy-five times during the season, the only intermissions being a few days at Christmas, and the Fridays in every week. In order to counteract this great success of the rival house, Garrick found it necessary to bring forward all the weight of his best characters; and he had even recourse to the expedient of playing off the mother against the son, by reviving Mrs Frances Sheridan’s comedy of the Discovery, and acting the leading character in it himself. The Duenna, in fact, is one of the very few operas in our language which combine the merits of legitimate comedy with the attractions of poetry and song. The “sovereign of the soul," as Gray calls music, always loses by being made exclusive sovereign; and the division of her empire with poetry and wit, as in the instance of the Duenna, doubles her real power. The intrigue of this piece is constructed and managed with considerable adroitness, having just material enough to form three acts, without being encumbered by too much intricacy, or weakened by too much extension. And as to the wit of the dialogue, except in one or two instances, it is of that accessible kind which lies near the surface, and which, as it is produced without effort, may be enjoyed without wonder.

Towards the close of the year 1775, Garrick intending to part with his moiety of the patent of Drury lame theatre, and retire from the stage, Mr Sheridan made him an offer as purchaser, and eventually became patentee and manager. The progress of the negociation cannot be better related than in some of Sheridan’s own letters, addressed to Mr Linley, which Mr Moore has printed. It appears, indeed, that the contract was perfected in June 1776; and in a paper drawn up by Mr Sheridan many years afterwards, the shares of the respective purchasers are thus stated, viz. Mr Sheridan, two fourteenths of the whole, L.10,000; Mr Linley, the same, L.10,000; and Dr Ford, three fourteenths, L.15,000. Whence Mr Sheridan’s supply came, or to whom he was indebted for this seasonable aid, has never been known. Not even to Mr Linley, whilst entering into all other details, does he hint at the fountain-head from which it was to come; and, indeed, there was something mysterious about all his acquisitions, whether in love or in learning, in wit or in wealth. Finally, in reference to this subject, the first contribution which the new manager furnished to the stock of the theatre was an alteration of Vanburgh’s comedy, the Relapse, which was brought out on the 24th of February 1777, under the title of a Trip to Scarborough.

Mr Sheridan was now approaching the summit of his dramatic fame. He had already produced the best opera in the language, and there now remained for him the glory of writing also the best comedy. As this is a species of composition which, more perhaps than any other, seems to require a knowledge of human nature and the world, it is not a little extraordinary that nearly all our first-rate comedies should have been the productions of very young men. Those of Congreve were all written before he was five-and-twenty. Farquhar produced the Constant Couple in his two-and-twentieth year, and died at thirty. Vanburgh was a young ensign when he sketched out the Relapse and the Provoked Wife; and Sheridan crowned his reputation with the School for Scandal at six-and-twenty. And it is still more remarkable to find, as in the instance before us, that works, which we might suppose to have been the offspring of a careless but vigorous fancy, should, on the contrary, have been the slow result of many doubtful experiments, gradually unfolding beauties unseen even by him who produced them, and at length arriving step by step at perfection. That the School for Scandal was produced by this tardy process, is evident from the sketches of its plan and dialogue which Mr Moore has produced, and which serve to throw a remarkable light on the first slow workings of genius, out of which its finest transmutations arise. The reader who may feel curious on this subject is referred to Mr Moore’s clear and masterly exposition. Suffice it to mention, that there are two distinct sketches, in the second of which particularly, is shown the condensing process which his wit must have gone through before it attained its present proof and flavour. There appear also to have been originally two plots, which the author incorporated into one; yet, even in the details of the new plan, considerable alterations were subsequently made, entire scenes suppressed or transposed, and the dialogue of some completely rewritten.

This play was produced on the 8th of May 1777, and its success was decided and triumphant. Indeed, long after its first uninterrupted run, it continued to be played regularly two or three times a week; and on comparing the receipts of the first twelve nights with those of a later period, it will appear how little the attraction of the piece had abated by repetition. The beauties of this comedy are so universally known, that it cannot be necessary to dwell upon them. With but little interest in the plot, no very profound or ingenious development of character, and a group of personages, not one of whom has any legitimate claims upon either our affection or esteem, it yet, by the admirable skill with which its materials are managed, the happy contrivance of the situations, that perpetual play of wit which never tires, and a finish almost faultless, it unites the suffrages at once of the refined and the simple, and is not less successful in[7:20:203] satisfying the tastes of the one, than in ministering to the enjoyment of the other. And this is the true triumph of genius in all the arts. In painting, sculpture, music, or literature, those works which have pleased the greatest number for the longest space of time, may be pronounced the best; for, however mediocrity may enshrine itself in the admiration of the few, the palm of excellence can only be awarded by the many. The defects of the School for Scandal, if they can be allowed to amount to defects, are in a great measure traceable to the amalgamation of two distinct plots, out of which the piece was formed. From this cause has devolved that excessive opulence with which the dialogue is almost overloaded, and which Sheridan himself used to mention as a fault which he was conscious of in his work. From beginning to end it is a continued sparkling of point and polish; and the whole of the characters might be comprehended under one common designation of wits, even Trip, the servant, being as shining and brilliant as the rest. “In short,” says Mr Moore, “the entire comedy is a sort of El Dorado of wit, where the precious metal is thrown about by all classes, as carelessly as if they had not the least idea of its value.”

Soon after the appearance of this comedy, Sheridan made a further purchase of theatrical property, amounting to L. 17,000; and amongst the visible signs of his increased influence in the affairs of the house, was the appointment, this year, of his father to be manager. At the beginning of the year 1779, Garrick died, and Sheridan, who had followed his body to the grave, wrote a monody to his memory, which was recited after the play in the month of March following. In the course of the same year he produced the entertainment of the Critic, which was his last legitimate offering at the shrine of the dramatic muse. In this incomparable farce, we have a striking instance of the privilege which genius assumes of taking up subjects that had passed through other hands, and giving them new value and currency. The plan of the Rehearsal was first adopted for the purpose of ridiculing Dryden; but although there is much laughable humour in some of the dialogue, the salt was not of a very conservative nature, and the piece continued to be served up to the public long after it had lost its relish. Fielding tried the same plan in a variety of productions, but without much success, except, perhaps, in the comedy of Pasquin. It was reserved for Sheridan to give vitality to this form of dramatic humour, and to invest even his satirical portraits with a generic, which, without weakening the particular resemblance, makes them representatives of the whole class to which the original belonged. Bayes, on the other hand, is a caricature made up of little more than personal peculiarities, but may amuse as long as reference may be had to the prototype, but fall lifeless the moment the individual that supplied them is no more.

Having terminated his dramatic career, in which he had been eminently successful, Sheridan now prepared to act a part in a widely different scene. His thoughts had been gradually drawn to the seducing subject of politics, on which he had tried his hand at some very fair remarks on absenteeism; he had also rendered some service to the party with which he had connected himself, by taking an active share in a periodical publication called the Englishman; and his first appearance before the public was made in conjunction with Mr Fox, at the beginning of 1780, when the Resolutions on the State of the Representation, together with a Heport on the same subject, were laid before the public. The dissolution of parliament, which took place in the autumn of 1780, at length afforded the opportunity to which his ambition had so eagerly looked forward; and Stafford was destined to have the honour of first choosing him for its representative. It is not our intention, however, to investigate his political with the same minuteness as his literary life; and this is the less necessary, seeing that the amplest narrative would probably be the heaviest, and that the masterly pen of Lord Brougham has sketched an outline which must be fully sufficient to satisfy the inquiries of the most curious and inquisitive.

“His first effort,” says Lord Brougham, “was unambitious, and it was unsuccessful. Aiming at but a low flight, he failed in that humble attempt. An experienced judge, Woodfall, told him it would never do; and counselled him to seek again the more congenial atmosphere of Drury Lane. But he was· resolved that it should do; he had taken his part; and as he felt the matter was in him, he vowed not to desist till he had brought it out. What he wanted in acquired learning and natural quickness, he made up by indefatigable industry. Within given limits, towards a present object, no labour could daunt him; no man could work for a season with more steady and unwearied application. By constant practice in small matters, or before private committees, by diligent attendance upon all debates, by habitual intercourse with all dealers in political wares, from the chiefs of parties and their more refined coteries, to the providers of daily discussion for the public, and the chroniclers of parliamentary speeches, he trained himself to a facility of speaking, absolutely essential to all but first-rate genius, and all but necessary even to that; and he acquired what acquaintance with the science of politics he ever possessed, or his speeches ever betrayed. By these steps he rose to the rank of a first-rate speaker, and as great a debater as a want of readiness, and need for preparation, would permit.

“He had some qualities which led him to this rank, and which only required the habit of speech to bring them out into successful exhibition; a warm imagination, though more prone to repeat with variations the combinations of others, or to combine anew their creations, than to bring forth original productions; it fierce, dauntless spirit of attack; a familiarity, acquired from his dramatic studies, with the feelings of the heart and the ways to touch its chords; a facility of epigram and point, the yet more direct gift of the same theatrical apprenticeship; an excellent manner, not unconnected with that experience; and a depth of voice which perfectly suited the tone of his declamation, be it invective, or be it descriptive, or be it impassioned. His wit, derived from the same source, or sharpened by the same previous habits, was eminently brilliant, and almost always successful. It was, like all his speaking, exceedingly prepared, but it was skilfully introduced, and happily applied; and it was well mingled also with humour, occasionally descending to farce. How little it was the inspiration of the moment, all men were aware who knew his habits; but a singular proof of this was presented by Mr Moore when he came to write his life; for we there find given to the world, with a frankness which must almost have made the author shake in his grave, the secret note-books of this famous wit; and are thus enabled to trace his jokes, in embryo, with which he had so often made the walls of St Stephen’s shake, in a merriment excited by the happy appearance of sudden unpremeditated effusion.

“The adroitness with which he turned to account sudden occasions of popular excitement, and often at the expense of the Whig party, generally too indifferent to such advantages, and too insensible to the damage they thus sustained in public estimation, is well known. On the mutiny in the fleet, he was beyond all question right; on the French invasion, and on the attacks upon Napoleon, he was almost as certainly wrong; but these appeals to the people, and to the national feelings of the House, tended to make the orator well received, if they added little to the statesman’s reputation; and of the latter character he was not ambitious. His most celebrated speech was certainly the one upon the Begum charge, in the proceedings against Hastings; and nothing can exceed the accounts left us of[7:20:204] its unprecedented success. Not only the practice then first began, which has gradually increased till it greets every good speech, of cheering, on the speaker resuming his seat, but the minister besought the House to adjourn the decision of the question, as being incapacitated from forming a just judgment under the influence of such powerful eloquence; whilst all men on all sides vied with each other in extolling so wonderful a performance. Nevertheless, the opinion has now become greatly prevalent, that a portion of this success was owing to the speech having so greatly surpassed all the speaker’s former efforts, to the extreme interest of the topics which the subject naturally presented, and to the artist-like elaboration and beautiful delivery of certain fine passages, rather than to the merits of the whole. Certain it is, that the repetition of great part of it, presented in the short-hand notes of the speech on the same charge, in Westminster Hall, disppoints every reader who has heard of the success which attended the earlier effort. In truth, Mr Sheridan’s taste was very far from being chaste, or even moderately correct. He delighted in gaudy figures; he was attracted by glare, and cared not whether the brilliancy came from tinsel or gold, from broken glass or pure diamond; he overlaid his thoughts with epigrammatic diction; he 'played to the galleries,’ and indulged them, of course, with an endless succession of claptraps. His worst passages by far were those which he evidently preferred himself, full of imagery, often far-fetched, oftener gorgeous, and loaded with point that drew the attention of the hearer away from the thoughts to the words; and his best by far were those where he declaimed, with his deep clear voice, though somewhat thick utterance, with a fierce defiance of some adversary, or an unappeasable vengeance against some oppressive act; or reasoned rapidly, in the like tone, upon some plain matter of fact, or exposed as plainly to homely ridicule some puerile sophism; and in all this his admirable manner was aided by an eye singularly piercing,^[1. It had the singularity of never winking. ] and a countenance which, though coarse, and even in some features gross, was yet animated and expressive, and could easily assume the figure of both rage, and menace, and scorn. The few sentences with which he thrilled the House, on the liberty of the press, in 1810, were worth, perhaps, more than all his elaborated epigrams and forced flowers on the Begum charge, or all his denunciations of Napoleon, 'whose morning orisons and evening prayers are for the conquest of England, whether he bends to the God of Battles or worships the Goddess of Reason ;’ certainly far better than such pictures of his power, as his having ‘thrones for his watchtowers, kings for his sentinels, and for the palisades of his castle sceptres stuck with crowns.’ ‘Give them,’ said he in 1810, and in a far higher strain of eloquence, ‘a corrupt House of Lords; give them a venal House of Commons; give them a tyrannical prince; give them a truckling court,—and let me but have an unfettered press; I will defy them to encroach a hair’s breadth upon the liberties of England.’ OS all his speeches, there can be little doubt that the most powerful, as the most chaste, was his reply, in 1805, upon the motion which he had made for repealing the Defence Act. Mr Pitt had unwarily thrown out a sneer at his support of Mr Addington, as though it was insidious. Such a stone, cast by a person whose house, on that aspect, was one pane of glass, could not fail to call down a shower of missiles; and they who witnessed the looks and gestures of the aggressor, under the pitiless pelting of the tempest which he had provoked, represent it as certain that there were moments when he intended to fasten a personal quarrel upon the vehement and implacable declaimer.

“When the just tribute of extraordinary admiration has been bestowed upon this great orator, the whole of his praise has been exhausted. As a statesman, he is without a place in any class, or of any rank; it would be incorrect and flattering to call him a bad, or a hurtful, or a shortsighted, or a middling statesman; he was no statesman at all. As a party man, his character st∞d lower than it deserved, chiefly from certain personal dislikes towards him; for, with the perhaps doubtful exception of his courting popularity at his party’s expense, on the two occasions already mentioned, and the much more serious charge against him of betraying his party in the Carlton House negociation of 1812, followed by his extraordinary denial of the facts when he last appeared in parliament, there can nothing be laid to his charge as inconsistent with the rules of the strictest party duty and honour; although he made as large sacrifices as any unprofessional man ever did to the cause of a long and hopeless opposition, and was often treated with unmerited coldness and disrespect by his coadjutors. But as a man his character stood confessedly low. His intemperate habits, and his pecuniary embarrassments, did not merely tend to imprudent conduct, by which himself alone might be the sufferer; they involved his family in the same fate; and they also undermined those principles of honesty which are so seldom found to survive fallen fortunes, and hardly ever can continue the ornament and the stay of ruined circumstances, when the tastes and the propensities engendered in prosperous times survive through the ungenial season of adversity.”

Sheridan was indeed most unfortunate. Whilst death was fast gaining on him, the miseries of life were thickening around him; nor did the last corner where he now lay down to die, afford him any asylum from the clamours of his legal pursuers. Writs and executions came in rapid succession, and bailiffs at length got possession of the house. A sheriff’s officer arrested the dying man in his bed, and was about to carry him off in his blankets to a spunging house, when he was prevented by an intimation of the responsibility he must incur, if, as was but too probable, his prisoner should expire on the way. In the mean time, the attention and sympathy of the public were awakened to the desolate condition of Sheridan, by an article which appeared in the Morning Post, written, it seems, by a gentleman who, though on no very cordial terms with him, forgot every other feeling in a generous pity for his fate, and in honest indignation against those who had deserted him. But it was now too late. Its effect, indeed, was soon visible in the calls made at Sheridan’s door, amongst which the Duke of York and the Duke of Argyll appeared as visiters; but the spirit that these unavailing tributes might once have comforted was fast losing the consciousness of every thing earthly; and, after a succession of shivering fits, he fell into a state of exhaustion, which continued till his death. He expired on Sunday, the 7th of July 1816, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and was buried on the Saturday following, many royal and noble persons crowding round his insensible clay, whose notice, had it been earlier, might have soothed and comforted his death-bed, and saved his heart from breaking. (a.)