It is certain that Richard Brinsley Sheri- SHERIDAN. dan will always be an interesting character to attentive readers and students of English literature. Orators, dramatists, playwrights, statesmen, enlightened men and women of the world, close students of human nature, will be particularly interested in him, for the reason, that the development of extraordinary powers, and the notable achievements of genius, must ever and everywhere be engaging to thoughtful people.

progenitors.

It is not often that traits can be traced so unmistakably to progenitors as in the Traits of case of Sheridan. His grandfather was a clergyman, but lost his chaplaincy and all hope of further preferment by preaching a sermon on the birthday of George I. from the text: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." He died, as stated, in great poverty and distress, having maintained. through all the changes of fortune a gay and careless cheerfulness, not allowing a day to pass, according to Lord Cork, "without a rebus, an anagram, or a madrigal." He published translations of Greek and Latin classics, and wrote letters, many of which were held of sufficient consequence to be included in Swift's Miscel

set up as a rival to Garrick.

lanies. His father was an actor, an elocutionist, and a lexicographer. He played.

His

at Drury Lane, and was set up, we are His father told, by his friends as a rival to Garrick. One of his published works was a life of his godfather, Jonathan Swift, with whom his father must have been intimate. mother was a novelist of considerable distinction, her romances still retaining a respectable place in English literature. The distinguishing traits of his grandfather, his father, and his mother, were developed and stimulated by his attachment to Miss Linley, a young and beautiful singer, in defense of whom he fought two duels, to whom he was afterwards married, and by whom his subsequent life was greatly determined.

Summary.

"He said his wife should sing in public no more, and she did not. In a few years

he had written the most brilliant comedies produced since the time of Shakespeare. A few years later he delivered the most electrifying speech ever heard in the House of Commons. He was in Parliament thirty years, and manager of Drury Lane for about the same period. When George IV. was Prince of Wales, Sheridan was his most intimate friend and adviser, shaping, no doubt, the future whisper of the throne.

money in

affairs.

Sheridan was almost a Republican in politics. He stood by the French Revolutionists, by Ireland, and the oppressed myriads of India. He held during his life but two or three offices, and made no money in Made no public affairs. Against these merits and public achievements is placed the fact that he made a multitude of engagements and kept but few of them; that he was generally in straits for money; and that he drank at times more port than was good for him. The real moral of his life seems to be that without a sense of order the most versatile genius will be continually in hot water. Sheridan could raise large sums of money for Drury Lane, and manage it through its golden age, yet he allowed small creditors to swarm around him as if helpless. Later in life he settled fifteen thousand pounds upon his second wife, and met with a heavy financial disaster when Drury Lane burned. Yet his debts after death amounted to only four thousand Debts only pounds. Such a bankrupt would not sand pounds. amount to a third rate in these days."

From being regarded at school as "a most impenetrable dunce," he rose to be, in many respects, one of the most distinguished men in the world. "The other

four thou

best.

night," writes Byron, in his Diary, "we were all delivering our respective and various opinions upon Sheridan, and mine was this: 'Whatever Sheridan has done or chosen to do has been par excellence Always the always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy (School for Scandal); the best opera, The Duenna (in my mind far before that St. Giles's lampoon, The Beggars' Opera); the best farce (the Critic - it is only too good for a farce); and the best address (Monologue on Garrick); and, to crown all, delivered the very best oration (the famous Begum speech) ever conceived or heard in England.' Somebody told Sheridan this, the next day, and, on hearing it, he burst into tears." The speech on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, Burke declared to be "the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit, united, of which there was any record or tradition." Fox said, "all that he had ever heard, all that he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapor before the sun;" and Pitt acknowledged "that it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish, to agitate

Impeachment of Hastings.

Justice.

and control the human mind." At the close of it occurs this celebrated passage: "Justice I have now before me, august and Picture of pure; the abstract idea of all that would be perfect in the spirits and the aspirings of men where the mind rises, where the heart expands where the countenance is ever placid and benign where her favorite attitude is to stoop to the unfortunate to hear their cry and to help them, to rescue and relieve, to succor and save: - majestic from its mercy; venerable from its utility; uplifted without pride; firm without obduracy; beneficent in each preference; lovely, though in her frown!"

eloquence.

The speech occupied five hours and a half in the delivery. An anecdote is given as a proof of its irresistible power in a Power of his note upon Bisset's History of the Reign of George III.: "The late Mr. Logan, well known for his literary efforts, and author of a most masterly defense of Mr. Hastings, went that day to the House of Commons, prepossessed for the accused and against the accuser. At the expiration of the first hour he said to a friend, All this is declamatory assertion without proof;'-when the second was finished, 'This is a most