LIBRARY

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UNIVERSITY

CALIFORNIA

INTRODUCTION BY SHERIDAN'S

GREAT-GRANDSON.

When in Canada several years ago I read with infinite pleasure a work by Mr. Fraser Rae on “ Wilkes, Sheridan, Fox; the Opposition under George III.” The spirit in which it was executed seemed to me so fair and honest, and the author showed so great a familiarity with the time and events of which he treated, that I determined, if an opportunity occurred, to suggest that he should undertake a complete biography of Sheridan. I was the more inclined to do this

on account of the unfortunate treatment which the subject had received at the hands of previous writers. The biography compiled by Dr. Watkins is a piece of bookmaking of the worst type. Moore, who professed to be Sheridan's friend and admirer, and to whom his papers were entrusted, committed the fatal fault of planning his “Memoirs ” of Sheridan upon too large a scale. Having got half-way through his task, he allowed six years to elapse before finishing it. By this time it had become an unwelcome burden, as he notes in his Diary, and this is only too evident from the somewhat ungenerous and subacid tone in which he continued it.1 This was followed by the scandalous sketch of Professor Smyth, who, taking advantage of his residence in Sheridan's house as his son's tutor, vented the ill-humour engendered by a position distasteful to his vanity, in spiteful libels on his patron. He committed the further crime of interpolating an atrocious falsehood about a perfectly innocent person. Subsequent biographers and essayists, having no original material at their disposal, have been obliged to fall back upon Moore's perfunctory narrative, with its many inaccuracies, or to eke out their story with the idle gossip and injurious inventions which, in the nature of things, were sure to accumulate around the reputation of a person endowed with Sheridan's gifts and idiosyncracies.

No man has ever lived in more worlds than Sheridan, or has ever shone with such brilliancy in all.

In the world of fashion, in the company of wits, among authors, painters and poets,

in the 1 His lamentations over his “task” are frequent and strongly worded, as, for example, "I often wish Sheridan, Miss Linley and Major Mathews at the Devil.” While not confessing indebtedness to Watkins in his “Memoirs ” of Sheridan, he writes in his Diary: “Worked a little at •Sheridan '; badly off for materials ; almost reduced to Watkins ” (Moore's Diary, vol. ii., pp. 173, 207).

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INTRODUCTION

ction House of Commons, at the Court of the Prince Regent, — whatever society he frequented, - he moved a star.

His charming manners, his handsome person,

his gaiety, and, above all, his good nature, which was one of his principal characteristics, rendered him universally popular. But these engaging qualities were sometimes marred by the foibles and peculiarities which are most apt to attract attention and to serve as weapons in the hands of a man's enemies. In early manhood he became one of the chiefs of a political party when party strife ran high, and when virulent calumny and abuse, in an age more coarse than ours, were considered legitimate means of offence, and his memory has suffered accordingly. Moreover, from his youth, two impediments clogged and embarrassed his every step,—his poverty and his Irish origin.

Sober English common-sense has always been suspicious of impecunious brilliancy in public men. While admiring, it distrusts it. Talent, to command confidence, especially in those days, had to be supplemented by wealth or birth; otherwise it was regarded as consisting, like a comet, of shining and attenuated gases, and its possessor

, was dubbed “an adventurer.” Now, Sheridan was not only poor but improvident, and though few could have been better born, so far as good birth is dependent upon ancient ancestry and feudal

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distinction in a man's own land, he had no root in the country of his adoption. This latter circumstance was almost an insuperable bar to political advancement. The chief offices of the State were then regarded as the patrimony of the great Whig and Tory families, to which it would be presumption for a stranger to aspire. But, although Sheridan forced his way through this artificial barrier and was soon associated in a close confederacy with Fox and the other Whig leaders, the straitened circumstances of his youth, in spite of the large though precarious income subsequently created by his talents, dimmed his prestige, embarrassed his daily life, and enveloped his declining years in disheartening gloom. Yet, notwithstanding the burning of Drury Lane Theatre, his debts in their totality were never considerable, and at his death did not much exceed £5,000. Though owing little, however, he owed that little to a great number of people, who were themselves needy, and who filled heaven and earth with their complaints. Had Sheridan, like Fox, Pitt, Burke and many a contemporary, owed vast sums of money to persons of his own degree, we should have heard little of these obligations ; but to withhold £, 5, justly due to your bootmaker, is properly considered more discreditable than an indefinite tardiness in repaying £10,000 to a too-confiding friend.

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For a like reason Sheridan's conviviality has been more rigorously denounced than many a contemporary toper's sodden and unredeemed intemperance. Wine quickly disordered his highstrung nervous system; and, while delighting the harder-headed drinkers around him with the sallies of his wit, two or three glasses were sufficient to overset the delicate poise of his brain. ÇAs a consequence, his cheerful and comparatively innocent indiscretions over the bottle have been more frequently in men's mouths than the results of deeper potations of his more stolid boon companions. In later life, alas ! for a certain period, grief and accumulated misfortunes drove him into more serious lapses, but from the dominion of these, to his great credit be it said, he eventually redeemed himself.

From the foregoing it will, I think, be easily understood how it came about that an altogether mythical Sheridan should have been presented to the imagination of the present generation, and how idle fables and a thousand trivial and sometimes disparaging anecdotes should have accumulated by the force of attraction round an individuality so various in its moods, so many-sided, so dramatic, and so eminently social. Even Moore, his contemporary, with every means of information at his disposal, was obliged to admit, when concluding his biography, that he really

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