ties are eminently possessed, undervaluing that knowledge which they do not seem to themselves to want, are inclined to dislike, and perhaps despise, the graver personages by whom it is communicated. In the end, however, they never fail to discover the unfortunate rashness of that judgment which fondly hoped that wit would be a succedaneum for knowledge. The ground so lost is hardly ever regained.

Sheridan certainly could not have disliked or despised such men as Dr Sumner and Dr Parr, but he disliked everything in the shape of a task, and well knowing that he could not compete with clever boys who were diligent, without being diligent himself, was satisfied to have his inferiority put down to the score of idleness. He was expected to possess genius, and that at the time was enough for boyish ambition. In everything but lessons he seems to have taken a lead, being not only loved but admired by all his school associates.

Every reader must be pleased with Dr Parr's letter-it gives a lively and excellent account of the subject of it, and moreover intimates a persuasion that the father of Sheridan was fully aware of his son's talents and capacity; a matter of easy belief, for had he been an "impenetrable dunce," it was the greatest of all follies to have sent him to Harrow. That his circumstances would not allow old Sheridan to leave him there longer, is much regretted by the Doctor, and probably by the young man himself in after times; for under such tutors he could not have failed to lay in a good stock of useful and valuable knowledge. Of classic lore, however, he did possess, if Dr Parr is to be believed, who speaks from personal knowledge, more than his biographer, who can only speak from opinion, is willing to allow. "It was not," says Mr Moore, "one of the least of Sheridan's triumphs, to have been able to persuade so acute a scholar as Dr Parr, that the extent of his classical acquirement was so great as is here represented, and to have thus impressed with the idea of his remembering so much the person who best knew how little he had learned."

Here again I must be at variance with the biographer. How a young and ingenuous mind could have looked for triumph in a falsehood injurious and dishonourable to himself, is not easy to

conceive, in the first place; and, in the second, Dr Parr was not one of those plodding, common-place tutors on whom boyish plausibility could impose, or who could in any case mistake the pertness of ignorance for the possession of knowledge. He admits the irregularity of his pupil, but their frequent conversation and intercourse left no doubt on his mind respecting the improvement he considers him to have made. Indeed, it seems impossible that a taste and imagination like Sheridan's should have been at all ac quainted with Homer, Horace, and Virgil, without a desire to improve that acquaintance, not with the accuracy of a critic or commentator, but for the delight such study could not fail to communicate. That he did not deserve the name of a scholar is, however, a point I am perfectly willing to concede.

Sheridan's immethodical eccentricity has led his biographer into a strange error, and induced him to ascribe to nature what nature could not possibly bestow. Nature gives but the materials; she places the ore in the mind, but it is art that gives the value and the polish. Conscious of, and confiding too proudly in, his own powers, Sheridan would learn in no way but his own; and that he did so to a very considerable degree, considering his giddy and playful disposition, appears not only from the fame he acquired as a speaker and writer, but from the account of the biographer himself. Dr Parr's illustration of his peculiarities sets the mode in a very clear light, yet Mr Moore tells us that, "of this advantage" (namely, the instruction of his father and other masters in London), "however, it is probable only the elder son availed himself, as Richard, who seems to have been determined to owe all his excellence to nature alone, was found as impracticable a pupil at home as at school!" Yet of this child of nature alone, it is in the succeeding sentence said, "that however inattentive to his school lessons at Harrow, he had already distinguished himself in poetry, which is the first exercise in which the young athletæ of intellect try their strength." This is not like leaving everything to nature-there is certainly some art and labour too in making verses, as the biographer himself well knows. And besides this, "his friend Halhed and

he had in conjunction translated the seventh Idyl and many of the lesser poems of Theocritus." It is not very likely that a youth, voluntarily engaging in such exercises, should be such a Grecian ignoramus as his biographer is pleased to represent him; nor is it altogether probable that his time in London, though he might be indisposed to profit by the dry lectures of Kerr and his father, was thrown away, and that he read nothing, because he, did not read the prescribed lessons. The union between him and Halhed, a young man of singular talents and endowments, is a sufficient proof of improvement as well as power, for Halhed would not have so joined himself with a mere unlettered idler. Poor Halhed's fate is a melancholy one. He returned (if I remember right) from India with improved fortunes, but impaired reason. One of the most eloquent speeches, or rather compositions, I ever read, was delivered by him in the House of Commons, in support of a ridiculous prediction published by one Brothers. It was heard with deep silence, and deeper sorrow. No ob servation was made, and being unseconded, the motion of course fell to the ground. What became of him afterwards I have not heard.

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Sheridan's wit and vivacity, as well as the nature of his connexions and situation, almost necessarily directed him to the Stage, and among his scattered papers were found many dramatie sketches, of some of which he subsequently availed himself. On one of these, afterwards transplanted into what Mr Moore calls the Farce of the Critic, the biographer thus moralizes Thus it is, too, and little to the glory of what are called our years of discretion, that the life of the MAN is chiefly employed in giving effect to the wishes and plans of the boy." Thus it is, too, that the ambition of pointing a sentence often leads a writer to transgress the limits of sense. Had he substituted indiscretion there would have been a meaning, for there are who, though they don't want talents, are boys all their lives. The glory of what is, and can alone be called mature discretion, consists, I apprehend, in unteaching the man the follies of the boy, and in instructing the ripened understanding "to put away childish things." Years of discretion were, I am afraid, what poor Sheridan never attained. VOL. XX.

Instances of petty plagiarism from himself and others, are often brought against Sheridan by his poetical biographer; in some cases, I suspect, to show the extent of his own reading. From himself he was certainly at full liberty to take without the crime of stealing; and not to borrow occasionally from others, on subjects much handled, is perhaps impossible. In Sheridan's own observation (preface to the Rivals) he might have found the finest apology: "Faded ideas float on the mind like half-forgotten dreams, and imagination, in its most suspicious moments, becomes suspicious of its offspring, and doubts whether it has created or adopted." To persons placed in the same situation, the same thoughts will naturally occur, and it was little worth the critic's while to seek a precedent from the thought in one of his beautiful songs, that he could not tell how long his love would last, because he knew not the length of his life. I suppose every ardent young lover feels and often makes the same declaration. The value of the thought is in the peculiar elegance and delicacy of the expression. Among Sheridan's far-fetched conceits, he mentions his comparing "serenaders to Egyptian embalmers extracting the brain through the ears." It certainly is not farther fetched than some of his own (as I have already showed), and much less inappropriate. The thought, according to Moore, is not Sheridan's, but Halhed's. I can, however, assert, though the thought might also have occurred to Halhed's own mind, that I have seen it in some author much older than either. The idea, in the Critic, of stealing other men's thoughts as gipsies do children, and disfiguring them, in order that they may pass for their own, is, in the biographer's remarks, taken from Churchill, who perhaps borrowed it from some one else.

It is a very happy one. Were dramatic authors to be confined to their own inventions, the range of the drama would be limited indeed. Sheridan must have read, at an early age, many works of this kind, as well as much of light literature. That he improved on what he imitated will easily be allowed, and all that honest criticism can expect is, not to be a servile copyist.

Sheridan's singularities seem to have accompanied him in everything, even E

in love and fighting. markable duels, neither very clearly narrated, w what too much. The si! of his love, his long unse tachment, the young lover trip to France, and all t stances from the commenc the conclusion, are very cur very interesting. Such lovers ly meet, except in the fictionpoet or novelist, that when th a well-written and accurate ace of all the incidents attending t union must be highly attractive, " can hardly be too long. Of the poc cal effusions to which their mutua passion gave rise, the biographer habeen too sparing, the more especially since what are called the Works of Sheridan are, in reality, only his dramatic works, and should have been so called. For the complete accuracy even of these, he tells us, in some part of the biography, that he is not answerable. Why, then, commit them to the press, under the sanction of his imprimatur, and with a preface signed by himself? The life certainly should have accompanied the edition, and in that edition all Sheridan's poetical works should have been included. The reasons assigned for delaying the biographical part are mere puff—the true one no doubt is, that the works were called for by the public-the booksellers would not wait-and the biographer was unprepared. There are several errors in the plays, particularly in the Duenna.

Having already offered some comments on matters preceding Sheridan's becoming manager of Drury Lane Theatre, I proceed to those which followed.

The biographer wonders that Sheridan, now become a manager, should think of reviving Vanburgh's comedy of the Relapse, under the name of a Trip to Scarborough. The only wonder, I think, is, that a play should appear among his works, to which he has no more pretensions as an author than Colley Cibber had to Richard the Third, which he adapted to the stage, with some very slight additions of his own. There were, however, strong managerial reasons for its introduction. In the first place, it cost him no trouble; in the next, it was well fitted for his company, by whom it was excellently performed; and, in the

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The sketches out of School for Scandal grew a finished a comedy, are inter show, according to the bi just, but not very novel ob the pains and patience which nius must employ to produce a composition. Of these, howev has given rather too much, nor L forgot to adorn his remarks on gradual process of the work with taphorical illustrations. "It can fail," he says, "to interest deeply a who take delight in tracing the alchemy of genius, and in watching the

actors, herself in particular, as Mr Puff does in the Critic. I think, by the by, that Mr Puff's shrewdness as a 66 ways and means" character, is not very compatible with his tragic absurdity. The extravagance of tragic writers in Charles the Second's days was justly ridiculed by the satirical lash of the witty Duke of Buckingham, but no writers of Sheridan's time were fairly subject to similar reproach. They might have been deficient in dramatic genius, but they were not guilty of dramatic absurdities. Puff's character, as at first appears, would render him much more likely to ridicule than to write the tragedy of the Spanish Armada." But the defect of judgment in the author is covered by the glittering mantle of his wit. A similar inconsistency appears, I think, in the character of Partridge in Tom Jones, from whose first interview and dialogues with his master we are prepared to expect much more of the wag, and much less of the simpleton. He is certainly made conducive to the reader's entertainment, but his character is by no means sustained qualis ab imo, with the same skill and happiness of that of his renowned prototype, Don Quixote's squire, the amusing and inimitable Sancho.

It seems now thought, that in the lively rake of the School for Scandal, Sheridan was drawing a picture of himself; and that there are some points of resemblance, is obvious. But at the time it came out, the general opinion was that another person sat for the picture, whom it resembled much more, and who was known to be the idol of Sheridan's admiration, the celebrated Charles Fox. Sheridan had spent no fortune; he was busily employed in making one; nor was he, at least at that time, known as a trafficker with Jews, or an associate of fashionable and deep-playing gamblers. All these circumstances, added to the identity of the Christian name, concurred to fix the dramatic cap upon the head of one so exactly qualified to wear it-his friend Fox.

Of these two remarkable men, so like in many points of wit, genius, and disposition, how different were the terminating scenes of life! Had human judgment ventured to predict their fortunes when they first began to be distinguished in the world, it would probably have reversed their fate, dooming the dissipated, dissolute, and ap

parently incorrigible Fox to an end commensurate with his wild career, and gilding the last days of the other with riches, with happiness, and with fame. Nature had bestowed upon Fox great talents, and education had cultivated them; he was also born to honour and to fortune. These, governed by prudence, would necessarily have led to the highest distinctions of the state, to all that the fondest votaries of wealth and glory can desire. But there was a time when the indulgence of dissipated and profligate habits seemed to point him out as a man whom even his talents, rank, and personal attractions, could not rescue from vice, from misery, and from ruin. The society of an amiable and accomplished wife might have gradually weaned him from pleasure, and pursuits destructive alike to health and fortune; but Sultan Solyman would as soon have thought of marrying, or combining his love to one fair favourite, as Charley Fox, at the time I speak of. Now, how was it with Sheridan? He had to make his fortune he was born to none, and therefore wanted that only temptation to extravagance into which his friend had fallen. He had married the woman of his heart; a woman, too, who, in beauty and accomplishments, was considered to be unrivalled. Though inheriting no property, he was in possession of genius amply sufficient to supply the want; he knew well how to employ it successfully; and when he became manager, had, as the vulgar phrase is, the ball at his foot. Besides, it was reasonable to suppose that a fortune got by labour would be more valued, and better preserved, than one descending by inheritance. Yet Fox in some measure redeemed the errors of a voluptuous and extravagant youth, by leaving the vain and busy world, and seeking the comforts of domestic tranquillity in literary retirement, and the company of a wife (for he did marry at last) whom he wisely chose, not for wealth, beauty, or connexion, but for good temper and good sense. On poor Sheridan's melancholy and inglorious end it is too painful to dwell. He too had the advantages which connubial union is capable of imparting, had he with equal prudence availed himself of them. His biographer enters into pretty large details of that melancholy period, withholding, however, one of those unfortunate failings which