had worn a livery too. When Craggs got into a coach with him, he exclaimed, 'Why, Arthur, I am always getting up behind, are not you?' Walpole having related this story to Selwyn, the latter told him, as a most important communication, that Arthur Moore had had his coffin chained to that of his mistress. 'Lord! how do you know?' asked Horace. 'Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at St. Giles's.' 'Oh! Your servant, Mr. Selwyn,' cried the man who showed the tombs at Westminster Abbey, 'I expected to see you here the other day when the old Duke of Richmond's body was taken up.'

Criminals were, of course, included in his passion. Walpole affirms that he had a great share in bringing Lord Dacre's footman, who had murdered the butler, to confess his crime. In writing the confession, the ingenious plush coolly stopped and asked how 'murdered' was spelt. But it mattered little to George whether the criminal were alive or dead, and he defended his eccentric taste with his usual wit; when rallied by some women for going to see the Jacobite Lord Lovat's head cut off, he retorted, sharply—'I made full amends, for I went to see it sewn on again.' He had indeed done so, and given the company at the undertaker's a touch of his favourite blasphemy, for when the man of coffins had done his work and laid the body in its box, Selwyn, imitating the voice of the Lord Chancellor at the trial, muttered, 'My Lord Lovat, you may rise.' He said a better thing on the trial of a confederate of Lovat's, that Lord Kilmarnock, with whom the ladies fell so desperately in love as he stood on his defence. Mrs. Bethel, who was famous for a hatchet-face, was among the fair spectators: 'What a shame it is,' quoth the wit, 'to turn her face to the prisoners before they are condemned!' Terrible, indeed, was that instrument of death to those men, who had in the heat of battle so gallantly met sword and blunderbuss. The slow, sure approach of the day of the scaffold was a thousand times worse than the roar of cannon. Lord Cromarty was pardoned, solely, it was said, from pity for his poor wife, who was at the time of the trial far advanced in pregnancy. It was affirmed that the child born had a distinct mark of an axe on his neck. Credat Judaeus! Walpole used to say that Selwyn never thought but à la tête tranchée, and that when he went to have a tooth drawn, he told the dentist he would drop his handkerchief by way of signal. Certain it is that he did love an execution, whatever he or his friends may have done to remove the impression of this extraordinary taste. Some better men than Selwyn have had the same, and Macaulay accuses Penn of a similar affection. The best known anecdote of Selwyn's peculiarity relates to the execution of Damiens, who was torn with red-hot pincers, and finally quartered by four horses, for the attempt to assassinate Louis XV. On the day fixed, George mingled with the crowd plainly dressed, and managed to press forward close to the place of torture. The executioner observing him, eagerly cried out, 'Faites place pour Monsieur; c'est un Anglais et un amateur;' or, as another version goes, he was asked if he was not himself a bourreau.—'Non, Monsieur,' he is said to have answered, 'je n'ai pas cet honneur, je ne suis qu'un amateur.' The story is more than apocryphal, for Selwyn is not the only person of whom it has been told; and he was even accused, according to Wraxall, of going to executions in female costume. George Selwyn must have passed as a 'remarkably fine woman,' in that case.

It is only justice to him to say that the many stories of his attending executions were supposed to be inventions of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, another wit, and of Chesterfield, another, and a rival. In confirmation, it is adduced that when the former had been relating some new account, and an old friend of Selwyn's expressed his surprise that he had never heard the tale before, the hero of it replied quietly, 'No wonder at all, for Sir Charles has just invented it, and knows that I will not by contradiction spoil the pleasure of the company he is so highly entertaining.'

Wit has been called 'the eloquence of indifference;' no one seems ever to have been so indifferent about everything, but his little daughter, as George Selwyn. He always, however, took up the joke, and when asked why he had not been to see one Charles Fox, a low criminal, hanged at Tyburn, answered, quietly, 'I make a point of never going to rehearsals.'

Selwyn's love for this kind of thing, to believe his most intimate friend, Horace Walpole, was quite a fact. His friend relates that he even bargained for the High Sheriff's wand, after it was broken, at the condemnation of the gallant Lords, but said, 'that he behaved so like an attorney the first day, and so like a pettifogger the second, that he would not take it to light his fire with.'

The State Trials, of course, interested George more than any other in his eventless life; he dined after the sentence with the celebrated Lady Townshend, who was so devoted to Lord Kilmarnock—

that she is said to have even stayed under his windows, when he was in prison; but he treated her anxiety with such lightness that the lady burst into tears, and 'flung up-stairs.' 'George,' writes Walpole to Montague, 'cooly took Mrs. Dorcas, her woman, and bade her sit down to finish the bottle.—"And pray," said Dorcas, "do you think my lady will be prevailed upon to let me go and see the execution? I have a friend that has promised to take care of me, and I can lie in the Tower the night before." Could she have talked so pleasantly to Selwyn?'

His contemporaries certainly believed in his love for Newgatism; for when Walpole had caught a housebreaker in a neighbour's area, he immediately despatched a messenger to White's for the philo-criminalist, who was sure to be playing at the Club any time before daylight. It happened that the drawer at the 'Chocolate-house' had been himself lately robbed, and therefore stole to George with fear and trembling, and muttered mysteriously to him, 'Mr. Walpole's compliments, and he has got a housebreaker for you.' Of course Selwyn obeyed the summons readily, and the event concluded, as such events do nine times out of ten, with a quiet capture, and much ado about nothing.

The Selwyns were a powerful family in Gloucestershire, owning a great deal of property in the neighbourhood of Gloucester itself. The old colonel had represented that city in Parliament for many years. On the 5th of November, 1751, he died. His eldest son had gone a few months before him. This son had been also at Eton, and was an early friend of Horace Walpole and General Conway. His death left George sole heir to the property, and very much he seemed to have needed the heritage.

The property of the Selwyns lay in the picturesque district of the Northern Cotswolds. Anybody who has passed a day in the dull city of Gloucester, which seems to break into anything like life only at an election, lying dormant in the intervals, has been glad to rush out to enjoy air and a fine view on Robin Hood's Hill, a favourite walk with the worthy citizens, though what the jovial archer of merry Sherwood had to do with it, or whether he was ever in Gloucestershire at all, I profess I know not. Walpole describes the hill with humorous exaggeration. 'It is lofty enough for an alp, yet is a mountain of turf to the very top, has wood scattered all over it, springs that long to be cascades in many places of it, and from the summit it beats even Sir George Littleton's views, by having the city of Gloucester at its foot, and the Severn widening to the horizon.' On the very summit of the next hill, Chosen-down, is a solitary church, and the legend saith that the good people who built it did so originally at the foot of the steep mount, but that the Virgin Mary carried up the stones by night, till the builder, in despair, was compelled to erect it on the top. Others attribute the mysterious act to a very different personage, and with apparently more reason, for the position of the church must keep many an old sinner from hearing service.

At Matson, then, on Robin Hood's Hill, the Selwyns lived; Walpole says that the 'house is small, but neat. King Charles lay here at the seige, and the Duke of York, with typical fury, hacked and hewed the window-shutters of his chamber as a memorandum of his being there. And here is the very flowerpot and counterfeit association for which Bishop Sprat was taken up, and the Duke of Marlborough sent to the Tower. The reservoirs on the hill supply the city. The late Mr. Selwyn governed the borough by them—and I believe by some wine too.' Probably, or at least by some beer, if the modern electors be not much altered from their forefathers.

Besides this important estate, the Selwyns had another at Ludgershall, and their influence there was so complete, that they might fairly be said to give one seat to any one they chose. With such double barrels George Selwyn was, of course, a great gun in the House, but his interest lay far more in piquet and pleasantry than in politics and patriotism, and he was never fired off with any but the blank cartridges of his two votes. His parliamentary career, begun in 1747, lasted more than forty years, yet was entirely without distinction. He, however, amused both parties with his wit, and by snoring in unison with Lord North. This must have been trying to Mr. Speaker Cornwall, who was longing, no doubt, to snore also, and dared not. He was probably the only Speaker who presided over so august an assembly as our English Parliament with a pewter pot of porter at his elbow, sending for more and more to Bellamy's till his heavy eyes closed of themselves. A modern M.P., carried back by some fancies to 'the Senate' of those days, might reasonably doubt whether his guide had not taken him by mistake to some Coal-hole or Cider-cellar, presided over by some former Baron Nicholson, and whether the furious eloquence of Messrs. Fox, Pitt, and Burke were not got up for the amusement of an audience admitted at sixpence a head.

Selwyn's political jokes were the delight of Bellamy's! He said that Fox and Pitt reminded him of Hogarth's Idle and Industrious Apprentices. When asked by some one, as he sauntered out of the house—'Is the House up?' he replied; 'No, but Burke is.' The length of Burke's elaborate spoken essays was proverbial, and obtained for him the name of the 'Dinner-bell.' Fox was talking one day at Brookes' of the advantageous peace he had made with France, and that he had even induced that country to give up the gum trade to England. 'That, Charles,' quoth Selwyn, sharply, 'I am not at all surprised at; for having drawn your teeth, they would be d——d fools to quarrel with you about gums.' Fox was often the object of his good-natured satire. As every one knows, his boast was to be called 'The Man of the People,' though perhaps he cared as little for the great unwashed as for the wealth and happiness of the waiters at his clubs.' Every one knows, too, what a dissolute life he led for many years. Selwyn's sleepiness was well known. He slept in the House; he slept, after losing £8oo 'and with as many more before him,' upon the gaming-table, with the dice-box 'stamped close to his ears;' he slept, or half-slept, even in conversation, which he seems to have caught by fits and starts. Thus it was that words he heard suggested different senses, partly from being only dimly associated with the subject on the tapis. So, when, they were talking around of the war, and whether it should be a sea war or a Continent war, Selwyn woke up just enough to say, 'I am for a sea war and a Continent admiral.'

When Fox had ruined himself, and a subscription for him was talked of, some one asked how they thought 'he would take it.'—'Take it,' cried Selwyn, suddenly lighting up, 'why, quarterly to be sure.'

His parliamentary career was then quite uneventful; but at the dissolution in 1780, he found that his security at Gloucester was threatened. He was not Whig enough for that constituency, and had throughout supported the war with America. He offered himself, of course, but was rejected with scorn, and forced to fly for a seat to Ludgershall. Walpole writes to Lady Ossory: 'They' (the Gloucester people) 'hanged him in effigy, and dressed up a figure of Mie-Mie' (his adopted daughter), 'and pinned on its breast these words, alluding to the gallows:—"This is what I told you you would come to!"' From Gloucester he went to Ludgershall, where he was received by ringing of bells and bonfires. 'Being driven out of my capital,' said he, 'and coming into that country of turnips, where I was adored, I seemed to be arrived in my Hanoverian dominions'—no bad hit at George II. For Ludgershall he sat for many years, with Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, whose 'Memoirs' are better known than trusted, as colleague. That writer says of Selwyn, that he was 'thoroughly well versed in our history, and master of many curious as well as secret anecdotes, relative to the houses of Stuart and Brunswick.'

Another bon-mot, not in connection with politics, is reported by Walpole as incomparable.' Lord George Gordon asked him if the Ludgershall electors would take him (Lord George) for Ludgershall, adding, 'if you would recommend me, they would choose me, if I came from the coast of Africa.'—'That is according to what part of the coast you came from; they would certainly, if you came from the Guinea coast.' 'Now, Madam,' writes his friend, 'is not this true inspiration as well as true wit? Had any one asked him in which of the four quarters of the world Guinea is situated, could he have told?' Walpole did not perhaps know master George thoroughly—he was neither so ignorant nor so indifferent as he seemed. His manner got him the character of being both; but he was a still fool that ran deep.

Though Selwyn did little with his two votes, he made them pay; and in addition to the post in the Mint, got out of the party he supported those of Registrar to the Court of Chancery in the Island of Barbadoes, a sinecure done by deputy, Surveyor of the Crown Lands, and Paymaster to the Board of Works. The wits of White's added the title of 'Receiver-General of Waif and Stray Jokes.' It is said that his hostility to Sheridan arose from the latter having lost him the office in the Works in 1782, when Burke's Bill for reducing the Civil List came into operation; but this is not at all probable, as his dislike was shown long before that period. Apropos of the Board of Works, Walpole gives another anecdote. On one occasion, in 1780, Lord George Gordon had been the only opponent on a division. Selwyn afterwards took him in his carriage to White's. 'I have brought,' said he, 'the whole Opposition in my coach, and I hope one coach will always hold them, if they mean to take away the Board of Works.'

Undoubtedly, Selwyn's wit wanted the manner of the man to make it so popular, for, as we read it, it is often rather mild. To string a list of them together:—Lady Coventry showed him her new dress all covered with spangles as large as shillings. 'Bless my soul,' said he, 'you'll be change for a guinea.'

Fox, debtor and bankrupt as he was, had taken lodgings with Fitzpatrick at an oilman's in Piccadilly. Every one pitied the landlord, who would certainly be ruined. 'Not a bit of it,' quoth George; 'he'll have the credit of keeping at his house the finest pickles in London.'

Sometimes there was a good touch of satire on his times. When 'High Life Below Stairs' was first acted, Selwyn vowed he would go and see it, for he was sick of low life above stairs; and when a waiter at his Club had been convicted of felony, 'What a horrid idea,' said he, 'the man will give of us in Newgate!'

Dining with Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, he heard him say, in answer to a question about musical instruments in the East, 'I believe I saw one lyre there.'—'Ay,' whispered the wit to his neighbour, 'and there's one less since he left the country.' Bruce shared the travellers' reputation of drawing the long-bow to a very considerable extent.

Two of Selwyn's best mots were about one of the Foley family, who were so deeply in debt that they had 'to go to Texas,' or Boulogne, to escape the money-lenders. 'That,' quoth Selwyn, 'is a pass-over which will not be much relished by the Jews.' And again, when it was said that they would be able to cancel their father's old will by a new-found one, he profanely indulged in a pun far too impious to be repeated in our day, however it may have been relished in Selwyn's time.

A picture called 'The Daughter of Pharaoh' in which the Princess Royal and her attendant ladies figured as the saver of Moses and her handmaids, was being exhibited in 1782, at a house opposite Brookes', and was to be the companion-piece to Copley's 'Death of Chatham.' George said he could recommend a better companion, to wit—the 'Sons of Pharaoh' at the opposite house. It is scarcely necessary to explain that pharaoh or faro was the most popular game of hazard then played.

Walking one day with Lord Pembroke, and being besieged by a troop of small chimney-climbers, begging—Selwyn, after bearing their importunity very calmly for some time, suddenly turned round, and with the most serious face thus addressed them—'I have often heard of the sovereignty of the people; I suppose your highnesses are in Court mourning,' We can well imagine the effect of this sedate speech on the astonished youngsters.

Pelham's truculency was well known. Walpole and his friend went to the sale of his plate in 1755. 'Lord,' said the wit, 'how many toads have been eaten off these plates!'

The jokes were not always very delicate. When, in the middle of the summer of 1751, Lord North, who had been twice married before, espoused the widow of the Earl of Rockingham, who was fearfully stout, Selwyn suggested that she had been kept in ice for three days before the wedding. So, too, when there was talk of another embonpoint personage going to America during the war, he remarked that she would make a capital breast-work.

One of the few epigrams he ever wrote—if not the only one, of which there is some doubt—was in the same spirit. It is on the discovery of a pair of shoes in a certain lady's bed—

Such are a few specimens of George Selwyn's wit; and dozens more are dispersed though Walpole's Letters. As Eliot Warburton remarks, they do not give us a very high idea of the humour of the period; but two things must be taken into consideration before we deprecate their author's title to the dignity and reputation he enjoyed so abundantly among his contemporaries; they are not necessarily the best specimens that might have been given, if more of his mots had been preserved; and their effect on his listeners depended more on the manner of delivery than on the matter. That they were improvised and unpremeditated is another important consideration. It is quite unfair to compare them, as Warburton does, with the hebdomadal trash of 'Punch,' though perhaps they would stand the comparison pretty well. It is one thing to force wit with plenty of time to invent and meditate it—another to have so much wit within you that you can bring it out on any occasion; one thing to compose a good fancy for money—another to utter it only when it flashes through the brain.

But it matters little what we in the present day may think of Selwyn's wit, for conversation is spoiled by bottling, and should be drawn fresh when wanted. Selwyn's companions—all men of wit, more or less, affirmed him to be the most amusing man of his day, and that was all the part he had to play. No real wit ever hopes to talk for posterity; and written wit is of a very different character to the more sparkling, if less solid, creations of a moment.

We have seen Selwyn in many points of view, not all very creditable to him; first, expelled from Oxford for blasphemy; next, a professed gambler and the associate of men who led fashion in those days, it is true, but then it was very bad fashion; then as a lover of hangmen, a wit and a lounger. There is reason to believe that Selwyn, though less openly reprobate than many of his associates, was, in his quiet way, just as bad as any of them, if we except the Duke of Queensberry, his intimate friend, or the disgusting 'Franciscans' of Medmenham Abbey, of whom, though not the founder, nor even a member, he was, in a manner, the suggester in his blasphemy.

But Selwyn's real character is only seen in profile in all these accounts. He had at the bottom of such vice, to which his position, and the fashion of the day introduced him, a far better heart than any of his contemporaries, and in some respects a kind of simplicity which was endearing. He was neither knave nor fool. He was not a voluptuary, like his friend the duke; nor a continued drunkard, like many other 'fine gentlemen' with whom he mixed; nor a cheat, though a gambler; nor a sceptic, like his friend Walpole; nor a blasphemer, like the Medmenham set, though he had once parodied profanely a sacred rite; nor was he steeped in debt, as Fox was; nor does he appear to have been a practised seducer, as too many of his acquaintance were. Not that these negative qualities are to his praise; but if we look at the age and the society around him, we must, at least, admit that Selwyn was not one of the worst of that wicked set.

But the most pleasing point in the character of the old bachelor—for he was too much of a wit ever to marry—is his affection for children—not his own. That is, not avowedly his own, for it was often suspected that the little ones he took up so fondly bore some relationship to him, and there can be little doubt that Selwyn, like everybody else in that evil age, had his intrigues. He did not die in his sins, and that is almost all we can say for him. He gave up gaming in time, protesting that it was the bane of four much better things—health, money, time, and thinking. For the last two, perhaps, he cared little. Before his death he is said to have been a Christian, which was a decided rarity in the fashionable set of his day. Walpole answered, when asked if he was a Freemason, that he never had been anything, and probably most of the men of the time would, if they had had the honesty, have said the same. They were not atheists professedly, but they neither believed in nor practised Christianity.

His love for children has been called one of his eccentricities. It would be a hard name to give it if he had not been a club-lounger of his day. I have sufficient faith in human nature to trust that two-thirds of the men of this country have that most amiable eccentricity. But in Selwyn it amounted to something more than in the ordinary paterfamilias: it was almost a passion. He was almost motherly in his celibate tenderness to the little ones to whom he took a fancy. This affection he showed to several of the children, sons or daughters, of his friends; but to two especially, Anne Coventry and Maria Fagniani.

The former was the daughter of the beautiful Maria Gunning, who became Countess of Coventry. Nanny, as he called her, was four years old when her mother died, and from that time he treated her almost as his own child.

But Mie-Mie, as the little Italian was called, was far more favoured. Whoever may have been the child's father, her mother was a rather beautiful and very immoral woman, the wife of the Marchese Fagniani. She seems to have desired to make the most for her daughter out of the extraordinary rivalry of the two English 'gentlemen,' and they were admirably taken in by her. Whatever the truth may have been, Selwyn's love for children showed itself more strongly in this case than in any other; and, oddly enough, it seems to have begun when the little girl was at an age when children scarcely interest other men than their fathers—in short, in infancy. Her parents allowed him to have the sole charge of her at a very early age, when they returned to the Continent; but in 1777, the marchioness, being then in Brussels, claimed her daughter back again; though less, it seems, from any great anxiety on the child's account, than because her husband's parents, in Milan, objected to their grand-daughter being left in England; and also, not a little, from fear of the voice of Mrs. Grundy. Selwyn seems to have used all kinds of arguments to retain the child; and a long correspondence took place, which the marchesa begins with, 'My very dear friend,' and many affectionate expressions, and concludes with a haughty 'Sir,' and her opinion that his conduct was 'devilish.' The affair was, therefore, clearly a violent quarrel, and Selwyn was obliged at last to give up the child. He had a carriage fitted up for her expressly for her journey; made out for her a list of the best hotels on her route; sent his own confidential man-servant with her, and treasured up among his 'relics' the childish little notes, in a large scrawling hand, which Mie-Mie sent him. Still more curious was it to see this complete man of the world, this gambler for many years, this club-lounger, drinker, associate of well-dressed blasphemers, of Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey, devoting, not his money only, but his very time to this mere child, leaving town in the height of the season for dull Matson, that she might have fresh air; quitting his hot club-rooms, his nights spent at the piquet-table, and the rattle of the dice, for the quiet, pleasant terraces of his country-house, where he would hold the little innocent Mie-Mie by her tiny hand, as she looked up into his shrivelled dissipated face; quitting the interchange of wit, the society of the Townshends, the Walpoles, the Williamses, the Edgecumbes; all the jovial, keen wisdom of Gilly, and Dick, and Horace, and Charles, as they called one another, for the meaningless prattle, the merry laughter of this half-English, half-Italian child, It redeems Selwyn in our eyes, and it may have done him real good: nay, he must have felt a keen refreshment in this change from vice to innocence; and we understand the misery he expressed, when the old bachelor's one little companion and only pure friend was taken away from him. His love for the child was well known in London society; and of it did Sheridan's friends take advantage, when they wanted to get Selwyn out of Brookes', to prevent his black-balling the dramatist. The anecdote is given in the next memoir.

In his later days Selwyn still haunted the clubs, hanging about, sleepy, shrivelled, dilapidated in face and figure, yet still respected and dreaded by the youngsters, as the 'celebrated Mr. Selwyn.' The wit's disease—gout—carried him off at last, in 1791, at the age of seventy-two.

He left a fortune which was not contemptible: £33,000 of it were to go to Mie-Mie—by this time a young lady—and as the Duke of Queensberry, at his death, left her no less than £150,000, Miss was by no means a bad match for Lord Yarmouth.⁶ See what a good thing it is to have three papas, when two of them are rich! The duke made Lord Yarmouth his residuary legatee, and between him and his wife divided nearly half-a-million.

Let us not forget in closing this sketch of George Selwyn's life, that, gambler and reprobate as he was, he possessed some good traits, among which his love of children appears in shining colours.

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.

Sheridan a Dunce.—Boyish Dreams of Literary Fame.—Sheridan in Love.—A Nest of Nightingales.—The 'Maid of Bath.'—Captivated by Genius.— Sheridan's Elopement with 'Cecilia.'—His Duel with Captain Matthews.— Standards of Ridicule.—Painful Family Estrangements.—Enters Drury Lane. —Success of the Famous 'School for Scandal.'—Opinions of Sheridan and his Influence.—The Literary Club.—Anecdote of Garrick's Admittance.— Origin of the 'Rejected Addresses.'—New Flights.—Political Ambition.— The Gaming Mania.—Almacks'.—Brookes'.—Black-balled.—Two Versions of the Election Trick.—St. Stephen's Won.—Vocal Difficulties.—Leads a Double Life.—Pitt's Vulgar Attack.—Sheridan's Happy Retort.—Grattan's Quip.—Sheridan's Sallies.—The Trial at Warren Hastings.—Wonderful Effect of Sheridan's Eloquence.—The Supreme Effort.—The Star Culminates.—Native Taste for Swindling.—A Shrewd but Graceless Oxonian.—Duns Outwitted.—The Lawyer Jockeyed.—Adventures with Bailiffs.—Sheridan's Powers of Persuasion.—House of Commons Greek.— Curious Mimicry.—The Royal Boon Company.—Street Frolics at Night.—An Old Tale.—'All's well that ends well.'—The Fray in St. Giles.'— Unopened Letters.—An Odd Incident.—Reckless Extravagance.—Sporting Ambition.—Like Father like Son.—A Severe and Witty Rebuke.— Intemperance.—Convivial Excesses of a Past Day.—Worth wins at last.— Bitter Pangs.—The Scythe of Death.—Sheridan's Second Wife.—Debts of Honour.—Drury Lane Burnt.—The Owner's Serenity.—Misfortunes never come Singly.—The Whitbread Quarrel.—Ruined.—Undone and almost Forsaken.— The Dead Man Arrested.—The Stories fixed on Sheridan.—Extempore Wit and Inveterate Talkers.

Poor Sheridan! gambler, spendthrift, debtor, as thou wert, what is it that shakes from our hand the stone we would fling at thee? Almost, we must confess it, thy very faults; at least those qualities which seem to have been thy glory and thy ruin: which brought thee into temptation; to which, hadst thou been less brilliant, less bountiful, thou hadst never been drawn. What is it that disarms us when we review thy life, and wrings from us a tear when we should utter a reproach? Thy punishment; that bitter, miserable end; that long battling with poverty, debt, disease, all brought on by thyself; that abandonment in the hour of need, more bitter than them all; that awakening to the terrible truth of the hollowness of man and rottenness of the world!—surely this is enough: surely we may hope that a pardon followed. But now let us view thee in thy upward flight the genius, the wit, the monarch of mind.

This great man, this wonderful genius, this eloquent senator, this most applauded dramatist was—hear it, oh, ye boys! and fling it triumphantly in the faces of your pedagogues—Sheridan, at your age, was a dunce! This was the more extraordinary, inasmuch as his father, mother, and grandfather were all celebrated for their quick mental powers. The last, in fact, Dr. Sheridan, was a successful and eminent schoolmaster, the intimate friend of Dean Swift, and an author. He was an Irish man and a wit, and would seem to have been a Jacobite to boot, for he was deprived of a chaplaincy he held under Government, for preaching, on King George's birthday, a sermon having for its text 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.'

Sheridan's mother, again—an eccentric, extraordinary woman—wrote novels and plays; among the latter 'The Discovery,' which Garrick said was 'one of the best comedies he ever read;' and Sheridan's father, Tom Sheridan, was famous, in connection with the stage where he was so long the rival of David Garrick.

Born of such parents, in September, 1751, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was sent in due course to Harrow, where that famous old pedant, Dr. Parr, was at that time one of the masters. The Doctor has himself described the lazy boy, in whose face he discovered the latent genius, and whom he attempted to inspire with a love of Greek verbs and Latin verses, by making him ashamed of his ignorance. But Richard preferred English verses and no verbs, and the Doctor failed. He did not, even at that period, cultivate elocution, of which his father was so good a master; though Dr. Parr remembered one of his sisters, on a visit to Harrow, reciting, in accordance with her father's teaching, the well-known lines—

But the real mind of the boy who would not be a scholar showed itself early enough. He had only just left Harrow, when he began to display his literary abilities. He had formed at school the intimate acquaintance of Halhed, afterwards a distinguished Indianist, a man of like tastes with himself; he had translated with him some of the poems of Theocritus. The two boys had revelled together in boyish dreams of literary fame—ah, those boyish dreams! so often our noblest—so seldom realized. So often, alas! the aspirations to which we can look back as our purest and best, and which make us bitterly regret that they were but dreams. And now, when young Halhed went to Oxford, and young Sheridan to join his family at Bath, they continued these ambitious projects for a time, and laid out their fancy at full usury over many a work destined never to see the fingers of the printer's devil. Among these was a farce, or rather burlesque, which shows immense promise, and which, oddly enough, resembles in its cast the famous 'Critic,' which followed it later. It was called 'Jupiter,' and turned chiefly on the story of Ixion—

the lover of Juno, who caught a cold instead of the Queen of Heaven; and who, according to the classical legend, tortured for ever on a wheel, was in this production to be condemned for ever to trundle the machine of a 'needy knife-grinder,' amid a grand musical chorus of 'razors, scissors, and penknives to grind!' This piece was amusing enough, and clever enough, though it betrayed repeatedly the youthfulness of its authors; but less so their next attempt, a weekly periodical, to be called 'Hernan's Miscellany,' of which Sheridan wrote, or was to write, pretty nearly the whole. None but the first number was ever completed, and perhaps we need not regret that no more followed it; but it is touching to see these two young men, both feeling their powers, confident in them, and sunning their halcyon's wings in the happy belief that they were those of the eagle, longing eagerly, earnestly, for the few poor guineas that they hoped from their work. Halhed, indeed, wrote diligently, but his colleague was not true to the contract, and though the hope of gold stimulated him—for he was poor enough—from time to time to a great effort, he was always 'beginning,' and never completing.

The only real product of these united labours was a volume of Epistles in verse from the Greek of a poor writer of late age, Aristaenetus. This volume, which does little credit to either of its parents, was positively printed and published in 1770, but the rich harvest of fame and shillings which they expected from it was never gathered in. Yet the book excited some little notice. The incognito of its authors induced some critics to palm it even on such a man as Dr. Johnson; others praised; others sneered at it. In the young men it raised hopes, only to dash them; but its failure was not so utter as to put the idea of literary success entirely out of their heads, nor its success sufficient to induce them to rush recklessly into print, and thus strangle their fame in its cradle. Let it fail, was Richard Sheridan's thought; he had now a far more engrossing ambition. In a word, he was in love.

Yes, he was in love for a time—only for a time, and not truly. But, be it remembered, Sheridan's evil days had not commenced. He sowed his wild oats late in life,—alack for him!—and he never finished sowing them. His was not the viciousness of nature, but the corruption of success. 'In all time of wealth, good Lord deliver us!' What prayer can wild, unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more fervency? I own Genius is rarely in love. There is an egotism, almost a selfishness, about it, that will not stoop to such common worship. Women know it, and often prefer the blunt, honest, common-place soldier to the wild erratic poet. Genius, grand as it is, is unsympathetic. It demands higher—the highest joys. Genius claims to be loved, but to love is too much to ask it. And yet at this time Sheridan was not a matured Genius. When his development came, he cast off this very love for which he had fought, manoeuvred, struggled, and was unfaithful to the very wife whom he had nearly died to obtain.

Miss Linley was one of a family who have been called 'a nest of nightingales.' Young ladies who practise elaborate pieces and sing simple ballads in the voice of a white mouse, know the name of Linley well. For ages the Linleys have been the bards of England—composers, musicians, singers, always popular, always English. Sheridan's love was one of the most renowned of the family, but the 'Maid of Bath,' as she was called, was as celebrated for her beauty as for the magnificence of her voice. When Sheridan first knew her, she was only sixteen years old—very beautiful, clever, and modest. She was a singer by profession, living at Bath, as Sheridan, only three years older than herself, also was, but attending concerts, oratorios, and so forth, in other places, especially at Oxford. Her adorers were legion; and the Oxford boys especially—always in love as they are—were among them. Halhed was among these last, and in the innocence of his heart confided his passion to his friend Dick Sheridan. At sixteen the young beauty began her conquests. A rich old Wiltshire squire, with a fine heart, as golden as his guineas, offered to or for her, and was readily accepted. But 'Cecilia,' as she was always called, could not sacrifice herself on the altar of duty, and she privately told him that though she honoured and esteemed, she could never love him. The old gentleman proved his worth. Did he storm? did he hold her to her engagement? did he shackle himself with a young wife, who would only learn to hate him for his persinacity? Not a bit of it. He acted with a generosity which should be held up as a model to all old gentlemen who are wild enough, to fall in love with girls of sixteen. He knew Mr. Linley, who was delighted with the match, would be furious if it were broken off. He offered to take on himself all the blame if the breach, and, to satisfy the angry parent, settled £1,000 on the daughter. The offer was accepted, and the trial for breach of promise with which the père Linley had threatened Mr. Long, was of course withheld. Mr. Long afterwards presented Mrs. Sheridan with £3,000.

The 'Maid of Bath' was now an heiress as well as a fascinating beauty, but her face and her voice were the chief enchantments with her ardent and youthful adorers. The Sheridans had settled in Mead Street, in that town which is celebrated for its gambling, its scandal, and its unhealthy situation at the bottom of a natural basin. Well might the Romans build their baths there: it will take more water than even Bath supplies to wash out its follies and iniquities. It certainly is strange how washing and cards go together. One would fancy there were no baths in Eden, for wherever there are baths, there we find idleness and all its attendant vices.

The Linleys were soon intimate with the Sheridans, and the Maid of Bath added to her adorers both Richard and his elder brother Charles; only, just as at Harrow every one thought Richard a dunce and he disappointed them; so at Bath no one thought Richard would fall in love, and he did disappoint them—none more so than Charles, his brother, and Halhed, his bosom friend. As for the latter, he was almost mad in his devotion, and certainly extravagant in his expressions. He described his passion by a clever, but rather disagreeable simile, which Sheridan, who was a most disgraceful plagiarist, though he had no need to be so, afterwards adopted as his own. 'Just as the Egyptian pharmacists,' wrote Halhed, in a Latin letter, in which he described the power of Miss Linley's voice over his spirit, 'were wont, in embalming a dead body to draw the brain out through the ears with a crooked hook, this nightingale has drawn out through mine ears not my brain only, but my heart also.'

Then among other of her devotees were Norris, the singer, and Mr. Watts, a rich gentleman-commoner, who had also met her at Oxford. Surely with such and other rivals, the chances of the quiet, unpretending, undemonstrative boy of nineteen were small. But no, Miss Linley was foolish enough to be captivated by genius, and charmed by such poems as the quiet boy wrote to her, of which this is, perhaps, one of the prettiest:

The many adorers had not the remotest suspicion of this devotion, and 'gave her' to this, that, or the other eligible personage; but the villanous conduct of a scoundrel soon brought the matter to a crisis. The whole story was as romantic as it could be. In a three-volume novel, critics, always so just and acute in their judgment, would call it far-fetched, improbable, unnatural; in short, anything but what should be the plot of the pure 'domestic English story.' Yet, here it is with almost dramatic effect, the simple tale of what really befel one of our most celebrated men.

Yes, to complete the fiction-like aspect of the affair, there was even a 'captain' in the matter—as good a villain as ever shone in short hose and cut doublet at the 'Strand' or 'Victoria.' Captain Matthews was a married man, and a very naughty one. He was an intimate friend of the Linleys, and wanted to push his intimacy too far. In short, 'not to put too fine a point on it' (too fine a point is precisely what never is put), he attempted to seduce the pretty, innocent girl, and not dismayed at one failure, went on again and again. 'Cecilia,' knowing the temper of Linley père, was afraid to expose him to her father, and with a course, which we of the present day cannot but think strange, if nothing more, disclosed the attempts of her persecutor to no other than her own lover, Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Strange want of delicacy, undoubtedly, and yet we can excuse the poor songstress, with a father who sought only to make money out of her talents, and no other relations to confide in. But Richard Brinsley, long her lover, now resolved to be both her protector and her husband. He persuaded her to fly to France, under cover of entering a convent. He induced his sister to lend him money out of that provided for the housekeeping at home, hired a post-chaise, and sent a sedan-chair to her father's house in the Crescent to convey her to it, and wafted her off to town. Thence, after a few adroit lies on the part of Sheridan, they sailed to Dunkirk; and there he persuaded her to become his wife. She consented, and they were knotted together by an obliging priest accustomed to these runaway matches from la perfide Albion.

The irate parent, Linley, followed, recaptured his daughter, and brought Her back to England. Meanwhile, the elopement excited great agitation in the good city of Bath, and among others, the villain of the story, the gallant Captain Matthews, posted Richard Brinsley as 'a scoundrel and a liar,' the then polite method of expressing disgust. Home came Richard in the wake of Miss Linley, who rejoiced in the unromantic praenomen of 'Betsy,' to her angry parent, and found matters had been running high in his short absence. A duel with Matthews seems to have been the natural consequence, and up Richard posted to London to fight it. Matthews played the craven—Sheridan the impetuous lover. They met, fought, seized one another's swords, wrestled, fell together, and wounded each other with the stumps of their rapiers in true Chevy-Chase fashion. Matthews, who had behaved in a cowardly manner in the first affair, sought to retrieve his honour by sending a second challenge. Again the rivals—well represented in 'The Rivals' afterwards produced—met at Kingsdown. Mr. Matthews drew; Mr. Sheridan advanced on him at first: Mr. Matthews in turn advanced fast on Mr. Sheridan; upon which he retreated, till he very suddenly ran in upon Mr. Matthews, laying himself exceedingly open, and endeavouring to get hold of Mr. Matthews' sword. Mr. Matthews received him at point, and, I believe, disengaged his sword from Mr. Sheridan's body, and gave him another wound. The same scene was now enacted, and a combat à l'outrance took place, ending in mutual wounds, and fortunately no one dead.

Poor little Betsy was at Oxford when all this took place. On her return to Bath she heard something of it, and unconsciously revealed the secret of her private marriage, claiming the right of a wife to watch over her wounded husband. Then came the dénouement. Old Tom Sheridan rejected his son. The angry Linley would have rejected his daughter, but for her honour. Richard was sent off into Essex, and in due time the couple were legally married in England. So ended a wild, romantic affair, in which Sheridan took a desperate, but not altogether honourable, part. But the dramatist got more out of it than a pretty wife. Like all true geniuses, he employed his own experience in the production of his works, and drew from the very event of his life some hints or touches to enliven the characters of his imagination. Surely the bravado and cowardice of Captain Matthews, who on the first meeting in the Park is described as finding all kinds of difficulties in the way of their fighting, objecting now to the ground as unlevel, now to the presence of a stranger, who turns out to be an officer, and very politely moves off when requested, who, in short, delays the event as long as possible, must have supplied the idea of Bob Acres; while the very conversations, of which we have no record, may have given him some of those hints of character which made the 'Rivals' so successful. That play—his first—was written in 1774. It failed on its first appearance, owing to the bad acting of the part of Sir Lucius O'Trigger, by Mr. Lee; but when another actor was substituted, the piece was at once successful, and acted with overflowing houses all over the country. How could it be otherwise? It may have been exaggerated, far-fetched, unnatural, but such characters as Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Lucius, Bob Acres, Lydia Languish, and most of all Mrs. Malaprop, so admirably conceived, and so carefully and ingeniously worked out, could not but be admired. They have become household words; they are even now our standards of ridicule, and be they natural or not, these last eighty years have changed the world so little that Malaprops and Acreses may be found in the range of almost any man's experience, and in every class of society.

Sheridan and his divine Betsy were now living in their own house, in that Dull little place, Orchard Street, Portman Square, then an aristocratic neighbourhood, and he was diligent in the production of essays, pamphlets, and farces, many of which never saw the light, while others fell flat, or were not calculated to bring him any fame. What great authors have not experienced the same disappointments? What men would ever be great if they allowed such checks to damp their energy, or were turned back by them from the course in which they feel that their power lies?

But his next work, the opera of 'The Duenna,' had a yet more signal success, and a run of no less than seventy-five nights at Covent Garden, which put Garrick at Drury Lane to his wit's end to know how to compete with it. Old Linley himself composed the music for it; and to show how thus a family could hold the stage, Garrick actually played off the mother against the son, and revived Mrs. Sheridan's comedy of 'The Discovery,' to compete with Richard Sheridan's 'Duenna.'

The first night 'The Rivals' was brought out at Bath came Sheridan's father, who, as we have seen, had refused to have anything to say to his son. It is related as an instance of Richard's filial affection, that during the representation he placed himself behind a side-scene opposite to the box in which his father and sisters sat, and gazed at them all the time. When he returned to his house and wife, he burst into tears, and declared that he felt it too bitter that he alone should have been forbidden to speak to those on whom he had been gazing all the night.

During the following year this speculative man, who married on nothing but his brain, and had no capital, no wealthy friends, in short nothing whatever, suddenly appears in the most mysterious manner as a capitalist, and lays down his £10,000 in the coolest and quietest manner. And for what? For a share in the purchase of Garrick's moiety of the patent of Drury Lane. The whole property was worth £70,000; Garrick sold his half for £35,000, of which old Mr. Linley contributed £10,000, Dr. Ford £15,000, and penniless Sheridan the balance. Where he got the money nobody knew, and apparently nobody asked. It was paid, and he entered at once on the business of proprietor of that old house, where so many a Roscius has strutted and declaimed with more or less fame; so many a Walking gentleman done his five shillings' worth of polite comedy, so many a tinsel king degraded the 'legitimate drama,' in the most illegitimate manner, and whose glories were extinguished with the reign of Macready, when we were boys, nous autres.

The first piece he contributed to this stage was 'A Trip to Scarborough,' Which was only a species of 'family edition of Vanbrugh's play, 'The Relapse;' but in 1777 he reached the acme of his fame, in 'The School for Scandal.'

But alack and alas for these sensual days, when it is too much trouble to think, and people go to the play, if they go at all, to feast their eyes and ears, not their minds; can any sensible person believe that if 'The School for Scandal,' teeming as it does with wit, satire, and character, finer and truer than in any play produced since the days of Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Marlowe, were set on the boards of the Haymarket at this day, as a new piece by an author of no very high celebrity, it would draw away a single admirer from the flummery in Oxford Street, the squeaking at Covent Garden, or the broad, exaggerated farce at the Adelphi or Olympic? No: it may still have its place on the London stage when well acted, but it owes that to its ancient celebrity, and it can never compete with the tinsel and tailoring which alone can make even Shakspeare go down with a modern audience.

In those days of Garrick, on the other hand, those glorious days of true histrionic art, high and low were not ashamed to throng Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and make the appearance of a new play the great event of the season. Hundreds were turned away from the doors, when 'The School for Scandal' was acted, and those who were fortunate enough to get in made the piece the subject of conversation in society for many a night, passing keen comment on every scene, every line, every word almost, and using their minds as we now use our eyes.

This brilliant play, the earliest idea of which was derived from its author's experience of the gossip of that kettle of scandal and backbiting, Bath, where, if no other commandment were ever broken, the constant breach of the ninth would suffice to put it on a level with certain condemned cities we have somewhere read of, won for Sheridan a reputation of which he at once felt the value, and made his purchase of a share in the property of Old Drury for the time being, a successful speculation. It produced a result which his good heart perhaps valued even more than the guineas which now flowed in; it induced his father, who had long been at war with him, to seek a reconciliation, and the elder Sheridan actually became manager of the theatre of which his son was part proprietor.

Old Tom Sheridan had always been a proud man, and when once he was offended, was hard to bring round again. His quarrel with Johnson was an instance of this. In 1762 the Doctor, hearing they had given Sheridan a pension of two hundred a year, exclaimed, 'What have they given him a pension? then it is time for me to give up mine.' A 'kind friend' took care to repeat the peevish exclamation, without adding what Johnson had said immediately afterwards, 'However, I am glad that they have given Mr. Sheridan a pension, for he is a very good man.' The actor was disgusted; and though Boswell interfered, declined to be reconciled. On one occasion he even rushed from a house at which he was to dine, when he heard that the great Samuel had been invited. The Doctor had little opinion of Sheridan's declamation. 'Besides, sir,' said he, 'what influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this great country by his narrow exertions. Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover to show light at Calais.' Still, when Garrick attacked his rival, Johnson nobly defended him. 'No sir,' he said, 'there is to be sure, in Sheridan, something to reprehend, and everything to laugh at; but, sir, he is not a bad man. No, sir, were mankind to be divided into good and bad, he would stand considerably within the ranks of the good.'

However, the greatest bully of his age (and the kindest-hearted man) thought very differently of the son. Richard Brinsley had written a prologue to Savage's play of 'Sir Thomas Overbury'—