idea of personal reproach. Your subjects, sir, wish for nothing but that, as they are reasonable and affectionate enough to separate your person from your government, so you, in your turn, would distinguish between the conduct which becomes the permanent dignity of a king, and that which serves only to promote the temporary interest and miserable ambition of a minister.

You ascended the throne with a declared-and, I doubt not, a sincere-resolution of giving universal satisfaction to your subjects. You found them pleased with the novelty of a young prince, whose countenance promised even more than his words, and loyal to you not only from principle but passion. It was not a cold profession of allegiance to the first magistrate, but a partial, animated attachment to a favourite prince, the native of their country. They did not wait to examine your conduct, nor to be determined by experience, but gave you a generous credit for the future blessings of your reign, and paid you in advance the dearest tribute of their affections. Such, sir, was once the disposition of a people who now surround your throne with reproaches and complaints. Do justice to yourself. Banish from your mind those unworthy opinions with which some interested persons have laboured to possess you. Distrust the men who tell you that the English are naturally light and inconstant; that they complain without a cause. Withdraw your confidence equally from all parties; from ministers, favourites, and relations; and let there be one moment in your life in which you have consulted your own understanding.

The drama enjoyed some revival in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, when several practised writers for the boards went back to the tradition of Congreve and Farquhar, taking care to avoid the scandalous indecencies of the close of the Dryden period. Of the comedies of these writers, of whom Colman and Cumberland were the most abundant, those of Goldsmith and of SHERIDAN were the best and the most literary, and these have permanently held the stage.

Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (1751-1816) was the third of the children of Thomas Sheridan the actor (Johnson's "Sherry, naturally dull ") and of his wife, Frances Chamberlaine (1724-1766), the novelist and playwright. He was born in Dublin on the 30th of October 1751; he attended a school in Dublin from the age of seven till eight and a half, and then rejoined his parents in London.

His brilliant mother was his first real instructor, and pronounced him "an impenetrable dunce"; in 1762 he was sent with his elder brother to Harrow. Here their parents

left the boys when, becoming bankrupt, they had to retire to France; when they reached Blois Mrs. Cheridan died, too early to have divined her Richard's talent. At Harrow the latter failed to distinguish himself. Soon after leaving school Sheridan eloped to Dunkirk with a supposed heiress and very beautiful singer, Miss Elizabeth Linley, to whom he was clandestinely married at Calais. The couple returned to England, and poverty obliged them to separate; but a tremendous duel in which

CRITIC

OR

A Tragedy Rehearsed

ramatic tece

in three CACTS

as it is performed at the

THEATRE ROYAL in DRURY LANE

Sheridan was engaged made so great a stir that the secret was discovered. In April 1773 the couple were publicly married again; young Mrs. Sheridan is understood to have been the model for Lydia Languish. In the winter of 1774 they settled in a costly house in Orchard Street, and Sheridan began to be a successful dramatist. The Rivals, St. Patrick's Day, and The Duenna were all first performed in 1775, The Trip to Scarborough and The School for Scandal in 1777, and The Critic in 1779. With this admirable farce, and at the age of only twenty-eight, Sheridan practically closed his career as a man of letters. Next year he entered Parliament as member for Stafford, and threw himself warmly into the troubled political life of those days, when the American War was passing to its inevitable conclusion. Sheridan's public career, and even his experiences as manager of Drury Lane Theatre, which was rebuilt in 1792 and reopened in 1794 under his auspices, scarcely belong to the history of literature, nor does the celebrated part he took in the impeachment of Warren Hastings in 1787-88. Mrs. Sheridan having died in 1792, Sheridan married a foolish girl in her teens, Miss Esther Ogle, daughter of the Dean of Winchester, with a small fortune. Sheridan's prospects darkened as he advanced in years, although he enjoyed bursts of brilliant prosperity. In 1809 the destruction of Drury Lane by fire was a terrible blow to him. The close of his life was made wretched by desperate financial subterfuges, and by the results of "oceans of port wine." He died, overwhelmed with debts, in his London house on the 7th of July 1816, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Richard Brindey Sheridan Ej.

LONDON.

Title-page of First Edition of Sheridan's "Critic"