first night, from the inexperience of the actor who played Sir Lucius O'Trigger, but quickly retrieved the failure and achieved a triumphant success. On the 21st of November in the same year he produced his clever and sparkling opera, "The Duenna," the music of which was composed by his father-in-law. It had an almost unprecedented success, greater even than that of the "Beggar's Opera." Towards the close of the year, Garrick resolved to part with his moiety of the patent of Drury Lane, and to retire from the stage. Sheridan, his father-in-law, and a Dr. Ford bought Garrick's share—Sheridan's own purchase costing £10,000—and he afterwards became a larger shareholder; but where or how he got the money on either occasion, Moore himself could not discover. On the boards of what was partly now his own theatre he produced on the 8th of May, 1777, and with the success which it deserved, that exquisite comedy, the "School for Scandal." He was only twenty-six when Johnson himself proposed him as a member of the Literary Club, observing that "he who has written the two best comedies of his age is surely a considerable man." At the club he met Burke, and about the same time he was introduced to Charles James Fox, and the trio were delighted with each other. In 1779 was performed his inimitable farce "The Critic." But with his new connections he began to cherish a political ambition which they encouraged, and "The Critic" was the last of his original dramatic productions. In the year of the first performance of "The Critic" he contributed to the Englishman, a short-lived organ of the whigs; and at the beginning of 1780 he made his first notable appearance as a politician, signing the report of a sub-committee in favour of the resolutions for parliamentary reform, brought before the public by Fox, as chairman of the Westminster committee. On the dissolution of parliament in 1780, he was elected one of the members for Stafford, and took his seat in October that year. His maiden speech was delivered on the 20th of November following, on a petition against the return of himself and colleague—the house listening with great stillness and attention to the author of "The Rivals," and of the "School for Scandal." The expectations which he had excited were somewhat disappointed, and he himself going up to the gallery and asking the famous reporter Woodfall what was his opinion, received the rather discouraging reply—"I am sorry to say I do not think that this is your line; you had much better have stuck to your former pursuits." Sheridan's rejoinder is well known: "It is in me, however, and by G__ it shall come out!" For some years he did not speak very frequently in the house, but he was active in the councils of his party, and on the formation of the short-lived Rockingham administration he was appointed under-secretary of state, resigning with his friends on the death of that nobleman. He had the sagacity to oppose the formation of the Fox and North coalition, accepting, however, when it was formed, a secretaryship of the treasury. The coalition fell, and Sheridan returned to the opposition. It was on the 7th of February, 1787, that he delivered in the house of commons his famous speech against Hastings in support of the charge relative to the Begum princesses of Oude. No report of it worthy of the name has been published; but not only was it praised exuberantly by Burke and Fox, even Pitt declared that "it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate or control the human mind." It helped to decide the impeachment of Hastings, and as one of the managers of the trial, Sheridan delivered in June, 1788, in four instalments, the celebrated speech summing up the evidence on the charges relative to the Begums of Oude. An excellent report of this famous oration has been recently published in the volumes issued at the expense of the treasury—Speeches of the Managers and Counsel in the Trial of Warren Hastings, edited by C. A. Bond; London, 1861. Meanwhile, both as a whig and as a wit and man of pleasure, Sheridan had ingratiated himself with the prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., and became perhaps the chief of his confidential advisers. Moore even hints that a jealousy of Sheridan's influence with the prince may have aided in influencing Burke to quarrel with his old friends and denounce their sympathy with the French revolution. In the schism between Burke and Fox, Sheridan adhered to the latter. In 1792 Sheridan lost his excellent wife; and in 1795 he married Miss Ogle, a daughter of the dean of Winchester, who brought him £5000. After the death of his first wife Sheridan, never a very prudent manager, became more reckless than ever, and pecuniary embarrassments began to thicken round him. He suffered losses from Drury Lane; his latest contributions of note to the drama, we may remark, were his successful adaptations from the German of Kotzebue—the "Stranger," and "Pizarro," 1798-99. In 1804 the prince of Wales bestowed on him the receivership of the duchy of Cornwall. When the death of Pitt opened the prospect of office to the whigs, Sheridan used all his influence to prevent Fox from joining Grenville. He was unsuccessful, and the connection which he had endeavoured to thwart repaid him in kind. Under the Grenville-Fox administration, instead of high office and a seat in the cabinet, he had to content himself with the treasurership of the navy. The death of Fox left Sheridan without friends in his own party, who were suspicious of his later dealings with the prince of Wales. Drury Lane was burned in 1809; the prince became regent, discarding his old councillors, at the beginning of 1811; in the following year Sheridan had reached his nadir; he lost his seat in parliament, and had to sell out of Drury Lane. He sought refuge in dissipation from the cares and anxieties which beset him. His health gave way, and his last days were harassed by the threats of creditors. On the 7th of July, 1816, in Saville Row, London, he died neglected by all but a very few friends, among whom were the poets Rogers and Moore. At his funeral, however, there were dukes among the pall-bearers, and royal dukes among the mourners, who accompanied his remains to their last resting-place in the Poet's corner of Westminster abbey. Sheridan's fame as a dramatist and a wit (of few men are there so many happy bon mots recorded and remembered) survives his political reputation. His dramatic works were published, with a charming preliminary essay by Leigh Hunt, in 1846 (in Bohn's Standard Library, 1848). The poet Moore's well-known Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Brinsley Sheridan appeared in 1825.—F. E.
SHERIDAN, Thomas, the friend of Swift, is said to have been born, the son of poor parents, about 1684, in the county of Cavan. A patron sent him to Trinity college, Dublin, and taking orders, he established in the Irish metropolis a school which was very successful. A reckless but genial and witty man, he was befriended by Swift, who procured him a living in the south of Ireland. He destroyed his own prospects of church preferment by once selecting "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof," as his text for a sermon preached on the anniversary of King George's birth-day. He afterwards became master of the free school at Cavan, but grew tired of it, and for a time resided with Swift at the deanery. The two old friends parted on bad terms, and Sheridan, with the proceeds of the sale of his Cavan mastership, returned to Dublin, where he died in 1738. He is the author of a prose translation of Persius, and there are many of his letters published in Swift's correspondence.—F. E.
SHERIDAN, Thomas, son of the preceding, was born in 1721 at Quilca, the residence of his father's friend, Swift, whose godson he was, and whose biographer he afterwards became. Educated at Westminster and Dublin, he was early seized by a crotchet that the greatest of arts was the art of elocution, and that his vocation was to assert and prove its importance. He went upon the stage, and acted tragedy in Dublin and London, becoming, for eight years, manager of the theatre-royal in the former city. Meanwhile, he was promulgating in print his views of the all-importance of elocution as an element of education; and finding his position as a manager at Dublin no longer tenable, he started as a lecturer on and teacher of elocution, and was received with great favour at Edinburgh. Among his pupils was Alexander Wedderburne, afterwards Lord Loughborough, whose sister was married to an intimate friend of the favourite Lord Bute. It was partly to this circumstance, Boswell hints, that Sheridan owed the pension of £200 a year, the bestowal of which so enraged his former friend, Johnson, that the latter exclaimed—"What! have they given him a pension? then it is time that I should give up mine." Many sarcastic remarks by Johnson on Sheridan are repeated by Boswell. The rest of Sheridan's life was mainly devoted to unsuccessful attempts to obtain the realization of his educational plan, in which elocution was to be a prime element. He published, among other works, a life of Swift, containing some valuable material, which his own and his father's connection with that great writer placed in his possession; and an English pronouncing dictionary, one of the earliest of any note. He died in 1788.—F. E.
SHERIF, Ed Deen, an eminent Persian historian, and a
