chioness's three papas,"-in the raking up of buried vice and forgotten follies,in the tearing away the decent curtain of silence that hung over sad family secrets; declaring madness to be inherent and hereditary in one race, disease in another, profligacy in a third, and branding a fourth with illegitimacy, till we may fairly dread to leave such volumes on our tables, lest our daughters should look into them, and ask if our fathers really were as base and as vicious as they are there represented! Such works are not "biographies," biographies," neither are they "sketches of character" the confusion of worthless trash with works of authority only increases their mischief; but they will be read, and therefore I notice them. Every man who lives a public life is in the power of other men as to his biography. Obscurity is a thicker shield than virtue; and the man who does his best in a public position is yet less safe from slander than he who does nothing and dies unknown. The biographer, however, who volunteers to condemn or absolve a public man, has undertaken a responsibility, both towards the dead of whom he writes, and the living for whom he writes, the solemnity of which never seems to cross the minds of these tattlers and parrots of literature, whose pages are made up of borrowed phrases. Dead men tell no tales: "--neither can they answer any tales that are told of them. A dead man cannot, as the living might, prosecute for slander-challenge for insult-or justify himself to friends against false accusation. But the ninth commandment is not annulled by the death of our neighbour. "Thou shalt not bear false witness," remains God's law, though his creature depart; and those who use their living hands to engrave yet deeper in a country's annals abuse of that country's noted and remarkable men, should, at least, in their consciences believe that they have so sifted evidence as to be able to deliver a true verdict,-"So help them GOD!"

Now, in the three publications to which I here refer, there are numberless notices which I personally know to be

untrue, but which it in no way concerns me to comment on or contradict. One only biography personally interests me,

the biography of Sheridan—of whom certainly those words might long since have been spoken which were applied to another victim; namely, that he has been "the best abused man in England." A book of such sketches as these would be incomplete without a vulgate edition of the received and adopted chapters "on Sheridan." Having, therefore, snipped and scissored from Watkins, Moore, Earle, Leigh Hunt, &c., "Grace and Philip Wharton," in the exercise of their craft as biographers, first pronounce that Sheridan was greatly overrated as to ability-in fact, was a very ordinary man-and then proceed to the amazing assertion that the fact of Sheridan's being born in a respectable position of life alone prevented his being transported as a felon; which, had he belonged to a poorer class, would assuredly have been his fate! Having given vent to this extraordinary piece of scurrilous condemnation, the conscientious couple coolly wind up by this printed and published confession,-that they have not examined into the veracity of any of the anecdotes; it is enough that they were current! They have not "examined into the veracity" of any of the anecdotes ! That is the point from which I start. I nail up that sentence-like a kite, or any other small bird of prey, with wings extended-as a scarecrow to biographers. They have not "examined into the veracity" of the anecdotes. But it is surely the first duty of those who abuse dead men-the first duty of Christian biographers towards their departed "neighbours"-to examine very strictly into the "veracity" of all anecdotes on the strength of which such severe sentence is pronounced. Abuse has seldom been followed by an admission at once so ridiculous and so disgraceful. They have not examined into the veracity of their anecdotes;" if they had, they would have known they were disseminating falsehoods and vulgar inventions. They have not examined into the veracity of their slander, but, like

the roadside gamin, merely stooped to take from the mud the readiest stone that came to hand, to fling it with a whoop and a halloo at the passer-by.

"Accidental" biography would be a better title for such books than " anecdotical" biography.

Soon after Sheridan died, a Dr. Watkins published a memoir of him: wretchedly ill-written, and admitted by all contemporaries to be replete with incorrect statements. The proposal was then made to Tom Moore to write a life that should give a better idea of the man whose memory was so poorly perpetuated. Lord Melbourne had begun a life of Sheridan. When he found that Moore had received these proposals from an eminent publisher, he gave up the task. He did more; he gave to Moore those portions which he had written, to make what use of he pleased; taking it for granted, with that simplicity and modesty which accompanies high intellect, and which all the brilliant success of his after career left unaltered, that Moore, the established author, the celebrated poet, was a fitter literary craftsman than himself, and would do better what all desired should be done. Lord Melbourne afterwards said he never regretted anything more than having resolved to give up those papers, and to abandon the idea of writing a memoir, which again, in Moore's hands, turned out to be so utterly unsatisfactory. It is a singular fact that, in all the biographies Moore wrote, he contrived to lower the subject of his biography in public estimation. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Byron, Sheridan, all fared alike in this respect. But it is little to be wondered at, if all were prepared for the press in the same way. Moore himself, in his posthumous journals, let us into the secret of his nonsuccess. He says "I am quite sick of this life of Sheridan. I can learn nothing about him. I am going to call on Sukey Ogle to ascertain if she can tell me anything." Like others who have followed him, he was not disposed to question too closely the sources of his information : wheat or tares, he must go a-gleaning! But, to those who knew Sheridan and

his family relations, this proposed application to an eccentric old maiden lady, a distant connexion of Sheridan's second wife, for the help so sorely needed to wind up a task the author was "sick of," reveals much of the cause of Moore's unexpected failure, in spite of his brilliant name.

And now the many memoirs,-prefaces to plays, notices in magazines, and thin pamphlet letters,-budded and sprouted with the proverbial luxuriance of ill-weeds. These, again, were copied from hand to hand: snip, snip, and echo, echo,--the same old stories, and a few new ones,-or a few old stories, and a great many new ones (all made on the same pattern), forming the loose warp and woof of pages "made to sell." Every one who brought out an edition of "Sheridan's plays," or "Sheridan's works," or "Sheridan's speeches," brought out also his own idea of a memoir; and stories were accepted as truths, merely on the excellent old lady's principle-that they had been "printed in black and white." Every foolish anecdote that could be invented by friend or foe-the dullest jokes, the most ungentlemanlike shifts and contrivances were all set down to Sheridan, and accepted by the million. And every fresh batch of invented trash sank him one degree lower from his true level.

It was reserved for "Grace and Philip Wharton" (or whoever may skulk behind that alias,) to write at last the most foolish, false, and abusive of the many inferior memoirs that have been based on those hasty originals.

Following "the lead," in their trashy abridgment of more tedious gossip-(but with more vulgarity,-the great jest of their pages consisting in calling Sheridan and his wife "Sherry and Betsy,"-)great stress is laid on the drunkenness of Sheridan. To read notices of this kind, one would imagine Sheridan was the only drunken man of his day. Was Pitt sober? Was Fox sober? Were they not, on the contrary, models of intemperance? Was not that vice the habitual and constant temptation of the time? Were not doors locked on re

luctant guests, who desired to keep uninjured what little brains they had? and was not the principal boast of a gentleman how many bottles he could stand? Did not Lord Cockburn's Memoirs open to us a vista of toast-drinking and inebriety perfectly inconceivable to our modernized tastes, but which was the "fashionable life" of that "Tom and Jerry" day? Sheridan was drunk as his companions were drunk, and with his drunken companions-with a drunken prince royal and the drunken ministers of the crown -but there can be little doubt that the more finely organized the brain, the more fatal the consequences of such swinish excitement.

He is accused of more than carelessness in money matters. Moore has admitted that, if those around him had been as true as himself, his debts could have been paid over and over again. No doubt Sheridan was improvident. Artists, writers, all these merchant speculators in brain-produce, are proverbially SO. Nothing makes a man so improvident as an uncertain income; rich today, and poor to-morrow, is the root of all carelessness: and woe to that man's regularity in affairs who imagines he can. gather gold at will, in an "El Dorado" of his own wits!

But there again, taking him with his contemporaries, the harder measure dealt to Sheridan seems inexplicable. Fox's debts were paid three times who paid Sheridan's? The Prince of Wales had his El Dorado in a submissive nation, and a subservient Parliament. It seems always to be forgotten that, in the burning of the theatre, both the real and speculative portion of Sheridan's means were destroyed. Had that galleon of his wealth not gone down, these Shylock scribblers might never have claimed their right to such cutting censures. The loss of a resource on which his whole fortune was embarked-like the breaking of banks, and the mercantile dishonesty which has suddenly impoverished so many in our own day-makes it impossible to judge what would have been the result, if success, instead of ruin, had been Sheridan's lot.

The accusation of gambling I pass. It is simply the most shallow of falsehoods; for though to Fox and many of his companions cards were an overwhelming temptation, Sheridan was extremely averse to them.

I might also pass the slander which would attack alike his memory as a husband, and the memory of the beautiful St. Cecilia as a wife. A more affectionate husband than Sheridan never lived. All the flatteries of society failed to wean him from the early love he won with his blood, and at the death of his wife his grief was such as to alarm his nearest friends. At no time of her harmless and innocent career would that lovely wife have been able to find in his neglect what Grace and Philip Wharton seem to consider a sufficient and natural excuse for conjugal infidelity. While Fox lived with a mistress-whilst the Prince of Wales declared upon his "honour" to the Senate of England that the woman was a mere paramour with whom he had gone through the sacred ceremony of marriage while many round him were very masters in the art of debauchery— Sheridan's dream of happiness was still "domestic life!" If, as is sneeringly stated, he did not sufficiently agree with Lockhart's lovely lines

"When youthful faith hath fled,
Of loving take thy leave;
Be faithful to the Dead,

The Dead can not deceive,”

if he sought later in life to renew the vanished dream, and bring "a glory out of gloom," it is at least a proof that his notions of the glory or the gloom of love lay in the bounded circle of HOME; and perhaps no more touching praise can be bestowed on his first wife than this, that while she lived his faults were not known as they were afterwards.

In politics, his worst foes cannot say he was not consistent-to his hurt, to the loss of personal advantage-anxious, not to advance private rivalries but public reforms; eager, chiefly in all questions that affected the oppressed, the struggling, and the helpless.

His friendship for a bad and ungrateful prince was, at least, a real enthusiasm; and if Moore's scornful lines

"The heart whose hopes could make it

Trust one so false, so low, Deserves that thou shouldst break it,"apply to him, he shared the common martyrdom of those who pin their faith on that tempted and selfish class whom we have Scriptural warranty for distrusting, and who, in all ages and all countries, have rewarded fawning better than fair service.

The account of Sheridan's death-bed is as nearly fabulous as any narration can be; but it is the current "copied" account, and passes muster with the rest. And now, we may fairly ask, if such "biographies" be true, how came this man, so abused, so run down, whose faults were so prodigious, whose merits were nil, to occupy the position he did when living? There is a great deal of sneering at his being the "son of an actor:" one of the favourite fables is, that he would have been blackballed at his club -as the "son of an actor"-but for a stratagem of the Prince of Wales. We will suppose this to be a fact instead of a fiction-we will suppose that a set of frivolous dandies did oppose the entrance into their club of that man whose tomb was to be in Westminster Abbey-we will further suppose that acting is the most degrading pursuit any man can follow; that it does not, (as the uninitiated might imagine) require the education of a gentleman, an understanding mind, a passionate heart, the kindling warmth that fires at noble thoughts, grace of gesture, feeling for poetry, and, lastly, the tongue of the orator with the scholar's brain, fitly to succeed in such an art,—but that, on the contrary, any fool may be taught to mimic, -as parrots are brought to copy the coaxing intonation of "Poor Polly," or Grace and Philip Wharton to imitate authors. We will suppose that to be the child of an actor is an ineffaceable stain. We will not open our Peerage to learn whether the actresses and daughters of actors there inscribed, have held their No. 15.-VOL. III.

places nobly and purely amongst our variously allied aristocracy; or whether their children are the recreant, the defaulting, the vicious, and the fugitive, of the races who boast proud names. We will take it for granted that Burns's great line-"a man's a man for a' that,"-stops short of the tabooed profession, and that actors are the Pariahs of civilized life. How did it happen, then, that a man labouring under such a disadvantage of birth, and also described as a common-place swindler, drunkard, and driveller, excelled in everything he attempted, and, from the obscure son of the Bath actor and schoolmaster, became minister of state and companion of princes? What dazzled fools does it make all his contemporaries, that they admitted him unquestioned to a superiority which is now denied to have existed! What an extraordinary anomaly does that famous funeral in Westminster Abbey present, amid a crowd of on-lookers so dense that they seemed "like a wall of human faces," if it was merely the carrying of a poor old tipsy gentleman to his grave by a group of foolish lords!

The God-given power is not so disposed of. Nor will even the dark thunder-clouds of faulty imprudence blot out the light which shines so clearly above and beyond. Unless Richard Brinsley Sheridan had been immeasurably superior to the majority of the men amongst whom he lived, he could not have so overleapt the barriers of poverty, want of connexion, and class jealousies, as to attain the celebrity and position he did attain. He was immeasurably superior. And, while nominally acquiescing in the sneers levelled at his origin, I beg to say that those sneers merely prove the ignorance of the writers who so assail him. If he was the son of an actor, he was the grandson of a bishop; and a bishop so conscientiously rigid in his religious opinions that all the worldly prospects of his family were blighted by the self-sacrificing fidelity with which those opinions were maintained. To the older biographic dictionaries of England I can refer these gossips

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