legs.

This is but the true comment on some score of anecdotes in Moore, Watkins, Kelly and Byron, &c. which would make a book in themselves, and constitute the whole authentic material from which any just portraiture can be drawn. Sheridan had one kind, indulgent and consistent friend, it was the Prince Regent, who never lost a reasonable occasion to serve him. But the habits of Sheridan were such as to neutralize the kind intentions of a friend whose rank made it impossible to follow into the recesses of dissipation one who had for some time ceased to have any existence beyond them one who could not be trusted more than a child, to his own discretion, temperance or resolution for a few hours. The prince provided for him by a patent situation; he offered to bring him into parliament; he did not enter into the minutiae of his pecuniary affairs, but he never was for a moment wanting in the will to relieve him, on the necessity becoming apparent. But poor Sheridan, while a consciousness of his own lost state made him rather avoid than seek the patronage of the prince, with the jealous inconsistency of his character, entertained a fretful and impatient sense of not being enough sought out. And this little proud sense of his former importance completed his estrangement from one who would have protected him with all his faults, for the sake of the past.

It has been with pain that we have forced ourselves to dwell thus far on a subject which it would be our natural impulse to touch with the tenderness and delicacy of Mr. Moore; but with our opinion we have no choice. It is indeed, a theme to awaken the most painful sympathy. In the strangely chequered records of genius, there is not another case of such deep and mournful contrast. The ascent of fame, fortune, public favour, and personal regard; the descent of poverty, degradation, and neglect; the mortifications which had so many high feelings to envenom them to the breast, and so many brilliant recollections to aggravate them. But the truth must not be lost sight of; there is not one to blame, but him who was an enemy to himself."

66

In the year 1815, his health began to fail. We give the following extract from a letter to his wife, at this time

"Never again let one harsh word pass between us during the period, which may

His disorder arose from the united effect of hard drinking, which gradually impaired, and at last brought on a confirmed disease of the stomachthe progress of which was accelerated by the anxiety attendant on the embarrassed state of his circumstances. His powers of digestion decayed daily, though from natural robustness of frame, his strength long resisted the consequences of this enfeebling state.

In the spring of 1816, he was confined entirely to bed. The pain of illness was aggravated by the attacks of his creditors. The bailiffs obtained possession of his house, and in the horror and alarm of being taken from his bed, poor Sheridan was obliged to have recourse to the kindness of some of his friends. They to whom the application was thus made, did not fail to do all that could be done by money. Liberal assistance was also immediately offered through Mr. Vaughan, on the part of the Prince Regent. This was refused by the advice of Mrs. Sheridan's relations, and an answer returned that sufficient means were provided. In this, no doubt, they acted with a discreet regard to their own credit, and what was due to poor Sheridan. His distress was not of a nature to reflect much honor on any party, and still less on his own prudence; and it could not but be felt, that to one who had done so much, and endeavoured to do so much for Sheridan as the Regent, it would not be very reputable to admit the existence of a case of such total destitution. It would have been an implication of the mournful truth, that assistance and promotion were wasted on one whom they had not availed to redeem from the courses that had laid him thus low and degraded in his last moments. thus much, because the refusal of the Regent's kindness has been so stated, as to suggest that it arose from a spirit of most childish pride, and that it was coupled with implications of the most ungenerous and uncandid kind. Such implications can scarcely have been au

We say

thorised by Sheridan himself, but are to be attributed to the eager malice of party, for which no missile is too base to find some hand to wield it. We cannot help regretting that a fallacious view of this nature has found an echo in the credulity of respectable authorities, whom we shall not name in connection with it. Let it be enough to say that the Prince Regent never was wanting in kindness to Sheridan : but that his patronage was defeated by the infatuation of poor Sheridan. That, further, it was not to the last supposed, that pecuniary assistance was what he wanted; nor was it imagined by any one of common sense, that he could be protected by any liberality against that imprudence which neutralized the most favourable circumstances of his whole life. Lastly, it was long felt that his character and mind had undergone the wreck of his prospects; he was the shadow of him

self, and had for some years ceased to be to his best friends any thing more than an object of pity and regret. In the statement of the biographer, the work of time does not always duly appear; and when this brilliant prodigy of one day is suddenly contrasted with the melancholy ruin of the next, the reader is too apt to forget the sad gradations between.

Sheridan's state became known, and elicited the general sympathy of every rank. But no human pity could ward off the inevitable stroke of a mortal disease. A day or two before his death he was attended by the bishop of London, who read prayers at his bed-side. He died on Sunday the 7th of July, 1816, in the 65th year of his age.

His funeral was attended by persons of the highest rank; and he was buried in Westminster Abbey, with the following simple inscription :

J. U.U.

which had not heretofore engaged my attention, from causes not needful to mention in these preliminary observations. I may be peculiar in my sentiments, and the mere skimmers of literature will, no doubt, object to them, as denoting something of a morbid sensibility, but I candidly avow, that I do not consider that man fitted to be an author of any eminence, who does not prove to the satisfaction of his readers, by references, quotations, allusions, and occasional criticisms, that he has read much, thought much, and been conversant with the literature, not only of his own times, but of the æra, so far back as that denominated in Roman history, the golden age. I also consider it absolutely necessary that he should, on every fitting occasion, incidentally, as it were, introduce any matter, however extraneous to the subject in hand, by which knowledge may be increased, and the arts and sciences developed in a tangible form.

Acting upon this persuasion, I no sooner determined upon a summer's excursion, for the purpose of invigorating my mind, somewhat relaxed by the three years' labour of preparing my first publication for the press, than I began to make arrangements for its subserviency to the spread of general information. I accordingly passed the greater part of four months in my study, almost like the reverend hermit of antiquity-"unknown to public view," except when I rode out for a few hours every day, for the sake of health : or spent an odd week in the hospitable mansion of a friend, to whose kindness and liberality I am indebted for the perusal of many scarce and interesting works which my library did not afford. Delicacy to his feelings forbids me alluding to him by name, but I cannot forbear taking this opportunity of expressing my veneration for his talents, conversational powers, and public and private virtues, acknowledging also my obligations for the many valuable hints vouchsafed to me, from time to time, when I have consulted him on my literary prospectusses.

Having arranged my plan, I commenced a short course of botany, diversified with some astronomy and the rudiments of geology, conceiving those sciences to be the most improving and the best adapted to give spirit and variety to a literary composition such as I meditated. Neither, as I before hinted, did I refuse attention to the claims of poetry, remembering that a tourist

is always expected to have a poetical imagination, and must enrich his pages with either his own unpremeditated effusions in rhyme or blank verse, or with select and appropriate passages from the most celebrated Pegasean votaries, both ancient and modern. I accordingly lent a willing ear to the sugges tions of a literary and accomplished female friend, whose name I am not permitted to expose to public animadversion, but whose taste, sensibility and endowments, are duly appreciated by that select circle which enjoys the gratification of "the feast of reason and the flow of soul," inseparable from her society. This gifted lady earnestly recommended to my notice the works of the late great unknown-Sir Walter Scott-and with the liberality that distinguishes her every act, gave me carte blanche as to time, for the study of his standard performances, lent me from the shelves of her own boudoir, viz. "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake." From these exquisite combinations of fiction and reality-fiction, as to the poetry: reality, as to the notes-I made copious extracts, alphabetically arranged under different heads, so that every object in nature can at once be supplied with appropriate mottos, or illustrations, by merely referring, as in a dictionary, to the initial letters, thus simplifying, in a great degree, the difficult art of poetical quotation.

From the same beneficent source I was also indulged with the perusal of Childe Harold—a rather extraordinary production of the late Lord Byronpurporting to be a pilgrimage, though, in reality, nothing but an unconnected essay upon any thing and every thing, written in an affected style, with the appearance of great carelessness, between jest and earnest, so that it is impossible to know what it means, from beginning to end. There are certainly some noble sentiments beautifully expressed, which would lead one to suppose that he had a fine imagination, if he knew what to do with it, which, I rather suspect, he did not, poor man! He always seems to want to make himself unhappy, and it is apparent that he never quite succeeded, at least to his own satisfaction. But his character is very interesting-as a father, he is exemplary and as a husband, very pathetic. From this noble author, I bave made few extracts, not considering his rambling style suited to the pithy condensation so peculiar to mine.

For,