Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), like Burke and Goldsmith, was an Irishman by birth; his family provided Prince Charles, in Sir Thomas Sheridan, with a most inefficient tutor, and an unfortunate comrade in war. Sheridan's own family was Protestant, his grandfather was a friend of Dean Swift in Ireland, and a humorist. His son, though in Dr. Johnson's set, was regarded by the great lexicographer as a prodigy of natural dullness, highly cultivated and improved by art. Educated at Harrow, young Richard never gave any cause for the complaint that he was dull. At twenty-one he eloped from Bath with the beautiful Miss Linley, a charming singer, the Saint Cecilia of Reynolds's painting. In 1775, Sheridan produced "The Rivals" at Covent Garden; one of the few plays of the eighteenth century which still live on the stage, and perhaps can never cease to amuse, thanks to Mrs. Malaprop's exquisitely well-chosen derangement of epithets, and the unexpected variety of her parts of speech. Malapropisms may be styled a mechanical form of humour, but Mrs. Malaprop's own are happily expressive of her character. To know Lydia Languish is to love her; and Sir Lucius O'Trigger scarcely caricatures the ideas of his duelling fellow-countrymen; whilst Bob Acres is the most sympathetic of all the comic poltroons of the stage, though too sanguine in his belief that "damns have had their day". Sir Anthony Absolute is a delightful variation on the stock character of the Angry Father; and these diverting figures make the sentimental parts of the serious lovers, Falkland and Julia, rather ungrateful. "The School for Scandal" may be called conventional in the contrast of hypocrisy and reckless goodness of heart in Joseph and Charles Surface; but convention is permitted to the stage, while Sir Peter and Lady Teazle, with the happy high spirits of the whole farcical comedy, and the varieties in the candour of the scandal-mongers, make the play at least the rival of "The Rivals," as it is far more provocative of mirth than the wit of Congreve. "The Critic," again, in its delicious nonsense and satire of authors, actors, and critics—Sir Fretful Plagiary is as diverting as realistic—infinitely surpasses its old model, "The Rehearsal". We laugh aloud as we read, and are convulsed as we look on when the piece is acted. Who forgets the nod of Lord Burleigh in the drama of the Armada, and the exquisite reason for which the characters cannot behold the galleons of Spain, and the romantic demeanour of the two Tilburinas, and the Governor who remains fixed, while the Father is moved? Of Sheridan's other plays "St. Patrick's Day" is not seen on the stage, while "The Duenna" does not "attain unto the first Three".
As manager and owner of Drury Lane Theatre, Sheridan proved himself to be not more skilled in finance than Balzac; in debt always, he somehow kept afloat. You would have said that "he was not the stuff they make Whigs of"; any more than Charles Fox. In Parliament, however (1780), he attached himself to that statesman's party; attacked Warren Hastings, and amused the Prince of Wales (George IV.) who certainly appreciated literary genius, from Sheridan and Scott to Miss Austen.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
Born a Pierrepont, daughter of the Earl of Kingston (1689-1762) and wife of Edward Wortley Montagu, Lady Mary, a toast at eight, lived through the great age of Anne and Pope, her absurd admirer before he was her shameless satirist. She was equally celebrated for her beauty, her wit, and her introduction of inoculation against small-pox, from Constantinople, where her husband was English ambassador (1716). Her light verses are sparkling and malicious; her fame rests on her letters, from the East, from England among the wits, to her sister (who married the Jacobite Earl of Mar, and lived in France), and, in later life, to Lady Bute, from Avignon, with its Jacobite colony, and from Italy, where she read and remarked on the great novelists of the day. Even Walpole's letters are scarcely more entertaining, and more brilliant records of society in the eighteenth century do not exist. Lady Mary was not sentimental, and laughed at Pope's lightning-stricken lovers; or rather at the artificiality of Pope's sentiment concerning them.
Junius.
Stat Nominis Umbra. Because we do not know who wrote the letters of political invective signed "Junius," and published by Woodfall in "The Public Advertiser" (1768-1773), much has been written about the mystery of the author's identity. From Sir Philip Francis (who seems to be the favourite, like Matthioli for the Man in the Iron Maskship) to the wicked Lord Lyttelton and Edward Gibbon, there have been about a score of candidates. Matthioli was certainly not the Man in the Iron Mask, and perhaps Sir Philip Francis was not Junius, who gives himself—very cleverly if he were Sir Philip,—the air of being some great one. The letters, except to the professed historian, are repulsive. The worst quality of satire, spite masquerading as virtuous indignation, is their chief characteristic, their style is that of antithetical rhetoric, highly inflated; their subject is party politics and personal invective.
[1] There was scarce a literary form which he did not touch, none which he touched did he fail to adorn.
[2] The writer observes that Sterne is unmentioned in Mr. Pancoast's "Introduction to English Literature," Third Edition, Enlarged, New York, 1907. "Alas, poor Yorick!"