Mr. Vaughan always said, that the donation, thus meant to be doled out, came from a Royal hand;—but this is hardly credible. It would be safer, perhaps, to let the suspicion rest upon that gentleman's memory, of having indulged his own benevolent disposition in this disguise, than to suppose it possible that so scanty and reluctant a benefaction was the sole mark of attention accorded by a "gracious Prince and Master" [Footnote: See Sheridan's Letter, page 268.] to the last, death-bed wants of one of the most accomplished and faithful servants, that Royalty ever yet raised or ruined by its smiles. When the philosopher Anaxagoras lay dying for want of sustenance, his great pupil, Pericles, sent him a sum of money. "Take it back," said Anaxagoras—"if he wished to keep the lamp alive, he ought to have administered the oil before!"
In the mean time, the clamors and incursions of creditors increased. A sheriff's officer at length arrested the dying man in his bed, and was about to carry him off, in his blankets, to a spunging-house, when Doctor Bain interfered—and, by threatening the officer with the responsibility he must incur, if, as was but too probable, his prisoner should expire on the way, averted this outrage.
About the middle of June, the attention and sympathy of the Public were, for the first time, awakened to the desolate situation of Sheridan, by an article that appeared in the Morning Post,—written, as I understand, by a gentleman, who, though on no very cordial terms with him, forgot every other feeling in a generous pity for his fate, and in honest indignation against those who now deserted him. "Oh delay not," said the writer, without naming the person to whom he alluded—"delay not to draw aside the curtain within which that proud spirit hides its sufferings." He then adds, with a striking anticipation of what afterwards happened:—"Prefer ministering in the chamber of sickness to mustering at
'The splendid sorrows that adorn the hearse;'
I say, Life and Succor against Westminster-Abbey and a
Funeral!"
This article produced a strong and general sensation, and was reprinted in the same paper the following day. Its effect, too, was soon visible in the calls made at Sheridan's door, and in the appearance of such names as the Duke of York, the Duke of Argyle, &c. among the visitors. But it was now too late;—the spirit, that these unavailing tributes might once have comforted, was now fast losing the consciousness of every thing earthly, but pain. After a succession of shivering fits, he fell into a state of exhaustion, in which he continued, with but few more signs of suffering, till his death. A day or two before that event, the Bishop of London read prayers by his bed-side; and on Sunday, the seventh of July, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, he died.
On the following Saturday the Funeral took place;—his remains having been previously removed from Saville-Row to the house of his friend, Mr. Peter Moore, in Great George-Street, Westminster. From thence, at one o'clock, the procession moved on foot to the Abbey, where, in the only spot in Poet's Corner that remained unoccupied, the body was interred; and the following simple inscription marks its resting-place:—
"RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN,
BORN, 1751,
DIED, 7th JULY, 1816.