“Lord Erskine, at woman presuming to rail,
Calls a wife a tin canister tied to one’s tail;
And fair Lady Anne, while the subject he carries on,
Seems hurt at his lordship’s degrading comparison.
But wherefore degrading? Considered aright,
A canister’s polished and useful and bright;
And should dirt its original purity hide,
That’s the fault of the puppy to whom it is tied.”
Sheridan met two sprigs of nobility one day in St. James’s Street, and one of them said to him, “I say, Sherry, we have just been discussing which you were, a knave or a fool. What is your opinion on the subject?” Sheridan took each of them by the arm, and replied, “Why, faith, I believe I am between the two.”
Of his parliamentary opponent, Mr. Dundas, he once said, “The honourable gentleman is indebted to his imagination for his facts, and to his memory for his jests.”