Mr. Sheridan was one of that circle denominated the prince’s friends. So long as his mind remained unaffected by the pressure of personal distress and embarrassment, and whilst he could contribute to the hilarity of the table by his wit, as he had formerly contributed to forward the interests of the prince by his earnest and unremitted endeavours, he appears to have been a welcome visitor at Carlton-house—but this was all. Nor the brilliancy of genius, nor the master of talent, nor time, nor intellect employed and exhausted in the service of the prince, obtained for this great man the means of a peaceful existence, on his cession from public life. In June, 1816, his constitution was completely broken up, and his speedy dissolution seemed inevitable.
He died at noon, on Sunday, the 7th of July, 1816. For several weeks prior to his death he lay under arrest, and it was only by the firmness and humanity of the two eminent physicians who attended him, Dr. Baillie and Dr. Bain, that an obdurate attorney was prevented from executing a threat to remove him from his house to a death-bed in gaol. He enjoyed, however, to the last moment, the sweetest consolation that the heart can feel in the affectionate tenderness, sympathy, and attention of his amiable wife and son. Mrs. Sheridan, though herself labouring under severe illness watched over him with the most anxious solicitude through the whole of that protracted suffering, which has parted them for ever.
To these particulars of this extraordinary individual, which are extracted from a memoir of him that appeared in The Times newspaper, must be added a passage or two from a celebrated “Estimate of his Character and Talents” in the same journal.
“Mr. Sheridan in his happiest days never effected any thing by steady application. He was capable of intense, but not of regular study. When public duty or private difficulty urged him, he endured the burden as if asleep under its pressure. At length, when the pain could be no longer borne, he roused himself with one mighty effort, and burst like a lion through the toils. There are reasons for believing that his constitutional indolence began its operation upon his habits at an early age. His very first dramatic scenes were written by snatches, with considerable intervals between them. Convivial pleasures had lively charms for one whose wit was the soul of the table; and the sparkling glass—the medium of social intercourse—had no small share of his affection. These were joys to be indulged without effort: as such they were too well calculated to absorb the time of Mr. Sheridan, and sooner or later to make large encroachments on his character. His attendance in parliament became every year more languid—the vis inertiæ more incurable—the plunges by which his genius had now and then extricated him in former times less frequent and more feeble. We never witnessed a contrast much more melancholy than between the brilliant and commanding talent displayed by Mr. Sheridan throughout the first regency discussions, and the low scale of nerve, activity, and capacity, to which he seemed reduced when that subject was more recently agitated in parliament. But indolence and intemperance must banish reflection, if not corrected by it; since no man could support the torture of perpetual self-reproach. Aggravated, we fear, by some such causes, the naturally careless temper of Mr. Sheridan became ruinous to all his better hopes and prospects. Without a direct appetite for spending money, he thought not of checking its expenditure. The economy of time was as much disregarded as that of money. All the arrangements, punctualities, and minor obligations of life were forgotten, and the household of Mr. Sheridan was always in a state of nature. His domestic feelings were originally kind, and his manners gentle: but the same bad habits seduced him from the house of commons, and from home; and equally injured him as an agent of the public good, and as a dispenser of private happiness. It is painful, it is mortifying, but it is our sacred duty, to pursue this history to the end. Pecuniary embarrassments often lead men to shifts and expedients—these exhausted, to others of a less doubtful colour. Blunted sensibility—renewed excesses—loss of cast in society—follow each other in melancholy succession, until solitude and darkness close the scene.
“It has been made a reproach by some persons, in lamenting Mr. Sheridan’s cruel destiny, that ‘his friends’ had not done more for him. We freely and conscientiously declare it as our opinion, that had Mr. Sheridan enjoyed ten receiverships of Cornwall instead of one, he would not have died in affluence. He never would have attained to comfort or independence in his fortune. A vain man may become rich, because his vanity may thirst for only a single mode of gratification; an ambitious man, a bon vivant, a sportsman, may severally control their expenses; but a man who is inveterately thoughtless of consequences, and callous to reproof—who knows not when he squanders money, because he feels not those obligations which constitute or direct its uses—such a man it is impossible to rescue from destruction. We go further—we profess not to conjecture to what individuals the above reproach of forgotten friendships has been applied. If against persons of illustrious rank, there never was a more unfounded accusation. Mr. Sheridan, throughout his whole life, stood as high as he ought to have done in the quarters alluded to. He received the most substantial proofs of kind and anxious attachment from these personages; and it is to his credit that he was not insensible to their regard. If the mistaken advocates of Mr. Sheridan were so much his enemies as to wish he had been raised to some elevated office, are they not aware that even one month’s active attendance out of twelve he was at times utterly incapable of giving? But what friends are blamed for neglecting Mr. Sheridan? What friendships did he ever form? We more than doubt whether he could fairly claim the rights of friendship with any leader of the whig administration. We know that he has publicly asserted Mr. Fox to be his friend, and that he has dwelt with much eloquence on the sweets and enjoyments of that connection; but it has never been our fortune to find out that Mr. Fox had, on any public or private occasion, bound himself by reciprocal pledges. Evidence against the admission of such ties on his part may be drawn from the well-known anecdotes of what occurred within a few days of that statesman’s death. The fact is, that a life of conviviality and intemperance seldom favours the cultivation of those better tastes and affections which are necessary to the existence of intimate friendship. That Mr. Sheridan had as many admirers as acquaintances, there is no room to doubt; but they admired only his astonishing powers; there never was a second opinion or feeling as to the unfortunate use which he made of them.
“Never were such gifts as those which Providence showered upon Mr. Sheridan so abused—never were talents so miserably perverted. The term ‘greatness’ has been most ridiculously, and, in a moral sense, most perniciously applied to the character of one who, to speak charitably of him, was the weakest of men. Had he employed his matchless endowments with but ordinary judgment, nothing in England, hardly any thing in Europe, could have eclipsed his name, or obstructed his progress.”
May they who read, and he who writes, reflect, and profit by reflection, on
The talents lost—the moments run
To waste—the sins of act, of thought,
Ten thousand deeds of folly done,
And countless virtues cherish’d not.
Bowring.