A physician and poet, was born towards the close of the sixteenth century, at Ormond, in the county of Tipperary, and educated at Oxford, where he took his medical degrees, and retired to his native country, where he speedily attained the highest eminence in his profession. He was living in 1620, but the time of his decease is not specified in our authorities. He wrote an heroic poem in Latin, on the Earl of Ormond and Ossory, and also some medical treatises.

This celebrated bard was, like Carolan, blind. His performance on the harp was unrivalled; and we are credibly assured, that many of the Irish national airs would have been lost, but for his retentive memory and pure taste. In Irish genealogy, in heraldry, and bardic lore, O’Neill was pre-eminent. He died at Maydown, in Armagh, towards the close of October 18 aged ninety.

AN extraordinary instance of longevity. He was born in the reign of King William, in 1696; and retained his {460} sight, hearing, and faculties, to the last moment. He died, April 1, 1807, at Beerhaven, in Ireland, aged one hundred and eleven, and left behind him only two hundred and fifteen nephews and nieces.

A poet of some fame, was descended from an ancient family, settled for some centuries at Congleton, in Cheshire. His father was attached to the republican party, in the reign of Charles I and on the Restoration quitted England for Ireland, carrying with him considerable sums of money, with which he purchased estates in that kingdom. These, with the lands he had in Cheshire, descended to the poet, who was born in Dublin in 1679, in which city he was educated; and at the age of thirteen entered of Trinity college, Dublin. He took his degree of M.A. in 1700, and in the same year was ordained deacon, although under the canonical age, by a dispensation from the primate. Three years after he was admitted into priest’s orders; and in 1705, Dr. Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, conferred upon him the arch-deaconry of Clogher. About the same time he married Miss Anne Minchin, by whom he had two sons, who died young, and a daughter who long survived him.

About this period he gave some occasional specimens of his poetical talents; but being partial to the enjoyments of social life, and the company of men of wit and learning; and as this was a taste he could gratify at home in a very small degree, he contrived many excursions to London, where he became a favourite. Goldsmith tells us he was unequal in his temper, and that he was always too much elevated, or too much depressed; and that, when under the influence of spleen, he would fly with all expedition to the remote parts of Ireland, and there receive a gloomy kind of satisfaction in giving hideous descriptions of the solitude to which he retired. Having tried this imaginary remedy for some time, he used to collect his revenues, {461} and set out again for England to enjoy the conversation of his friends, Lord Oxford, Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, and Gay. With Pope he had a more than usual share of intimacy. Pope highly respected him, and they exchanged opinions on each other’s productions with freedom and candour. He afforded Pope some assistance in his translation of Homer, and wrote the life prefixed to it; but Parnell was a very bad prose-writer, and Pope had more trouble in correcting this life than it would have taken him to write it. Being intimate with all the Scriblerus’ tribe, he contributed the “Origin of the Sciences:” and also wrote the “Life of Zoilus,” as a satire on Dennis and Theobald, with whom the club had long been at variance; and to the Spectator and Guardian he contributed a few papers of very considerable merit, in the form of “Visions.”

It seems probable that he had an ambition to rise by political interest. When the Whigs were ejected, at the end of Queen Anne’s reign, he was persuaded to change his party, not without much censure from those whom he forsook, and was received by the Earl of Oxford and the new ministry as a valuable reinforcement. When Oxford was told that Dr. Parnell waited among the croud [sic] in the outer room, he went, by the persuasion of Swift, with his treasurer’s staff in his hand, to inquire for him, and to bid him welcome; and, as may be inferred from Pope’s dedication, admitted him as a favourite companion to his convivial hours; but it does not appear that all this cordiality was followed by any preferment. Parnell also, conceiving himself qualified to become a popular preacher, displayed his elocution with great success in the pulpits of London; but the Queen’s death putting an end to his expectations, abated his diligence, and from that time he fell into a habit of intemperance, which greatly injured his health; The death of his wife is said to have first driven him to this miserable resource.

Having been warmly recommended by Swift to Archbishop King, thia prelate gave him a prebend in 1713, and {462} in May 1716, presented him to the vicarage of Finglas, in the diocese of Dublin, worth £400 a-year. “Such notice,” says Dr. Johnson, “from such a man, inclines me to believe, that the vice of which he has been accused was not gross, or not notorious.” But he enjoyed these preferments little more than a year; for in July 1717, he died at Chester, on his way to Ireland, in his thirty-eighth year. Dying without male issue, his estate, but considerably embarrassed by his imprudence, devolved to his nephew, Sir John Parnell, Bart, one of the justices of the King’s Bench in Ireland, and father to the Irish chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Parnell, who died in 1801.

A collection of his poems was published in 1721, by Pope, with an elegant epistle to the Earl of Oxford. “His praise,” says Dr. Johnson, “must be derived from the easy sweetness of his diction; in his verses there is more happiness than pains: he is sprightly without effort, and always delights, though he never ravishes: every thing is proper, yet every thing seems casual.”

A dramatic author just above mediocrity, was a native of Cork, and was sent at a proper age to complete his studies at Edinburgh, where, feeling a genius for indolence instead of application, he neglected his anatomical lectures, and determined to embrace the profession of an actor, for which (as might naturally be imagined) he had not one requisite. This he was convinced of on his first night’s display. He soon after visited London, and went through all the difficulties usually attendant on literary adventurers. At length, after having got entangled in pecuniary embarrassments, Pilon was obliged to fly to France. During his absence, however, his affairs were accommodated, and on his return to England he married Miss Drury, of Kingston, (1787,) and died January 19, 1788, and lies buried at Lambeth.

He wrote a pamphlet, entitled “A Critical Essay on Hamlet, as performed by Mr. Henderson,” which procured him the patronage of Mr. Colman, and under his auspices his pieces met the public eye. He wrote the popular farce of “The Deaf Lover,” and the celebrated comedy “He would be a Soldier” and eleven other dramatic pieces.

A name never to be forgotten in the annals of charity and benevolence; when time shall have drawn the curtain of oblivion, before the records of wit, learning, and talent, his name shall live in the breast of virtue, and cheer distant generations, by monuments of utility.

He was born in the county of Carlow, and died in Dublin, in the ninetieth year of his age, March 1st, 1818; was educated for the bar, but never practised. He possessed strong powers of mind, and great classical attainments, and profound knowledge of the laws of his country. Enjoying independent property in the shade {465} of retirement, he considered how he might employ it usefully, encourage industry, and mitigate distress. But here it may be necessary to advert to the wretched state of the woollen weavers in the populous and manufacturing districts of the city, and Earl of Meath liberty adjoining. It has been calculated, that about twenty-two thousand persons supported themselves by this branch of trade, during those seasons of the year in which they could dry the wool warps and cloths in the open air; but in the winter, when rain, snow, or frost set in, they were thrown out of employ, and then suffered all the miseries of hunger, cold, and the usual disorders attending such privations. In consequence of such complicated miseries, the woollen weavers and the artisans concurred in 1809 in presenting a memoir to their landlord the Earl of Meath, the Farming and Dublin Societies, the lord mayor, recorder, and court of aldermen, the representatives of the city and county, and other distinguished personages, praying them to take into consideration their distressed state; and to adopt some measures, whereby their warps, wool, and cloth, might be dried in the winter, and wet weather. For this purpose, many meetings took, place, and it was at length determined, that an application should be made to the Imperial Parliament, for about £3,500 sterling, which they supposed, might be sufficient for a building to answer the purposes prayed for. Accordingly, this affecting appeal was laid before the Dublin Society, 2nd of March, 1809, who admitted, that, the importance of the subject, demanded their protection; and recommendation, but that they could not at present make an application to parliament on the subject, and finally postponed its consideration to a future day. It was then proposed to raise the sum by shares on transferable debentures of ten pounds each. This proposal also failed, though it held out the probability of its proving productive of emolument to its humane and patriotic promoters. In short, nothing towards the relief of this complicated misery was effected, until Thomas Pleasants, before whose {466} name, no most noble, or right honourable caught the admiring gaze, purchased these titles in perpetuity, from every being who bows at the shrine of virtue, from every heart that expands at the touch of feeling, humanity, or charity. He purchased a piece of ground, April 1814, and proceeded to the erection of that useful and elegant fabric, the Stove Tenter House, at an expense of upwards of £14,000 being four times the amount of the sum solicited as a subscription amongst wealthy individuals and patriotic societies!!! This admirable fabric is two hundred and sixteen feet long, and twenty-two wide, it has three lofts, supported by iron pillars, with floors of the most ingenious construction; the admirable yet simple manner with which iron tenters, stoves, and other apparatus are combined, exhibits skill and strength that cannot be surpassed; it is likewise rendered fire proof. A few hours now effect, in perfection, what heretofore could not be attained iu an imperfect manner, in many days. In various parts of the building are appropriate mottoes cast on plates of iron, to attract the attention of the artisan employed, and impress on their minds the maxims of industry, sobriety, end morality. From September 29th, 1816, to December 24th, 1817, one thousand six hundred and eighty-three pieces of cloth, two thousand and ninety-six warps, and one thousand eight hundred and seventy-three stones of wool have been sized, dried, tentered, and finished beneath the fostering influence of the Stove Tenter House. The Meath or County Hospital, situated in the same populous district, from want of sufficient funds, could not afford relief to the numbers who claimed it; and there being no operation room, the surgeons and patients were distressed by the necessity of performing all in the open wards. Mr. Pleasants could not contemplate, unmoved, such calls on humanity, and at one time he sent the sum of £6,000 - 4000£ of it to build an operating room, &c.-~ and the interest of the residue to be applied for ever to purchase wine and other necessaries for the afflicted. He presented the Dublin Society with 100£ worth of valuable {467} books; and, at the expense of near £700 he erected the beautiful gates and lodges at their botanical garden, at Glassnevin [sic for Glasnevin], near the city. He printed and circulated, gratuitously, a large edition of a most rare and valuable work, “Reflections and Resolutions,” by the Rev. Samuel Madden, D.D. Dublin, 1738, 8vo. It is impossible to enumerate the extent of his private charities - he seemed only to exist for the purposes of benevolence and liberality, and to diffuse comfort in the habitations of the wretched. By his will, after legacies to a surviving brother, to some other relations, his law agent, surgeon, apothecary, and domestics, be appoints three trustees, to whom he gives 100£ per annum each, for life, in consideration of their trouble; and, after their decease, the same sum to the senior curates of Peter’s, and St. Bride’s parishes, who are to be trustees for ever. To these trustees, he bequeaths his house and garden in Camden-street, and £15,000 to found a school for protestant females, where as many as the funds will permit, are to be lodged, dieted, clothed, and educated, so as to render them useful members of society, and the trustees are to be residuary legatees to all his remaining property for the funds of this school. Tp the schools and alms-houses of St. Bride’s parish, he bequeathed £6,000 to the parishes of St. Luke and St. Catherine, £1,000 each, and the same sums to the Fever and Meath hospitals. His fine collection of paintings, by Rubens, Vandyke Schalken, Rembrandt, &c., to the Dublin Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Ireland, that country he so much loved, and of which he was one of the brightest ornaments.

We are informed, in the “Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland,” was the inventor of the musical glasses. He was born to a good’ estate in the county of Monaghan; but being more attached to music than economy, he, like many other men of genius, outlived the possession of it, and was obliged, in his old age, to make out a precarious {468} subsistence by the exercise of his art. He lost his life about the year 1775, in an accidental fire in Cornhill.

AN eminent lawyer and senator, was the descendant of a family which derives its origin from Picardy, in France. That branch of his ancestral stock, to which the Ponsonby family in these kingdoms trace their lineage, came over to England among the adventurous followers of Duke William of Normandy: and when that enterprising leader, after the decisive battle which transferred the crown of England to his head, provided for his followers by the spoil of the conquered country, in the division of the landed possessions, the manor of PONSONBY, at Hale, in Cumberland, fell by lot to the ancestor of this gentleman, and conferred on him and his descendants,

“A local habitation and a name.”

A scion from this stock, a Sir John Ponsonby, in a subsequent age, probably inheriting the adventurous spirit of his ancestor, and desirous to better his fortunes by his martial prowess in the train of a victorious leader, accompanied Cromwell’s army to invade Ireland. The fertile soil of that island presented to this adventurer a tempting contrast to the bleak vallies [sic for valleys] and barren mountains of the Northern border; and the success of the Protector’s arms, enabled Sir John Ponsonby, like many others of his countrymen, to carve out for himself rich possessions, wrested by confiscation from the Irish Catholics, as lawful spoil of a whole sect, proscribed as notorious delinquents “rebels” freebooters, rapparees, and by various other happy epithets, calculated to reconcile to the scrupulous clemency of the victors, the plunder and extinction of the vanquished. The descendants of those fortunate adventurers, are to this hour designated among the natives as Cromwellians. The present rental of the Ponsonby family in Ireland, exceeds £50,000 per annum. Such a property, in a country circumstanced as Ireland has been added to character, talents, and favourable opportunities, could not fail to attain honours, and power, and high connexions, for the possessors: and accordingly, two peerages, Besborough [sic for Bessborough] and Imokilly; the Speaker’s chair in the Irish House of Commons; the Irish chancellorship; alliances with the ducal houses of Devonshire and St. Albans, as well as the noble ones of Spencer, Grey, and Westmoreland, in England; and of Shannon, Loftus, Kilworth, and Mountnorris, in Ireland, have all contributed to render the Ponsonby family wealthy, eminent, and powerful.

Mr. George Ponsonby, the subject of this memoir, was born on the 5th of March, 1755. He was the third son of the Honourable John Ponsonby, soon afterwards elected Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, in which he succeeded Mr. Boyle. He was brother to the late, and uncle to the present Earl of Besborough, by Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of William, the third Duke of Devonshire, and great aunt to the present duke. He was, virtute officii, a privy, counsellor, and six several times [sic] one of the lords justices, a commissioner for administering the chief government, in the absence of the viceroy.

On the demise of the then late Lord Shannon, his heir and successor, who had married the Speaker’s daughter, joined his political influence with those of his father-in-law, and the Ponsonby family: and such was the strength of this alliance, that they not only vanquished the rival house of Beresford; then a formidable and ruling junto, but in a great degree counterbalanced the royal prerogative itself, which was very powerful in Ireland. Mr. Ponsonby resigned the speaker’s chair in 1769, from his decided reluctance to carry up, officially, to Lord Townsend, then viceroy, an address, which was voted by the House contrary to, his decided opinion. This sacrifice of his situation greatly raised the popularity of a gentleman, who was long considered to possess and to exercise a greater degree of patronage and influence in the government of the country, than any commoner or peer ever had before him.

{470} His younger son, Mr. George Ponsonby, having completed his preparatory education under the paternal roof, was transferred to a public school, and thence to the university of Cambridge, where he distinguished himself eminently by his natural talents, and by his acquirements; and as his senior brother, in the order of primogeniture, was fated to enjoy the hereditary fortune, the junior was destined to supply the defect of patrimony, by a professional avocation.

The law, which had been a source of success and elevation to his father, naturally suggested itself as the line best suited to the talents and future fortunes of the son; as it had been to many of the junior branches of great families in Ireland: nor were the father’s views disappointed in the sequel; as all the honours attendant on the most successful career, were at length fairly attained by him.

In the year 1780, he was called to the Irish bar, at the Four Courts, Dublin; but a considerable time elapsed, before he evinced that application, industry, and sedulous attendance in the courts, which are absolutely necessary even to the moderate success of a young lawyer. But, whether his hopes were damped by the difficulties of competition with the talents of numerous seniors, who preoccupied so much of eminence and emolument; or whether his object was to mature his legal knowledge by close study, in order to start at a future period with more splendour and effect, is not easy to conjecture. Certain, however, it is, that he seemed to decline the tedium of a long and sedulous attendance on the courts, in his serge robe, the silent observer of the assiduous exertions of others. And, although it was obvious, from “subsequent events,” that he by no means neglected the legal researches necessary to his future eminence, his apparent pursuits took a turn incompatible with his forensic interests; fox-hunting and politics seemed to occupy the whole of his attention; and he contrived, after a time, to obtain a seat in that parliament, where he afterwards figured as a distinguished leader. In 1782, when the Duke of Portland {471} was appointed to the viceroyalty of Ireland, Mr. Ponsonby, through the interest of his British connexions, had the professional honour of a silk gown conferred on him, and was shortly afterwards appointed first counsel to the commissioners of revenues the salary and emoluments of which were awarded at £1,200 a year, in the room of Mr, Maurice Coppinger, who was displaced by the new viceroy to clear a niche for Mr. Ponsonby. Many important prosecutions were directed by this board; and a barrister of such short standing must certainly possess considerable talents, as well as some practical knowledge, before he could fulfil the duties of such an office with competent ability and discretion. Mr, Ponsonby, however, seemed to evince a constitutional indolence in his professional avocation, and to manifest a predominant attachment to the sports of the field. He would at any time much rather have unkennelled a fox, and contended for the brash at the end of a forty miles chase, than have devoted a day to prosecuting a smuggler or a distiller, and driving an unhappy husband to ruin, and his wife and children in beggary. The onus of the duties, therefore, devolved upon his junior counsel.

During the period of this vacillation between business and his favourite sport, e married Lady Mary Butler, eldest daughter of Brinsley, second Earl of Lanesborough. In the sudden recal [sic] of the Duke of Portland from the chief government, Mr. Ponsonby lost a valuable patron; and on the arrival of the new viceroy, the late Marquis of Buckingham, be soon discovered he had found an enemy. The noble marquis was selected by Mr. Pitt, to govern Ireland in new manner, and upon new principles. It had been the constant but unhappy fate of that country to be the victim of party experiments, and the influence of great families contending for mastery, under the auspices of the British cabinet: and it was now decreed by the cabinet of England, that the power of the house of Besborongh should give place to that of the house of Waterford. The new viceroy accordingly commenced his operations by {472} making a variety of changes, and, amongst the rest, Mr. Ponsonby was dismissed from office to make room for Mr. Marcus Beresford, a beardless stripling, the cadet of a powerful family, whose star was now in the ascendant. There could be no objection to the age or talents of Mr. Ponsonby; for his successful rival was comparatively a boy, just fledged in a bar gown, with the person, the voice, and the frivolous manner of a young lady. This youth too, was promoted to a seat in parliament, and took a prominent post on the treasury bench; where it was truly ludicrous to see this political tyro, night after night, rising to oppose, in treble tones, the formidable thunders of Grattan, Ponsonby, Curran, and others of their eloquent colleagues.

Persecution has often produced martyrs; and patriots, who might have lain dormant in the lap of ease and tranquillity, have likewise been often roused and confirmed by it. Mr. Ponsonby, a younger brother, with no other inheritance than his talents and his profession, now found himself deprived of a lucrative office, which he had confidently hoped long to enjoy. He was also a married man, and already hailed as the father of an offspring that must look to him for support. He had formed an establishment suitable to a permanent revenue, now diminished more than half by his loss of office. His wounded pride could not tamely view a hostile family triumphant, and himself a victim of that triumph. The occurrence, however, proved fortunate in its result; it roused all his slumbering energies to action, and effected thenceforth an important change in his character and conduct. He determined on a new course of life, and resolved to sacrifice indolence at the shrine of laudable ambition, to direct his talents to worthier pursuits, and not only to render his professional avocation a source of emolument, more pro-ductive than that he had lost, but to convince the new viceroy that he was not to be injured with impunity. Hounds and hunters vanished by rapid degrees the Four Courts became the constant theatre of his sedulous {473} exertions: and the whole stock of his professional knowledge, previously acquired at leisure hours, now daily increased by study and experience, was brought into play with rapidly increasing eminence and emolument. Thus proving what may he effected by a man of parts, who has the firmness to surmount the indolence of a disposition wholly averse to toil and constraint, and to exert these qualities with which nature and education have endowed him. In a very short time, Mr. Ponsonby not only acquired the reputation of a first-rate lawyer, which his extensive family connexion, and his rising popularity, enabled him to render extensively productive; but his political knowledge, and commanding eloquence, rendered him equally conspicuous in the senate, and not less a popular favourite with his country, than a formidable antagonist to the ministers whom he opposed.

Never, perhaps, in the history of free nations, was a more ample field displayed for the eloquence of a popular orator, than by the state of Ireland from the period of which we now speak, down to that of the Union. The fetters of the country, it is true, were somewhat lightened, and the trammels which paralysed her exertions, rather relaxed, by the recent exemption from external domination, by the freedom of commerce, and by the national independence, acquired by the eloquence and firmness of Mr. Grattan and his compatriot orators. But still the vitals of the nation were consumed by the infection of many a hidden malady. Well might it be said of Ireland, “casco carpitur igni” for, exclusive of religious animosities, cherished for party views and political machination, the nation was like a fertile garden overrun with the rankest weeds and brambles of corruption; and the House of Commons an Augean stable, that required more than Herculean labour to cleanse it from the accumulated filth of job, and place, and pension, and sinecure, and rapacity, and public profusion; It rarely met but for some public mischief, and little, if any, public good could be expected from it. It was the arena where conflicting {476} nations struggled for influence and spoil; where the minister of the day, who commanded one side, and manoeuvred to strengthen his ranks from the other, had no object at heart but to raise revenue and maintain subjugation; to keep down the people, and remunerate their oppressors. The time of the House, instead of being devoted to improve the natural resources of the nation for general advantage, was wasted in declamatory contests, or in discussing motions started for the purpose of displaying popular eloquence on one side, or carrying some measure of oppression or rapacity on the other. The assembly then, as was eloquently said by Mr. Curran, “brooded, like a midnight incubus, upon the bosom of the country, and pressed her vital energies almost to death.”

Such was the state of things when the Marquis of Buckingham arrived, professedly to reform all abuses, and redress all grievances; but, in opposition to these professions, the noble marquis increased and aggravated the causes of complaint. And so difficult did he find it to gratify the rapacity of his supporters, that, like another Acteon, he was almost devoured by his own hounds. Not only was he obliged to overload the pension list, already intolerable, and to fill up every pigeon-hole of office with new claimants, but even to sub-divide places and salaries between two or more candidates, and to create many new places for members of parliament, by increasing the number of commissioners at public boards, already much too numerous for the business they had to transact. Against such an order of things, Mr. Ponsonby commenced his ardent and powerful attacks; and the viceroy soon found, that he had roused a most formidable enemy in the man he had deplumed to decorate a rival with his spoils. Ably supported by Mr. Grattan, Mr. Curran, Mr. Forbes, and several others, the ablest orators in the senate of that day, he thundered against the prevalent system of corruption; he forcibly displayed all the real or imputed crimes and errors of administration; he aggravated the public, com{475}plaints, which now became loud and general; and he was soon deemed by his partisans, a competent leader for the host of Opposition, who, though uniformly defeated on the division, constantly carried off the palm of argument, leaving to their opponents no triumph but that of a devoted majority. The better to concentrate their operations, the members of opposition in both Houses, formed themselves into a Whig Club, on the same principles with that in England, wearing the same uniform of blue and buff, and acting in concert with their British allies. Lord Charlemont and the Duke of Leinster took the lead in the upper House; Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. Grattan, Mr. Curran, and Mr. Forbes, in the lower. Many gentlemen, not in parliament, or connected with party, joined them. They held constant meetings, at which they concerted and arranged their measures, for the service of their country, and the annoyance of their opponents. They broadly contended, that the government patronage in the Commons House had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished; that the expenses occasioned by this fatal system, had exceeded all former bounds; and proved, that out of three hundred members, there were one hundred and ten who enjoyed places and pensions under the crown.

To sketch even a slight outline of the topics of Mr. Ponsonby’s eloquence, would be to give a parliamentary history of his country, from his first entrance into that senate, until its final extinction in the Union; for he took a distinguished part on every debate of importance. An event occurred about the period to which we have just alluded, which gave Mr. Ponsonby a complete triumph over the viceroy. On the alarming illness of his late majesty, in 1789, both kingdoms were overwhelmed in sorrow. It was ultimately deemed requisite by the British minister and parliament, to appoint a regent, during his majesty’s incapacity. But then it was determined to restrict the heir-apparent, who was nominated to the office, with powers limited in such a manner, and to such a {476} degree as, in the opinion of Mr. Fox and the Opposition, must render the office painful, if not odious to that illustrious personage. His hereditary right to the exercise of this important function, without the sanction of parliament, was questioned by the first minister of the day, who was supported in the plan he had proposed by a great majority of the British parliament, notwithstanding the powerful remonstrances of his opponents. But the result was in Ireland quite different. The Opposition, in that country, after a short struggle, appeared in a triumphant majority. Mr. Ponsonby, who now headed it, aided by the powerful talents and co-operation of Mr. Grattan, and other distinguished orators, maintained with equal boldness and success the inherent right of Ireland, on the suspension of the royal functions, to nominate and appoint a fit regent, with or without limited powers, independent of any reference to what might be done by the British parliament, on the present occasion. This was the first question which afforded an opportunity to the parliament of Ireland for exercising their new-born independence; and on this occasion they appeared resolute to support that independent right. They viewed in the heir-apparent to the throne, the fittest of all persons to administer for his royal father, the functions of that royal authority he was born to enjoy. They held it at once invidious, offensive, and indicative of an ungracious suspicion, to trammel his royal highness with jealous restrictions, in exercising for his father, the powers and privileges of the crown, which were already limited by the constitution. They could not withhold from that illustrious prince, the confidence reposed in his father, and which must, in the course of nature, soon he transferred to himself. The subject was long, ably, and indeed, violently debated in both Houses: but in spite of all the influence of the viceroy, and all the eloquence and art of the Beresford party, with Mr. Fitzgibbon (the then attorney-general, and afterwards chancellor) at their head, the warmth of national feeling surmounted all the more cool and calculating principles {477} of Mr. Pitt’s doctrine; and a vote passed both Houses, inviting his royal highness to assume the regency of Ireland, unfettered and unclogged by any of those restrictions, which had been imposed in England. A deputation from both Houses waited on the viceroy, with an address to his royal highness, founded upon this vote, which they requested him to transmit to England; but his excellency refusing to forward a state paper so directly opposed to the most important principles of his administration and the main object of his most strenuous resistance, a vote of censure was passed by both Houses, and a deputation of members, consisting of four from each House, was sent to England to present their address to the prince regent. The Irish ambassadors, as they were called, were most graciously received by his royal highness at Carlton House, and honoured with the warmest expressions of thanks for the generous attachment, manifested towards him by the parliament of Ireland: but the critical recovery, of his royal father just at that time, pre- . vented his royal highness from signifying any opinion as to the acceptance of their proposal. The Marquis of Buckingham, after this open breach with the parliament, considering his post no longer tenable, immediately returned to England. A marked trepidation and dismay was now manifest amongst those Irish placemen who had, as the phrase is, ratted from the treasury phalanx, and supported the regency vote, on a speculation of worship to the rising sun. They trembled for their places. Many were dismissed, and others, in atonement for their error, made the most humiliating concessions, and were allowed to retain their posts. Mr. Ponsonby, however, stood firm at the head of a select and faithful band of eloquent adherents, who continued for a series of years to oppose the system of measures, which they but too truly prophesied must ultimately lead to a general convulsion.

The discussion upon the regency question led to two results, deeply involving the fate of Ireland. Mr. Fiz{478}gibbon, the attorney-general, in reward for the zeal he had shewn in opposing the exercise of independence by the parliament on this occasion, obtained the chancellorship of Ireland soon afterwards, on the decease of Lord Lifford, this being the first time that honour had ever been conferred upon an Irishman. And, secondly, the measure itself, and the arguments by which it was supported, laid a feasible foundation for effecting the subsequent Union, and furnished the principal reasonings urged by Lord Castlereagh and his partisans, for carrying that measure into effect, by all means, good or bad, and at all risks, as indispensable, to prevent the ultimate separation of both countries.

It is, however, but justice to the liberality of Lord Clare, though a vindictive politician, to state, that on his quitting the bar to mount the chancery bench, he presented his bag of briefs to Mr. Ponsonby as a very distinguishing mark of his professional regard, and his approbation of the legal abilities of his political opponent; who, notwithstanding his parliamentary exertions, which were ardent and indefatigable, pursued his forensic avocations with the most zealous industry and lucrative success. And, although his lordship, who frequently smarted under the satirical lash of Mr. Curran’s wit, and once fought a duel with him, carried even to the equity bench his hostility, personal as well as political, to that gentleman, insomuch as to ruin, by his marked discountenance, the chancery practice of Mr. Curran, by much the most important and lucrative part of his profession, he observed a very different deportment towards Mr. Ponsonby.

An incident which occurred to the latter in the come of his legal practice, excited his marked hostility in the chief judge of the court of King’s Bench, John Scott, Earl of Clonmell, and terminated in something like the ruin of that noble lord. Mr. Scott had elevated himself by the boldness of his character, and his services to the government, from very humble circumstances to the high office he then filled. A newspaper war had broken out {479} between Mr. John Magee, the eccentric proprietor of a popular print, called the Dublin Evening Post, and an attorney, Mr. Francis Higgins, the owner of another newspaper, the Freeman’s Journal, then hired in the service of the Irish government. This war raged for a considerable time with great virulence; and Magee did not confine his attacks merely to Higgins, but directed a scattered fire against the whole circle of his intimate associates, amongst whom was numbered Mr. Richard Daly, the manager of the Dublin theatre. Magee spared no species of abuse, ridicule, and satire, against the parties: and this involved him in several actions for libel, in which the damages were laid at an enormous amount. Lord Clonmell, on the application of the plaintiffs, advised by Mr. Higgins, issued six successive fiats to arrest Magee, and hold him to bail to abide the issue of as many several actions; and he was accordingly held to bail to the amount of £16,000 This induced him to turn his fire against his lordship in a most extraordinary way. He not only opened upon him the batteries of his news-paper, but also took an extensive piece of land adjoining Lord Clonmell’s marine domain, at the edge of Dublin Bay. This piece of land he baptized by the name of Fiat Lawn; his lordship himself being currently designated as the Marquis of Mount Flat. Magee soon announced for a particular day, certain olympic games, termed, Da bra pleasuragh, to be celebrated on Fiat Lawn, consisting of cudgel play, foot-ball, and rural dancing. By way of interlude, there was a sailing match for fishing boats, in the bosom of the adjacent bay; the prizes were, suits of sails and fishing nets; and the whole fête to conclude with a magnificent hunt on the lawn, of a shaven pig, lathered with soap, to be the prize of the fortunate pedestrian who could first seize and detain it. This project was purposely contrived for the annoyance of Lord Clonmell; and upwards of fifty thousand people, of all classes, from the metropolis and surrounding country, were assembled to see these eccentric sports. The injury done to Lord {480} Clonmell’s grounds, was productive of a new fiat, issued on the affidavit of the chief justice himself, before a puisne judge of his own court, Sir Samuel Bradstreet, and Mr. Magee, unable or unwilling to find farther bail, was lodged in Newgate to abide the issue of his trial. An action at the suit of Mr. Daly the manager, came on first for trial. Mr. Ponsonby, with a most able veteran lawyer, and member of parliament, Mr. Arthur O’Neile, was counsel for Magee. But, notwithstanding the host of precedents and eminent law authorities adduced by both gentlemen, decisively in favour of their client, the chief justice, by his simple ipse dixit, overruled every thing. The advocates of Magee then declined offering further authorities, and a verdict was obtained for the plaintiff. Several other actions were still pending; Magee was driven to distraction, and almost to ruin. But Mr. Ponsonby, convinced that Lord Clonmell had acted partially, oppressively, and in gross abuse of his judicial authority, brought forward the subject in parliament, and moved for impeaching his lordship at the bar of the House of Lords. On the night of Mr. Ponsonby’s motion, he introduced it by observing, that he should not support it merely by arguments of his own, but from the very words of the ablest law authorities and constitutional writers that had ever existed; and he brought with him for the purpose, a formidable collection of books, selected from his library, with apposite and pointed quotations, which he introduced into his speech; and concluded an unanswerable mass of argument, by moving for the impeachment.

Mr. Curran, who had been counsel for the plaintiff on the trial, supported the motion of Mr. Ponsonby. He said, that as he had been accidentally retained as counsel against Mr. Magee on the trial, he was bound to use his best exertions for the cause of his client and had the fortune to succeed with the court and jury in obtaining a verdict. But he begged, that the House would consider him now, not as acting the part of an advocate in a court of law, where he had spoken with his brief in one hand, {481} and his fee in the other; but as a member of parliament, delivering the opinion of a constitutional lawyer and an honest man; and he perfectly coincided in the statements and opinions, so eloquently expressed, and so ably advanced by his learned friend.

The only Crown lawyer who ventured to answer, was Mr. Wolfe, the attorney-general, who succeeded Mr. Fitzgibbon in that office, and afterwards Lord Clonmell on the bench, by the title of Lord Kilwarden. But he did not attempt to refute the arguments, though he opposed the motion of Mr. Ponsonby. He contented himself with observing, that judges were but men, and liable, even with the best intentions, to human errors and oversights; that enough had been done, by the introduction of this motion, to prevent a repetition of the like errors in future; and he concluded by expressing a hope, that his learned friend would consent to withdraw a motion, calculated to depreciate the judicial station, and to encourage and give triumph to those who set all law and all authority at defiance.

Mr. Ponsonby replied, “that in bringing this question before the House, he had done his duty as a member of parliament, and a supporter of the laws, the constitution, and the liberties of the subject; and therefore he could not so lightly abandon a measure he had adopted with the coolest deliberation, and the fullest conviction of its necessity. He should leave it for the House to do its duty, and dispose of his motion as they pleased; but he should not withdraw it. He acted from no motives of personal feeling towards the noble judge. His learned friend, he believed to be a good-natured man, and a good lawyer, but thought him a most miserable attorney-general. If, however, he was content to abandon the defence of his noble friend, the learned judge, by declining all argument, and trusting the decision of this question to the book of numbers, be it so: he, Mr. Ponsonby, was quite aware of what would be the issue; he had done his duty. He might, it was true, lose his motion: but “Lord {482} Clonmell was damned for ever.” The question was put and negatived without a division; but the judicial character and mental feelings of the noble lord, never recovered the blow. He survived but a few years.

We now revert to the period when the French Revolution was about to burst forth, to the astonishment and annoyance of all Europe. The effect produced by the discussions that preceded and accompanied that dreadful event, was truly formidable, and excited considerable ferment in the popular mind, in Ireland as well as in England. The cry of parliamentary reform by the corresponding societies in England, was loudly resounded in the sister country. The Society of United Irishmen, originated about this time, by a party of junior barristers, for purposes declaredly liberal, temperate, and patriotic, so rapidly increased in numbers and popularity, as to excite some alarm in the ruling party. Minor societies, as scions from the original, sprung up in every part of the kingdom, acknowledging that of the metropolis as their supreme head. Their professed objects were, the abolition of all animosities on the score of religion, and the establishment of a brotherhood of affection and attachment between all classes of Irishmen, for the common good of their country. The two leading measures which they avowed were, Catholic emancipation from all the remaining proscriptions of the penal laws; and a reform in the representative House of Parliament.

Though many successive relaxations of the penal laws had been gradually, but grudgingly, ceded to the Catholics in preceding years; still there were many important privileges withheld. The Catholics considered that their tried loyalty, for above a century, had entitled them to exemption from all invidious distinctions between them and the rest of their fellow-subjects, and to a full admission to all the advantages of the constitution. But they had failed in their repeated solicitations to obtain this ultimate boon.

The dissenters of Ulster, although in present possession of the advantages of their high-church fellow-subjects, still {483} felt that they held those advantages merely by sufferance, de anno in annum; and that they were still liable to the operation of a test act, only suspended from session to session. A bill was brought in every year for allowing dissenters, holding offices under the crown, further time to qualify by receiving the sacrament in the established church, and taking certain oaths, wholly repugnant to their religious scruples; and if any session should elapse without renewing this bill, all dissenters would be immediately disqualified from retaining their old, or obtaining new, appointments, whether civil or military; and would thus be included in the same proscription with the Catholics.

These two great sects, comprising above four-fifths of the whole population, and, for near a century, entertaining a spirit of rancorous hostility against each other, which was cherished by the predominant church, on the good old maxim, of divide and rule, now saw that their only hope of gaining their respective objects, was by Parliamentary reform; for the propriety of this measure they had the sanction of Mr. Pitt and Lord Castlereagh, (both of whom commenced their political career as its strenuous advocates, the former continuing to avow his attachment to it long after his possession of office,) and for the attainment of this end, they formed a solemn coalition of mutual support. This was the principle which gave birth to the Society of United Irishmen; and propagandists were zealously employed throughout the country to fan the flame. A variety of combustibles were already stored in the popular mind, which only required ignition to blaze out in a dangerous conflagration.

The heated discussions and democratic principles promulgated by the revolutionists in France, and the animating details of the victorious successes of the French arms, were republished in all the British and Irish newspapers. The manifestoes of the British Corresponding Societies; - the publication of Paine’s Rights of Man, by subscription, and its distribution, gratis, by hundreds of thousands {484} amongst the middling and lower orders; the recent memory of former grievances, to which the ruling party hod obstinately refused redress; the marked reluctance with which any advantage was ceded to the country by the British government; - and the powerful eloquence of the Opposition, which failing of its effect in Parliament, yet forcibly excited the national feelings; - all tended to one fearful issue. The old volunteer system, to which Ireland attributed all she had obtained, though it had long sunk into repose, was still kept alive in the metropolis by self-armed and self-officered associations of tradesmen, which included many of the old volunteer army, and converted their Sunday amusements into military exercises, parades, field-days, sham battles, sometimes in detached corps, and sometimes in brigades, under the celebrated Napper Tandy, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, and other popular chiefs. These corps were allowed to proceed, if not without notice, at least with no interruption from government, though drums, fifes, and military ensigns were constantly heard and seen in all directions; and every square within, and field about the metropolis, presented an active school of tactics. The olaims before mentioned, and the manifestoes of the United Irishmen, fomented the smothering flame; a civil war was kindled between the Orangemen and Catholics in the north, under the appellations of Peep-of-day Boys and Defenders; and many bloody battles were fought, and houses plundered, demolished, and burnt, without any interference from the lood magistrates to check these disorders, which, on the contrary, were supposed to be encouraged by the Orange gentry of the district. Thousands of poor Catholic families, farmers or artisans, were expelled by fire and sword from their native homes in the northern counties, and forced to travel southward in search of an asylum, propagating, as they journied [sic], their tales of woe. In the mean time, the Catholics in the metropolis held conventions, and the Presbyterians in Ulster political synods, for the promotion of their reciprocal objects; whiles on the side {485} of government, proclamations, imprisonments, prosecutions, and penal enactments, were the remedies adopted. Such was the alarming state of things, when the British cabinet felt the necessity of taking some measures to tranquillize and conciliate the people. Catholic emancipation, and a total abolition of the test laws, were allowed by all, except the Orange party, to be at once indispensable, and effectual for every desirable purpose; and Earl Fitzwilliam was deputed, as the genius of peace, to come over as viceroy, in the room of Lord Westmoreland. This nobleman was in every way suited, from the just popularity of his principles, the mildness of his manners, the dignity of his character, and his large landed property in Ireland, to effect the objects of his mission. His friends in Parliament announced the glad tidings of his appointment and his approach, with full powers to propose the measures of conciliation and unity to all parties. The noble Earl landed late on a Sunday evening, and went first to the house of his friend Mr. Ponsonby, in Granby-row; the news of his arrival was announced by salutes of ordnance, and the whole metropolis was in a few minutes brilliantly illuminated. Joy and gratulation pervaded all ranks, except that party who must now recede from office and power, but not from secret influence. Lord Fitzwilliam met the Parliament. The objects of his mission were explained by his friends, and implicitly accredited: and, as an earnest of anticipating gratitude, a motion was made in the House of Commons, by Mr. Grattan, for a grant of three millions to England in aid of the war against France, and it was cheerfully carried. But scarcely had this vote received the sanction of the other House of Parliament, when the authority of Earl Fitzwilliam to propound the promised measures was denied by the British cabinet; and the noble earl was charged with misconceiving his instructions. The subject of the emancipation was discussed in the Irish privy council, preparatory to its introduction in Parliament, and was strenuously opposed by the Orange party in that assembly, particularly by Lord Clare and an{486}other leading member, the president of a great assembly. Mr. Grattan represented the dangers of exasperating the feelings of the whole country, by refusing what all so confidently expected, and the peril of an actual civil war; but the great leader alluded to, is reported to have answered, “What of that? Suppose the conflict should coat fifty thousand lives, it were better so, than forfeit the ascendancy of the Protestant interest in church and state.” Earl Fitzwilliam, who could not have been mistaken as to the authorities with which he was invested on acceptibg the viceroyalty, now perceived his honour was to be sacrificed to the machinations of a party in the English cabinet, aided by the influence of the Orange junto in Ireland. He felt that he had been made an instrument of deception to the hopes of Ireland. He explained in a public letter, addressed to the Duke of Portland, and then resigned his office.

Thus failed the accomplishment of that system to which the eloquence of Mr. Ponsonby and his friends had been, for so many years, zealously directed. “The word of promise,” thus snatched from the national ear, and “the cup of expectation dashed from their lips”; Earl Fitzwilliam’s resignation, and the cause of it, were heard of with public consternation and dismay. That nobleman, on his way to the yacht, which was to return him to England with chagrin and disgust, passed through streets crowded by a silent and sorrowing multitude of all ranks, hailed by their farewell blessings. The shops were all closed, and business suspended; black flags and crapes were displayed from the windows; and the metropolis wore the gloomy aspect of mourning for some public calamity. Earl Camden arrived as the new viceroy, accompanied by Mr. Pelham as his secretary; and the party of Lord Clare and the Beresfords returned to power. The whole torrent of mischief, restrained by the temporary suspension of their influence, was now ready to rush forth on the country with accumulated violence.

In the House of Commons, notwithstanding what had {487} passed, the question of Catholic emancipation was brought forward, for the last time, by Mr. Arthur O’Connor, with great energy and eloquence, and debated with much warmth. Mr. Pelham, the new secretary, opposed it with a degree of animation bordering on fury. He said, that concession after concession to the Catholics seemed but to encourage new demands; and nothing appeared now competent to satisfy them but the surrender of the constitution in church and state. But if that House was not prepared for the final surrender of that constitution, concession most stop some where. It had now, in his opinion, reached the utmost limits, consistent with the security of the state; and here he would plant his foot, and never consent to a measure which he believed to be pregnant with the separation of both kingdoms. The motion, after a debate which lasted till four in the morning, was lost. Mr. O’Connor, whose zeal in this cause prompted him to transgress the strong injunctions of his uncle, Lord Longueville, to whose fortune he was heir-presumptive, was disinherited. The flames of discontent were rekindled in every quarter of the country. A newspaper, called the Northern Star, which had been put down by military force, was replaced by another in the metropolis, called The Press, which was now set on foot by Mr. O’Connor, Lord, Edward Fitzgerald, and others of their friends, all Protestants, and many of them men of the first education and talents. It was written with great ability, and adapted for the intellects and feelings of the great mass of the population. It was calculated to rouse them to a revolutionary spirit; its circulation was- unparalleled, in number and extent, even by all the other newspapers; and it was read or listened to with the utmost eagerness by all classes, even by the-humblest mechanics, labourers, and peasants, from the metropolis to the remotest corners of the kingdom. Political clubs succeeded; nightly meetings of thousands; plunder of arms; manufacture of pikes; administration of oaths; with the adoption of signals, and watch-words, and the {488} preparation of depots for arms and ammunition. These measures were accelerated in proportion to the expedients resorted to for their prevention. The volunteer squads in the metropolis had been for some time suppressed, and a corps of yeomanry established by law. The United Irishmen, and their more prominent leaders, were now denounced; suspicion was punished as crime. The scenes which succeeded cannot now be detailed; never will they be erased from the bosoms of those who witnessed them, or from the memory of their posterity: but the future historian alone can safely and faithfully pourtray [sic] them. The dreadful event had arrived which Mr. Ponsonby and his parliamentary friends had prophesied for years, as the result of the long and prevailing system; and for which a hopeful scion of the house of Beresford publicly expressed his wish in the House of Commons. Open rebellion stalked abroad in all its horrors; and in its course, full the fifty thousand lives, loyal as well as disloyal, which the grave president of a grave assembly fixed, in the privy council, as the price of preserving the Protestant ascendancy, were expended. But the partisans of government, far from admitting the prevailing measures as in any degree the cause of the evil, attributed it in chief to the inflammatory speeches of the Opposition. Mr. Curran, now retired from parliament, and Mr. Ponsonby, who had, in their professional capacity, acted for the defendants upon some state trials, were insidiously pointed at as secret abettors of treason; and Mr. Grattan was obliged to fly from his residence at Tennahinch, to avoid assassination by the Orange guerillas, who scoured and marauded in his neighbourhood. Lord Camden and his secretary, now convinced of what had been predicted, privately retired from the tempest they had raised; and Lord Cornwallis arrived as viceroy; and, partly by the seizure of the rebel directory, partly by the sword, but chiefly by a system of lenience and amnesty, terminated the conflict. But, to remedy these horrors, while the nation still lay bleeding and exhausted after the perilous {489} and sanguinary conflicts of civil war, strong reinforcements of British troops were poured into the country; and this, auspicious opportunity was seized for carrying the Union, - by means the most pure and constitutional, no doubt! and transporting the skeleton of the Irish Parliament to England for ever.

Mr. Ponsonby and his political friends gave the most strenuous opposition to this measure. They ardently wished to see a period to the distresses of their distracted country, but they desired not to sacrifice her independence. They could not contemplate without pain the extinction of her separate legislature, and they deprecated such a change, as an experiment of problematical advantage, while they considered the consequent ruin of their country certain and unequivocal.

At length, after a long struggle, a new order of things arose in the ministerial quarter; for, in 1806, in consequence of the singular and unexpected coalition between Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox, some important changes took place in the governments of both countries. The talents and long services of Mr. Ponsonby were not forgotten, and he was appointed a member of the Irish privy council, and received at the same time the seals as lord chancellor. His brother, the Right Hom Wiliam Brabazon Ponsonby, was created an English peer, by the title of Imokilly, on the 25th of March in the same year; and soon afterwards his friend, Mr. Curran, was appointed, on the retirement of Sir Michael Smyth, master of the rolls: but, in the arrangements for this latter appointment; an unfortunate misunderstanding arose between these two friends, which was not reconciled until Mr. Curran lay on his death-bed. Mr. Ponsonby, who had negotiated the resignation of Sir Michael Smyth to make way for Mr. Curran; on this occasion, understood that a gentleman named Ridgeway, should either retain his office of secretary to the master of rolls, worth about £500 a year; or, that if Mr. Curran should appoint his own son to that office, he should pay. Mr. Ridgeway salary out at his {490} own emoluments. Mr. Curran disclaimed this arrangement, which had never been committed to paper, and Mr. Ponsonby generously paid the salary out of his own purse to Mr. Ridgeway, but closed his friendship with Mr. Curran.

The Fox and Grenville administration, though it comprised a constellation of talents, was but of short continuance. They immortalized their memory, however, by the abolition of the slave trade. They projected much good for Ireland, but they never acquired the cordial confidence of his late majesty; and they retired, at last, in consequence of the king’s refusal to sanction them in the concession of Catholic emancipation, which was understood to have been a stipulated condition with that portion of the people of Ireland, as the price of their acceding to the Union. Mr. Ponsonby now retired, of course, from the Irish chancery bench, with the pension of £4,000 a-year, uniformly granted in such cases; a large remuneration, as his opponents remarked, for so short a period of judicial service. The brevity of that period, however, was not his fault, but that of the established usage, by which, a change of administration always produces the retirement of the chancellor; which creates a bonus for the new cabinet, while it is a serious grievance to the suitors in the chancery court. Mr. Ponsonby, in consideration of his appointment, had relinquished a professional practice much more productive than his judicial emoluments; and he conld not recede to the situation of an advocate in that court where he had presided as the judge.

Mr. Ponsonby now repaired to England to take his seat, as a member of the Imperial Parliament;, and, as that death of his friend, Mr. Fox, had deprived the country party of a leader in the senate, Mr. Ponsonby was chosen to take the direction of the Opposition ranks. His talents’ in that capacity were undoubtedly respectable; and, although he was removed from that scene, where his political knowledge had most experience, where the peculiar topics of his eloquence were still prevalent, where he {491} acquired and displayed all his skill in debate, and where his manner and his talents were better known and admired, yet he distinguished himself in the British senate with no diminished estimation. The stile of his eloquence partook of his character. It was polished, clear, forcible, and comprehensive; always full, but never redundant; his language was elegant; his irony grave, but strong; his deportment courtly; and, although he avoided a figurative diction, his arrangement was strictly logical, and his arguments so plain, intelligible, and convincing, that they rarely, if ever, failed to captivate and decide his auditors. He was eminent for his candour and moderation. He possessed an accurate and powerful memory, and was constantly known, although he never took notes, in replying, at the conclusion of a long and arduous debate on a question introduced by himself, to sometimes twenty opponents, to single out in the order of their speaking, and on the benches where they sat, the precise arguments of each, which he proposed to refute, seizing skilfully on the stronger or weaker points, as best suited his purpose. As a leader of Opposition, Mr. Ponsonby was of course generally opposed to ministerial measures; and but rarely succeeded in his own. On the 4th of March, 1817, he brought in a bill, both useful and necessary in the then state of his late majesty’s health, to prevent the necessity of renewing certain civil and military commissions, on the demise of the crown. In the same month he supported the motion of his friend Sir John Newport, for retrenching fees in the courts of justice; and in a debate upon the regulation of the Welch [sic] judges, he maintained that the functions of a chief justice of Chester; and the duties of an attorney-general, were incompatible. The last time he spoke in the House, was to recommend to his majesty’s ministers to alleviate the general distress, as that, and that alone, had produced in the country any thing like tumult or disaffection.

His health had begun visibly to decline, and probably there was a correspondent declension in the tone and {492} vigour of his mind. But his intellect was clear and comprehensive as ever. During a subsequent debate in the House of Commons, he was seized with a paralytic affection, which, after a few days, proved fatal, on the 8th of July, 1817, at his house in Curzon-street, May-fair; and his remains were deposited, without ostentation or ceremony, at Kensington, near London, beside those of his brother, Lord Imokilly. He left no surviving male issue; and his only daughter, Martha, was married to the Honourable Francis Aldborough Prittie, second son of Lord Dunally, and knight of the shire for the county of Tipperary.

Baron of Imokelly, the elder brother of George Ponsonby, and of course the hereditary possessor of the family estate. He was many years an independent member of the Irish Parliament, and uniformly attached to the same political principles and connexions as his brother. He was also a leading member of the Whig Club; and was one of the deputation selected by the House of Commons for conveying the addresses of both Houses to his then Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, beseeching him to assume the regency of Ireland, during the incapacity of his royal father, untrammelled by any restrictive conditions. His ample hereditary fortune rendered it unnecessary for him to cultivate eloquence like his brother, to whose professional views it was indispensable. He well knew that rank, wealth, and respectability, gave ample weight with any party to the support or opposition of a member of Parliament; and that in point of effect, the Mme of a parliamentary ventriloquist, (to use the language of Mr. Curran,) and his simple monosyllable, aye or no, told as powerfully on a division as the eloquence of a Demosthenes could have done, when each party came into the house determined on the vote they should give, and thus preconcerted the catastrophe of a debate, like the denouement {495} of a comedy: Mr. Ponsonby therefore declined all facundiary emulation. He lived in the hospitable and splendid stile [sic] which his fortune afforded, as a country gentleman. On all important occasions he attended his parliamentary dirty; seldom spoke much, but always with good sense, sound principle, and gentlemanly moderation. He was one of the staunchest opponents of the Beresford influence; strenuously resisted the Union; and was afterwards dignified with a British peerage, during the Fox and Grenville administration, by the Irish title of Imokelly. He died a year or two before his brother, and his remains were deposited without pomp at Kensington, near London.

A learned divine, was born in Dublin, on October 16, 1705, and received the first rudiments of his education under the celebrated Dr. Francis Hutchinson. He entered the university of Glasgow in 1724, where he remained until 1725, and took the degree of M. A.; but engaging actively in a dispute between the students and their superiors, he was expelled the college, though he was speedily reinstated in his former situation. He was ordained in 1727; and, in 1739, was appointed Chaplain to Lord Cathcart. In 1728, he married Elisabeth, daughter Of Major Baxter, by whom he had twenty-one children.

in 1743, he was appointed curate of St. Luke’s parish, Dublin, where, with the assistance of Mr. Kane Percival, then curate of St. Michan’s, he formed a scheme to raise a fund for the support of widows and children of clergy-men of the diocese of Dublin; which has since produced very happy effects. In 1758, he lost his wife. In 1759, he was offered a benefice, but was prevented from accepting it from conscientious motives. In 1707, he was created D. D. by the university of Glasgow. In 1768, the mastership of the free-grammar school at Wolverhampton, in Staffordshire, becoming- vacant, the company of Merchant-Tailors, the patrons, unanimously conferred {496} it on him. In 1772, he was chosen one of the committee to carry on the business of the society of clergymen, &c., in framing and presenting the famous petition to the House of Commons of Great Britain, praying to be relieved from the obligation of subscribing assent and consent to the thirty-nine articles, and all and every thing contained in the book of common prayer. After this he lived several years at Wolverhampton, where he was greatly respected by all ranks of people. He died, of the gout in his stomach, at that place, May 20, 1783, in the seventy-ninth year of his age; and was buried in the church-yard of the new church there.

A clergyman of the Romish church, fully deserving the epithet “Worthy”; was a native of Ireland, and was educated at Salamanca. During his long residence in London he was attached to the chapel of the Spanish embassy, where he officiated as one of the chaplains. He was eminent for exemplary piety and boundless charity. His donations to the poor, upon whom, we are told, “he constantly bestowed almost the whole of his income,” were marked by this peculiar and truly Christian characteristic, that in relieving the distressed, he made no distinction of religion or country.

He died in George-street, Manchester-square, on the 14th of April 1799, in the seventieth year of his age, and forty-sixth of his ministry.

Was descended from an ancient and respectably family, said to be a junior branch of the baronial house of Roche, Viscount Fermoy. He entered the military service of his country very early in life, and distinguished himself eminently in America, during that war, which terminated about the commencement of his late majesty’s reign and {495} in which the immortal Wolfe fell, and particularly at the taking of the Moro fort, at the Havannah. Shortly after his retirement from actual service in the army, he obtained a seat in the Irish House of Commons, of which he continued a member up to the period of the Union. In that assembly he was distinguished as a perpetual appendage to the ministerial establishment, and enjoyed from the government a small pension, together with the office of master of ceremonies at the castle of Dublin, for which he was nationally adapted, by the suavity of his provincial accent, and the good humour and gentlemanly politeness of a soldier of the old school. In Parliament, though his eloquence was not of the most polished or forcible cast, the richness of his national brogue, the humorous oddity of his rhetoric, and a supernatural propensity to that species of figure called the Bull, which might induce an astrologer to suppose him born under the influence of Taurus, rarely foiled to excite continued peals of laughter when he spoke in the house; and of those qualifications the ministers of the day, whom he always supported, constantly availed themselves, whenever the temper of the House required to be relieved from the irritating asperities of warm debate; or whenever the speech of a patriot, perhaps too powerful for refutation, was more conveniently to be answered by ridicule. On those occasions it was rather amusing to see the worthy baronet, after repeated calls from the treasury benches, rising to answer some of the most splendid orations of Mr. Grattan, Mr. Ponsonby, or Mr. Curran, by observing upon them in his own way. The display made at many of those opportunities by the worthy baronet, though it excited perpetual laughter from the oddity of his language and the happy tropes which usually distinguished his stile of argument, sometimes surprised, by its order of arrangement and apposite point, those who were not in the secret of the worthy baronet’s previous arrangement for the discussion. The truth was, that whatever might have been his pitch of intellect, he was gifted with a most extraordinary memory; and could {496} get off by rote, at one or two readings, any written production of very considerable length. This faculty of his was well known to the ministers whom he supported; and there was rarely a fixed debate on any national subject, in which a part was not previously cast for Sir Boyle to act, and a speech written for him, by some of the grave wags of the treasury benches; which speech was furnished to him in due time for study, and which he contrived to translate into a version of his own. He acted as a sort of buffo the political opera. The late Mr. Edward Cooke, who, in various departments, still acted as a political engineer to the ruling party in Ireland, during the successive administrations of Lord Westmoreland, Lord Camden, and Lord Cornwallis, was known to have composed many of those orations for Sir Boyle. The author knew the whim both of the orator and the audience, and could skilfully anticipate where a peal of laughter could tend to damp the fire of debate, and restore good humour to the disputants; and Sir Boyle was selected as the fittest engine for this purpose. There were some occasions where the worthy baronet’s eloquence was not previously thought necessary, and of course no speech was prepared for him. But he was an old soldier, and too full of the esprit de corps, to look calmly on the conflict without a zeal for taking his share of the battle. He sometimes, therefore, ventured to volunteer an extempore philippic of his own; and then it was that his native genius shone with all its genuine splendour, pure from the mine, and unmarred by the technical touches of any treasury artist; then it was, that all the figures of national rhetoric, to use the phrase of Junius, “danced the hays through his speech in all the mazes of metaphorical confusion.”

Upon one occasion of this kind, the worthy baronet was doomed to sit dumb, while he anxiously longed to distinguish himself in the contest. He felt his mind pregnant with ardour to shine forth. He endeavoured to collect his scattered sentiments and combine them into some shape for delivery; but in vain. He retired to the coffee-room {497} to reconnoitre his notions, and endeavour to marshal them into some form for operation, but without effect, - all was “confusion worse confounded.” A lucky expedient crossed his fancy, and he was determined to seize the opportunity. There was a ministerial member in the house, a learned Serjeant Stanley, who was usually in the habit of rising Cowards the end of a long protracted debate, and about three or four in the morning, amusing the House with an important speech of an hour or more, ingeniously compiled from the fragments of other speeches which he had previously heard in the course of the discussion: but, having so often played off this manoeuvre, he was a good deal bantered by his senatorial colleagues upon his skill in selection: so that he at last determined to attempt some-thing original; and had composed a long speech for the purpose, and anxiously waited to catch the speaker’s eye, that he might take the earliest opportunity of delivering his oration, adorned as it was with all the flowers of his wit and fancy. This gentleman just stepped into the coffee-room to cast an eye over his composition and refresh his memory. Sir Boyle took a seat near him, and in the course of conversation, as he darted off in a hurry to catch an opportunity for speaking, unfortunately his speech fell from his pocket on the floor. Sir Boyle picked it up, and on reading it over, thought it would admirably suit his own purpose;- “it was just the very thing he wanted.” At a second reading his powerful memory rendered him master of the whole. He returned to his seat in the House, and took the earliest opportunity of delivering the borrowed oration, to the great astonishment of the whole assembly, and to the utter consternation of Mr. Stanley, who sat biting his nails with anguish, at hearing his elaborate performance, which cost him a week to manufacture, and which had vanished he knew not how, delivered by Sir Boyle, and lost to his own fame for ever. The worthy baronet, having finished this oration, amidst the plaudits of his friends, returned to the coffee-room, where he met the mortified composer; and, without {498} waiting for a formal denouement, addressed him cordially with, “My dear friend Stanley, here is your speech again; and I thank you kindly for the loan of it. I never was so much at a loss for a speech in all my life; but sure it is not a pin worse for wear, and now you may go in and speak it again yourself, as soon as you please.” The discomfiture of Mr. Stanley is easier conceived than described; but the story caught wind, and excited infinite pleasantly at his expense.

On another occasion, an opposition member had appointed a day for a popular motion, on some national subject; and, for nearly a month before, he had been daily moving for official documents, as materials to illustrate his observations. When the night for the discussion arrived, those documents appeared piled upon the table of the house in voluminous array; and the orator, preparatory to his opening speech, moved that they be now read by the clerk, in order the better to prepare the House for more clearly understanding the observations he was about to submit.

This operation would have occupied the clerk, and the silent attention of the members, for at least two hours. The House was extremely full; the whole assembly stared at each other; a rueful buzz murmured from bench to bench; and several members observed, that the reading would occupy the whole night, - while others shrunk silently away, unwilling to abide so formidable a trial of their patience.

Sir Boyle Roche, however, suggested a happy expedient for obviating the difficulty, by rising to move that a dozen or two of Committee clerks might be called in, and each taking a portion of the documents, all might read together, by which means they might get through the whole in a quarter of an hour.

This suggestion, offered with profound gravity, was so highly ludicrous, that the House joined in an tmivefsaf Jaugh, and the question was actually postponed for the night, to give time for the mover to form a more succinct arrangement for introducing his motion*

The anecdotes of the honourable baronet’s eloquence abound in his own country, where it was considered a standard specimen of the native stile; and of course, many notable tropes are attributed to him which he never uttered.

Sir Boyle was created a baronet oa the 30th November, 1783. He married Mary, the eldest daughter of Sir T. Frankland, Bart, of Great Thirkelby Hall, county of York. He was tall and famous in his person, and even in his old age he wore the obvious characteristic of early comeliness and courteous manners. He was a gentleman of great simplicity and good nature. He died at his house in Eccles-street, Dublin, June 5th, 1807, at a very advanced age; and as he lived esteemed, he died regretted by a very numerous circle of friends.

This exemplary and enterprising prelate, was born of respectable parents in the county of Wexford, and at an early age felt a strong impulse to embrace a religious life. Yielding to these inclinations, he visited Flanders, and prosecuted his studies with rapidity and success in the Irish college at Louvaine. Being ordained priest about the time after his return, he was appointed pastor of the parish of Enniscorthy, where his piety and seal were conspicuous: his original purpose, however, had not forsaken him; he resigned his charge, the. endearments of family connexion, and a competency for life, and became a member of the Augustin convent of Ross.

In compliance with the wishes of his superiors, in 1790, he went to Rome, but was shortly after obliged to return through indisposition. It was now that he turned his attention to the state of the infant church in America, where a want of ministers deprived great numbers of the Roman Catholics of the necessary aids of their religion. He resolved upon extending his labours to the new world; and that his exertions might not close with his life, he {500} procured (in conjunction with the Rev. Mr. Carr,) from the pope, a bull, authorising the establishment of his order in the United States. He departed from Ross in the year 1794, accompanied by his friend, the Rev. Mr. Ennis. Shortly after their arrival in Philadelphia, a plague, which carried off many thousands of the inhabitants, made its appearance; it was on this trying occasion, and on another similar one, which succeeded to it, that the charity and zeal of this extraordinary man were manifested. Laying aside all dread of the contagion which infected the air, swept away whole families, and against which there was no security but in flight, he never ceased to administer the comforts of religion to the sick, and to sweeten the cup of their misery, by such exhortations as fervour and piety could suggest. It is worthy of remark, that he and his companion Mr. Ennis (who fell a martyr for his brethren) were the only clergymen who remained in Philadelphia during the plague; and that, at the request of the ministers of different sects, they attended altlwho called as them without religious distinction. He also established a convent of his order, which has now become a seminary for missionaries. Here he persevered, faithful in the discharge of his sacred duties, till a little time before his decease, when he removed to Baltimore, to benefit a constitution impaired by professional exertions. He died at Baltimore, in September 1819, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.

A medical writer of considerable learning, was born in Ireland, most probably at Dublin, on December 96,1698. His parents were Quakers, and were, as he tell us, among “the more refined professors” of that religion. In his eleventh year, he was sent “to a seminary of the like,” which, he says, was a school not only of learning, but of religion. Two years after, he was removed to a school where there was far less religion, and from this to his {501} eighteenth year he was “at various mixed schools, and among aliens.” In his twentieth year he was again placed in a family of friends; and such were the religious impressions of his youth, that he seems at various times to have considered the acquisition of human learning as a crime. He pursued it, however, and began a course of medical studies in Ireland, which he continued in London, and finished in Holland, probably at Leyden, then the chief medical school in Europe. Even here he cannot help telling us, that “the object was all nature and physic, not grace.” In 1723, having returned to his native country, he began practice, in what place he does not mention; but in the following year he “was transplanted to Dublin by a singular providence” and attained much reputation. Soon after, he began a scheme for the improvement of the Materia Medica, in which he persevered for upwards of forty years, and which produced a work which we shall shortly notice.

In 1733, he began his “History of the Rise and Progress of the People called Quakers in Ireland, from 1653 to 1750,” which was printed at Dublin in 1751, 4to. In 17S7, he published an “Essay on Women’s Preaching.”* From 1740 to 1745, he was engaged on the “Natural History of the County of Dublin.”

The first publication by which he was known in his professional character in this country, was his Treatise on Mineral Waters, 4to. He also published an “Essay towards a Natural History of Dublin,” in two vols. 8vo. Dr. Rutty died April 27, 1775, and one or two trivial publications made their appearance after his decease as did also his “Spiritual Diary and Soliloquies,” in two vols. 8vo. one of the most extraordinary of those books which have been published under the title of “Confes{502}

* If this was against female preaching, Dr. Batty afterwards changed his mind, for, in his Diary for 1768, he says, that “the natural volubility of the sex, beyond all comparison superior in effect to what to delivered by some of us dull reasoners, renders them far better speakers, and fitter instruments for a superior power to animate and direct; a mystery of grace discovered, and amply displayed to public view to our society alone!”

sions.” It is scarcely possible, however, to read it or characterise it with gravity, it being a series of pious meditations perpetually interrupted with records of too much whiskey, piggish or swinish eating, and ill temper. Had his friends been left to their own judgment, this strange farrago would never have appeared; but by a clause in his will, his executors were obliged to publish it. Nor after all, does it exhibit a real character of the man; who, we are assured by his friends (in the preface), was correct and temperate in his conduct and mode of living, a man of great benevolence, and a very useful, as he certainly was a very learned, physician.

A very celebrated herald and heraldic writer, was descended from a very ancient and respectable English family, and was born in 1630, in the castle of Carnow, in the province of Wicklow. He partook, in no small degree, of the miseries of the period which marked his youth. At the early age of eleven years, he sought an asylum in England, being driven by the rebellion from Ireland. No sooner had his commiserating relatives determined to educate him to some profession, than they were proscribed for adhering to the cause of their sovereign; he received, therefore, only that learning which a grammar school could give. As some small recompence [sic] for the hardships he and his family had undergone, he was admitted at the Restoration as pursuivant in the College of Arms; but conscientiously attached to James II he obtained leave, after the Revolution, to resign his tabard to Mr. King, rouge dragon, who paid him £220 for his office. He retired to Bloomsbury, or its vicinity, where he died, January 16, 1693, and was buried in St. Bride’s upper church-yard. The last days of this valuable man (we are informed) corresponded but too unhappily with the first. He married Margaret, daughter of William Jokes, of Bottington, in the county of Montgomery, relict of William Kerry, by whom he had issue. His works are “A Genealogical History of the Kings {503} of Portugal” folio, 1664, partly a translation, published in compliment to Catherine of Braganta, consort to Charles II; “The Order and Ceremonies used at the Funeral of his Grace George Duke of Albemarle;” this is a thin folio, the whole represented in engraving; “A Genealogical History of the Kings of England” folio, Savoy, 1677, dedicated to Charles II by whose command the Work was undertaken; this is our author’s best and most estimable performance; many of the engravings are by Hollar. Mr. Stebbing, the Somerset herald, reprinted it in 1707, continuing it until that year. “The Coronation of King James II and Queen Mary” folio, Savoy, 1687; this is a most superb work.

All the above works of Sandford are very scarce, and fine copies, when they are met with, bear a high price..

Of the early particulars of this great warrior’s life we are wholly unacquainted. He greatly distinguished himself at the siege of Limerick, by intercepting the battering artillery and ammunition destined to support that siege. He one day left Limerick with a strong body of troops, and having so directed his march as to make King William think he had no design upon his artillery, he suddenly crossed the Shannon, and coming op in the night with the convoy, he cut to pieces the detachment that guarded it, and then charging the great guns with powder up to the muzzles, and burying them and the rest of the ammunition in the ground, he, by means of a train, set fire to the buried powder, and the artillery and every thing else blew up with a dreadful explosion. This explosion was heard at Limerick, and convinced King William that he had lost his convoy. This bold and successful enterprise of Sarsfield’s, made William feel that he had then no other chance for taking Limerick but by storm. He accordingly ordered one; but, even after his troops had entered the town, they were repulsed with such slaughter, that {504} thousand of the bravest of them were left dead on the spot. William immediately after this raised the siege; and Sarsfield had the glory of preserving his native country to his unfortunate master King James, for another campaign, against the ablest general of the age. He was afterwards created Earl of Lucan, and was second in command at the battle of Aughrim. St. Ruth (who was the first in command) and he, not having agreed on any one point, the former did not communicate to him the order of his battle that day; so that when St. Ruth fell, Lord Lucan, upon whom the chief command devolved, knew but little of the disposition of the army, with the exception of that part which had been immediately under his own orders; notwithstanding, however, this adverse circumstance, he acquired great honour, by the masterly retreat he made to Galway and Loughrea, to one of which he conducted the infantry, and to the other the horse. He afterwards fell in one of Marlborough’s battles, covered with wounds, in the service of France, in which he had the rank of lieutenant-general.

THE intimate friend of Dean Swift; is said by Shield, in Cibber’s &147;Lives of the Poets,” to have been born about 1684, in the county of Cavan; where, according to the same authority, his parents lived in no very elevated state. They are described as being unable to afford their son the advantages of a liberal education; but he being observed to give early indications of genius, attracted the notice of a friend to his family, who sent him to the college of Dublin, and contributed towards his support while he remained there. He afterwards entered into orders, and set up a school in Dublin, which long maintained a very high degree of reputation, as well for the attention bestowed on the morals of the scholars, as for their proficiency in literature. So great was the estimation in which this seminary was held, that it is asserted in some {505} years to have produced the sum of £1,000 It does not appear that he had any considerable preferment; but his intimacy with Swift, in 1725, procured for him a living in the south of Ireland, worth about £150 ayear, of which he went to take possession, and by an act of inadvertence destroyed all his future expectations of rising in the church; for, being at Cork on the 1st of August, the anniversary of King George’s birthday, he preached a sermon which had for its text, “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof”; on its being known he was struck out of the list of chaplains to the lord-lieutenant, and forbidden the castle. This living Dr. Sheridan afterwards changed for that of Dunboyne, which, by the knavery of the farmers and power of the gentlemen in the neighbourhood, fell as low as £80 per annum. He gave it up for the free school of Cavan, where he might have lived well in so cheap a country on £80 a year salary, besides his scholars; but the air being, as he said, too moist and unwholesome, and being disgusted with some persons who lived there, he sold the school for about £400; and having soon spent the money, became infirm in health, and died September 10, 1738, in his fifty-fifth year. Lord Cork has given the following character of him “Dr. Sheridan was a schoolmaster, and in many instances perfectly adapted for that station. He was deeply versed in the Greek and Roman languages, and in their customs and antiquities. He had that kind of good nature which absence of mind, indolence of body, and carelessness of fortune produced; and, although not over strict in his own conduct, yet he took care of the morality of his scholars, whom he sent to the university remarkably well founded in all classical learning, and not ill instructed in the social duties of life. He was slovenly, indigent, and cheerful. He knew books much better than men; and he knew the value of money least of all. In his situation, and with this disposition, Swift fastened upon him as upon a prey with which he intended to regale himself, whenever his appetite should prompt him.” His lordship {506} then mentions the event of the unlucky sermon, and adds, “This ill-starred, good natured, improvident man returned to Dublin, unhinged from all favour at court, and ever banished from the castle. But still he remained a punster, a quibbler, a fiddler, and a wit: not a day passed without a rebus, an anagram, or a madrigal. His pen or his fiddlestick were in continual motion, and yet to little or no purpose,” &c. &c. This character is in a great measure confirmed by his son in his Life of Swift.

He published a prose translation of Persius, to which he added the best notes of former editors, together with many judicious ones of his own, 12mo. 1739. Many of his letters are also to be found in Swift’s Miscellanies.

Actor, was the eldest son of Dr. Thomas Sheridan, the subject of the preceding article, and was born in 1721, at Quilca, a place which to future times will acquire a degree of importance, as the residence of Swift, and the birth-place of most of Mr. Sheridan’s family, particularly of the author of the “School for Scandal”. Under his father, who was the most eminent schoolmaster of his time, he received the first rudiments of his education, and had the honour to be noticed for his proficiency in literature by his godfather. At the age of thirteen, in 1734, he was admitted of the foundation at Westminster school, at which seminary he continued two years, and was by pure merit elected a king’s scholar. His father was then so poor, that he could not add £14 to enable the boy to finish the year; and was forced to recall him to Dublin, at the university of which the doctor had friends, and procured his son’s entrance on the foundation, where he took his degree in arts. In the year 1738, he lost his father, and at that juncture it was his intention to follow’ his steps, and devote himself to the education of youth, which, he observes “he ever esteemed to be one of the most useful and honourable stations in life.” - Having his {507} father’s reputation to build upon, and some very advantageous proposals made to him upon that head, he had the most flattering prospect of success, and would certainly have entered upon the office immediately after taking his degree of master of arts, but for one objection. He saw a deficiency in the early part of education, that the study of the English language was neglected, and it could not be reduced to any rule, unless the art of speaking was revived. The revival of the long lost art of oratory became therefore the first necessary step towards his design. To obtain this there was but one way open; which was the stage; accordingly he made his appearance at Smock-alley theatre, January 29,1743, in the character of Richard the Third, with distinguished encouragement and applause. His theatrical career was, however, soon interrupted; for, in the month of June, he was obliged both to defend his own conduct, and repel the attacks of T. Cibber, who took an opportunity of involving him in a controversy, which was carried on with dignity and spirit by Sheridan, and with flippancy and pertness by Cibber. The cause of the dispute arose from the robe in which Cato used to be performed, being taken away by the manager, and without it Mr. Sheridan refused to proceed in his part. On applying to Cibber for his advice; he was treated with impertinent negligence; and continuing his refusal, Cibber went on the stage, and offered to read the part of Syphax. This offer was accepted by the audience; but Mr. Sheridan considering it an officious and insidious interference, appealed to the town, and was answered by Cibber, to whom a reply was printed, which again was followed by a rejoinder. In the progress of this controversy, much virulence was displayed, and much abuse poured forth. Both parties lost their temper and probably neither had reason in the end to applaud is own conduct. Cibber, or a friend of his, collected all the papers published, and printed them in a pamphlet; entitled, “The Buskin and Sock; being controversial Letters between Mr. Thomas Sheridan, tragedian, and Mr. Theophilus {508} Cibber, comedian, 12mo, which seems to have ended the dispute. The next year, 1744, Mr. Sheridan came to England, and appeared at Covent-garden theatre, March 81, in the character of Hamlet, and at the commencement of the winter season engaged at Drury-lane, where a sort of competition or rivalship was set up between him and Mr. Garrick, which occasioned a quarrel. On his return to Dublin, he undertook the management of the theatre there; and Mr. Garrick, notwithstanding the quarrel, was invited over. During that season Mr. Garrick, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Barry, and Miss Bellamy, frequently acted in the same plays; yet it is remarkable, that with such a company, and in a Parliament winter, with all their strength united, they were not able to exhibit plays oftener than two nights in a week, and could seldom ensure good houses to both those nights; and that the receipt of the whole season did not exceed £3,400 Mr. Sheridan continued in the management of the theatre, which before that time had been conducted in a very disorderly manner; and the abuses had continued so long as to be evidently a very arduous, if not impracticable task to reform. He was, however, determined to attempt it; and an event soon happened which afforded him the opportunity of enforcing some new regulations.

On the 19th of January, 1746-7, a young gentleman inflamed with wine, went into the pit, and climbing over the spikes of the stage, very soon made his way to the green-room, where he addressed one of the actresses in such indecent terms, aloud, as made them all fly to their dressing rooms. He pursued one of them thither, but being repulsed by the door, he made such a noise there as disturbed the business of the scenes. Miss Bellamy, whom he pursued, was then wanted on the stage but could not come out for fear. Mr. Sheridan (who was in the character of Aesop) went to the door, attended by the servants and a guard, and ordered them to take that gentleman away, and conduct him to the pit, from whence he came. This was done without the least bustle or obstruction on the part of the gentleman; but when he arrived in the pit, he seized a basket from one of the orange-women, and when the manager came on the stage, took the best aim he could at him with the oranges; one of which taking place, Mr. Sheridan addressed the audience (which happened to be but thin that night) for protection. As there were some gentlemen in the pit who were acquainted with the rioter, they {509} silenced him with some difficulty, but not before several abusive names had passed from him, such as scoundrel and rascal: and Mr. Sheridan was so much disconcerted as to say, “I am as good a gentleman as you are”; which words were the next day altered thus, “I am as good a gentleman as any in the house.” After the play, this young hero went out of the pit, and found his way to Mr. Sheridan’s dressing room, where to his face, before the servants, he called him the same abusive names, which, of course, provoked him to give him some blows, which the gentleman took very patiently; and by means of another falsehood (that Sheridan’s servants in the room held him while their master beat him) the club of his companions, to whom he went that night with Ms broken nose and other grievances, were so animated and incensed that a scoundrel player should beat gentleman, that a party was directly formed - a powerful fighting party, - end the next day all persons were threatened openly in every coffee-house that dared to look as if they inclined to take the part of Sheridan. His name being in the bills some days after to perform Horatio, several letters, cards, and messages were sent to him, warning him not to leave his house that evening, and to take particular care to be well guarded even there. He followed this friendly advice; and when Mr. Dyer went ou the stage to apologise for his not performing the part, and to acquaint the audience with his reasons, at that instant about fifty of the party, with the young hero at their head, rose in the pit, and, climbing over the spikes on the stage, ran directly to the green-room; from thence to all the dressing rooms; broke open those that were locked; ran up to the wardrobe and thrust their swords into all the chests and presses of cloths, by way of feeling, they said, if Sheridan was concealed there. After many of these violences a party went off to his house; but finding he had provided for their reception, they thought proper to retire. This transaction happened on a Thursday night; and from that time for several nights the theatre was shut up; but during the interval the friends of each side employed themselves in defending and attacking each other from the press. The spirit of the most respectable people was by this time roused to oppose the licentiousness of the rioters. The chief inhabitants began at this juncture to assemble, and resolve to encourage and protect the manager. Several citizens, who seldom were seen in the theatre, were so sensible of the advantages and importance of a well regulated stage, that they declared to Mr. Sheridan and his friends, that they would now more than ever appear there, and doubted not being able to protect the manager and the actors in general in the discharge of their duty. With assurances of this kind, and a consciousness of his being in the right, Mr. Sheridan consented to the performance of Richard. The house fitted earlier than usual. The play opened with great quietness, but at the latter end of the first act, when Richard appeared, a confused noise was heard in different parts, but chiefly from the boxes, of “submission - a submission suhmission - off - off – off!” Mr. Sheridan advanced with respectful bows, but was prevented speaking by louder and more distinct sounds of a “no submission - no submission - go on with the play.” It was in this conjuncture that the celebrated Dr. Lucas rose up in the pit, an asserted the rights of {510} the audience, and the freedom of the stage. He expressed his astonishment and detestation of men’s bringing their private quarrels with managers or players into the theatre, and such he apprehended the present can to be; but since the dispute was introduced, it must, like other disputes there, be determined by the majority. He presumed every sober person in the house came to receive the entertainment promised in the bills, of which he payed his money at the door. The actors then, he observed, were the servants of the audience, and under their protection during that performance; and he looked upon every insult or interruption given to them in the discharge of their duty as offered to the audience. He apprehended the matter in dispute was no breach of the duty of the managers or actors cognizable by any persons present; but whether it was so, or thought otherwise by the house, the question might be easily determined. He therefore moved, that those who were for preserving the decency and freedom of the stage, should distinguish themselves by the holding up of hands; judging that when they should come to know their numbers and superiority, they would silence or turn out their opponents. He was heard with great respect, and saluted with shouts of applause; but on the division the numbers were so great against the rioters, and withal appeared so animated for action, that the minority suddenly went off, and left the performance of that night in quiet. Nothing was yet done decisively, but each party by this time was more exasperated against the other. At length matters came to a crisis. There was an annual play appointed before the riot began, the “Fair Penitent,” for the benefit of the Hospital for Incurables; and the governors, who were all persona of consequence, demanded the performance of their benefit play, and sent the manager word (who was to perform the part of Horatio) that they would take upon them to defend him that night; resting assured no set of men would oppose a charity play, especially as all the ladies of quality exerted their interest, and were to honour it with their presence. The bills were accordingly posted up, and the governors went early to the theatre with their white wands: the boxes and pit would have been filled with ladies, if about thirty gentlemen had not taken early possession of the middle of two or three benches near the spikes of the orchestra. There were above a hundred ladies seated on the stage, and when the curtain drew up nothing could equal the brilliant appearance of the house. At the entrance Mr. Sheridan (who had the honour of being ushered in by the governors) those thirty men, all armed, rose up in the pit and ordered him off; and they were joined by some few placed in both galleries. Mr. Sheridan withdrew, and then violent disputes and threatening) began between the governors on the stage and the gentlemen in the pit; and something very like challenges passed between several of them, as all the persona on both sides ware publicly known. Among the governors was a student of the college in his bachelor’s gown, who behaved with* some warmth against those who opposed the play, and a gentleman (near the spikes) in the pit threw an apple at him, called him scoundrel, and (as he declared) said they were all a pack of scoundrels. This exasperated the college, and members of it were very eager to take their revenge, which in the end {511} they obtained the next day. The play, however, was not represented. the play, however, was not represented, and riot and confusion reigned during the whole night. The lord justice now thought proper to order the master of revels to shut up the theatre by his authority, which was accordingly done. The young gentleman who began the disturbance was taken up for assaulting Mr. Sheridan, and for mischief done at the theatre, in the dressing rooms, and the wardrobe; and the manager was indicted for assaulting and beating the gentleman in the dressing room. When then time of trial drew near, the Lord Chief Justice Marlay sent for the High Sheriff, and directed him to make out and bring a list of sufficient and anle jurors to his lordship. This was done to prevent any unfair practices being used. On the day appointed for the trials, that of Mr. Sheridan came on first; when it appearing that the gentleman gave the manager such provoking abusive language in his dressing room as compelled him to beat him out of it, and that no other person touched him, the jury acquitted the prisoner without going out of the box. The former prosecutor, now become the culprit, than appeared at the bar, and the facts charged on him were proved by many witnesses. In the course of the trial Mr. Sheridan was called, and during his examination one of the counsel on the part of the prisoner got up and said, “He wanted to see a curiosity. I have often seen (continued he) a gentleman soldier, and a gentleman tailor, but I have never seen a gentleman player.” Mr. Sheridan bowed, and said, “Sir, I hope you see one now.” The result of the trial was, that the gentleman was found guilty, and the sentence passed upon him was a fine of five hnndred pounds, aad three months imprisonment. After he had remained in confinement a week, he applied to Mr. Sheridan for his interference in his behalf, who instantly solicited the government to relinquish the fine which was granted him. He then became solicitor and bail himself to the Court of King’s Bench for his enlargement, and succeeded in his application. Thus Sheridan emancipated the stage from the abject and ignominious state in which it existed previous his connection with it; and from this time regularity, order, and decency, were introduced. Among other circumstances which this event gave rise to, it was the means of his becoming acquainted with the lady whom he shortly afterwards married. This was Miss Chamberlaine, who was born in Ireland, in the year 1724, but descended from a good English family, which had removed thither. She was the grand-daughter of Sir Oliver Chamberlaine, and, during the controversy occasioned by the riot, wrote a small pamphlet in the defence of the manager. So well-timed a work exciting the attention of Mr. Sheridan, he procured himself to be introduced to his fair patroness, to whom he was soon after married. She was a person of the most amiable character in every relation of life, with the most engaging manners. With here he lived in great domestic harmony above twenty years. In the management of the theatre. Mr. Sheridan now passed several years, with no greater variety than usually attends so complicated a machine; - some broils with performers, and some complaints, but more approbation from the public. Over his performers he soon obtained a complete ascendancy, from the firmness of his conduct as well as the impartiality of it. {512} His success was various: in some seasons, the theatre produced consider able profit; in others, his gains were but small. In this manner, however, he continued, with the prospect of a firm establishment fir life, and the means of a competency, if not affluence, until another storm made shipwreck of his fortune, and drove him entirely from his port, to take refuge in England. For some time before this period, he had instituted a club, the members of which were in number about fifty or sixty persons; chiefly lords and members of parliament, who were invited to dine together in the manager’s apartment in the theatre, no female being admitted but Mrs. Woffington, who was placed in a great chair at the head of the table, ant elected president for the season. This club was begun without any party intention on the side of the manager, but, by the means of Mrs. Woffington, was, in 1751, metamorphosed from its original design into one of a political nature: the conversation and general toasts of this weekly assembly, which were what might be called anti-patriotic, soon became the talk of the town; and the manager, of course, was severely abused for being the supporter of the society, as he most certainly and effectually was, when he was the person who paid for it all. At this critical and dangerous juncture, it is not to be wondered at that this assembly of courtiers publicly supported by the manager, who being also the principal actor, was consequently at all times within the immediate resentment of the provoked party, should become the object of revenge. The patriots of the day resolved to watch for the first opportunity to destroy him, and an occuring soon offered.

The tragedy of “Mahomet” had been for some time singled out by the manager to be revived; the chief parts were written out and cast the winter preceding, in the following manner: Palmira, Mrs. Woffington; Zaphne, Mr. Sheridan; and Alcanor, Mr. Digges. On February 23, 1754, the night of performance, the pit was filled very soon with the leaden and chiefs of the country party; and when Digges spoke the following speech: “If, ye powers divine,” &c. (act I. scene 1,) the moment he had finished it, all the party in the pit roared out entire; which was continued with such violence, that the actor, after discovering due astonishment in his countenance, very readily spoke the whole speech over again, which was most remarkably applauded by the audience. The fine scenes of Zaphne and Palmira, which are the best in the play, and were pu famed by their principal and usually applauded actor, this night passed unnoticed, and all the applause fell on the character of Alcanor. Although it would have been more prudent from the appearances then exhibited, to have laid aside the play for the present, yet the manager unfortunately yielded to a request made him to perform “Mahomet” a second thus; and contented himself with ordering a general summons to all the company to meet him in the green-room on the Friday morning, the day before the play was to be acted. When the company were all assembled, be entered the room with a paper in his hand, and read them a lecture on the duties of an actor, particularly respecting his conduct to the public; and proceeded to shew, in the most glaring colours, that the actor who prostituted himself to the wanton humour of an audience, brought inevitable {513} disgrace not only on himself, but on all his brethren. Mr. Digges rose up and said, it was very obvious that this lecture on the duties of an actor was levelled at him; that he was the person who had brought that disgrace upon himself and his brethren; but as the same play was to be performed the following night, and the same demand from the audience was likely to fall on him, he desired to know what were the manager’s commands in regard to his conduct. Mr. Sheridan’s reply was, that he should give him no directions, but leave him to do as he thought proper. Digges then said, “Sir, if I should comply with the demand of the audience, and repeat the speech as I did before, am I to incur your censure for doing it The manager replied, “Not at all; I leave you to act in that matter as yon think proper.” The night following, March 2, was the performance. The pit was full as soon as the doors were open, the house crowded; and this remarkable speech in the first scene, as soon as ever it was out of the mouth of the actor, he was called upon to repeat, with the same vehemence as on the first night. The actor seemed startled, and stood some time motionless: at last, at the continued fierceness of the encores, he made a motion to be heard, and when silence was obtained, he said, “It would give him the highest pleasure imaginable to comply with the request of the audience, but he had his private reasons for begging they would be so good as to excuse him, as his compliance would be greatly injurious to him.” On his saying that, they immediately called out, Sheridan! Sheridan! the manager! the manager! and this cry soon became universal throughout all parts of the house. After some time Mr. Digges left the stage; and the uproar continuing, Mr. Sheridan (who stood behind the scenes) ordered the curtain down, and sent on the prompter to acquaint the audience that they were ready to perform the play, if they were suffered to go on in quiet; if not, that they were at liberty to take their money again. The prompter was not heard, but obliged to withdraw. Mr. Sheridan then said, with some agitation, “They have no right to call upon me; I’ll not obey their call; I’ll go up to my room and undress myself,” and he went up. Some of his best friends left the pit and boxes, and went to his dressing room after him, and entreated him not to undress, but to go down and endeavour to pacify an audience that knew he was there, and must be enraged at his refusal to appear before them. But at these reasons and these entreaties of his friends he remained unmoved: and being strongly possessed with the notion that personal mischief was intended him, he got into a chair, went home, and left the house in that uproar and confusion. Mrs. Woffington was then persuaded to appear before them, to see if a fine woman could assuage the fury of the many- headed monster; but she was not heard. Digges was the seeming favourite and reigning orator. He was desired to go on, and to assure the audience Mr. Sheridan had laid him under no injunction not to repeat the speech and therefore could not on that account have incurred their displeasure. Digges went on, moved to be heard, and a profound silence ensued; he repeated what he had been desired, but in vain; as they had called so long for Sheridan, they would insist on having him before them, and his answering for himself. At last, when they were told he was positively gone home, {514} they insisted on his being sent for, and added, they would wait patiently an hour, as he was known to live at some distance; and accordingly they sat down quietly to amuse themselves. Messengers were dispatched to the manager to acquaint him with the resolution of the house, but no arguments could prevail on him to return back: and when the hour was expired they renewed their call, and after continuing it some time, two of their leaders (persons of gravity and condition) rose from the pit and went off over the boxes; that was the agreed signal. A youth in the pit then stood up, and cried out, “God Bless his Majesty King George, with three huzzas”; and at the end of the last huzza they began to demolish the house, and the audience part was all in pieces in five minutes. After this execution, some moved to fire the house, others to attack the wardrobe. Accordingly a party leaped upon the stage, and with their swords and other instruments cut and slashed the curtain, which was finely painted, and cost a great sum of money; broke and cut to pieces all the scenes within their reach; and some attempts were made towards the wardrobe, but finding that place well defended, they retired; several who went off through the box-room dragged the grate full of burning coals into the middle of the room, laid some of the broken doors of the boxes upon it, and left them there. In this condition they were found, and time enough to prevent the intended mischief.

Thus ended this memorable riot, which operated very fatally towards the fortune of Mr. Sheridan. Disgusted with the public behaviour, and not much satisfied with his theatrical situation, he published his case, and after letting his theatre for two years, he embarked for England. Here he immediately entered into a negotiation with Mr. Rich, and (being desirous of compelling Mr. Barry to go over to Dublin) hastily made an engagement with him for a share of the profits on such nights as he should perform, without having weighed circumstances, or properly guarded against events. His first appearance was in the character of Hamlet, October 24. He also produced an alteration, by himself, of “Coriolanus,” formed out of the plays of Shakspeare {sic passim] and Thomson, in which he introduced a magnificent spectacle of a Roman ovation. He performed also Cato, Œdipus, Richard III, Shylock, (Portia, Mrs. Woffington, October 30,) Othello, (Iago, Mr. Ryan,) Macbeth, (Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Woffington, November 16,) Romeo, (Juliet, Miss Bellamy, November 20,) and several other characters; but his gains, it is imagined, fell short of what he hoped for. As the successor of Barry, and the rival of {515} Garrick, he by no means answered the public expectations. With many peculiarities in his manner, not of the pleasing kind, nature seemed to have forbidden him by her parsimony ever to have become a popular performer. Even those who were willing to praise, and could with justice applaud his skill and judgment, generally came away without but that complete satisfaction which was to be found at Drury-lane theatre, where Garrick and Nature carried every thing before them. These circumstances all combining, it will be no surprise to know, that at the end of the season his engagement was not renewed. The leisure he now found naturally led him to recur to his former scheme of education. In April 1756, he wrote to Mr. Lee a proposal for engaging him for the ensuing season in Dublin, and therein said, “I have been long weary of the stage, and as I have a much more important point in view, am determined to quit it as soon as possible; and no consideration should have induced me to undertake it this year, but the want of a proper person to supply my place.” A proper person, however, it was difficult to find, and the term of the lease which he had let being now expired, and the minds of the people of Dublin by this time inclining to receive him again with favour, he resolved upon returning to his native country, and resuming the management of the theatre again; but in the execution of this design unexpected difficulties arose. At the beginning of this season he also met with a mortification, to which he was obliged to submit, however reluctantly. Previous to his appearance, an apology for his former conduct was demanded by the public, and with so much earnestness, that it became necessary to promise it unconditionally. The night was accordingly fixed, and every part of the house crowded soon after the doors were open. When the curtain drew up he advanced to the centre of the stage with a paper in his hand, fearing (in that unavoidable confusion) to trust entirely to his memory. It was the opinion of some of the best judges, that no man within their observation ever appeared before the public with so much {516} address, or spoke to the passions with such propriety. Tears gushed from the eyes of several of his male auditors. After the apology was over, and his pardon had been signed by the loudest acclamation, he had begun to retire; he advanced again, and with broken, faltering accents, spoke as follows “Your goodness to me, at this important crisis, has so deeply affected me, that I want powers to express myself: my future actions shall shew my gratitude.” He appeared a few nights after in the character of Hamlet, to a crowded audience, and received the utmost applause. The same success attended most of his principal characters; but, though he brought the celebrated dancers from the opera in London, Bugiani and Marenesi, to perform that season, at a great price, yet the audiences began to slacken for want of a capital female actress. Having been disappointed in the abilities of a young lady new to the stage, whom he had engaged in London, and also of the assistance he hoped to have found in Mr. Lee, he was obliged to call in every auxiliary that offered, to help a failing season. At the end of it Mr. Foote came to Dublin, and contributed in some measure, to conclude the year in a better manner than was looked for, though still unprosperously. During Mr. Barry’s residence in Dublin, he had been prevailed upon to undertake the erecting and managing a new theatre on a larger and more extensive scale, in the execution of which scheme he had prevailed on Mr. Woodward, then a performer of great reputation at Drury-lane, to unite with him. Mr. Sheridan made overtures to Mr. Barry to part with his theatrical interest to him; but Barry had engaged too far to recede. Sheridan then applied to Parliament to stop his opponents, by granting him a monopoly; he recommended a wild idea of grafting his plan of education upon the management of the theatre; and he proposed to give up his interest to the public upon certain terms - that it might be conducted for the public advantage, something like the French stage. These proposals, though enforced with warmth, and not without argument, made {517} no impression; they were neglected by the majority; the new theatre was proceeded upon, and, as Mr. Sheridan had predicted, all the parties concerned in it were ruined. In the season which began in October 1757, Mr. Sheridan was obliged to continue as before, both actor and manager; but having the assistance of Mrs. Fitzhenry in the capital female characters, he was more prosperous than in the preceding year. He also met with much encouragement from the Duke of Bedford, the then lord-lieutenant of Ireland. The favour he experienced from this nobleman, encouraged him to hope for success in his application to Parliament. But finding, at length, that he was to expect nothing from his solicitations, he determined’ to oppose his enemies on their own ground, with the best company which could be collected against them. On December 6, 1757, he summoned together a very respectable and numerous audience of the nobility and gentry of Ireland, at the music hall, in Fishamble-street, before whom he pronounced an oration, in which he, with considerable address and ability, set forth the errors of the then modes of education, the advantages which would attend the adopting his proposed improvements to individuals, and to the community at large. Many of the first characters in the kingdom for rank and learning were present. He was heard with respect and attention, and received the plaudits which were due to the novelty of his plan, and the intrinsic merits of it. Fruitless though his efforts were to suppress the new adventurers, he persevered, as was his custom, with great steadiness until every glimmer of hope had vanished. He then found it necessary to muster his forces to oppose them in the ensuing season, 1758-9. He accordingly offered terms to Mrs. Fitzhenry, who, hesitating to accept them, he rashly declared against entering into articles with any one of the company; the consequence was the immediate loss of Mr. King and Mr. Dexter, two performers of great use to the theatre. He then saw his mistake, altered his resolution, and signed a general article with all his company, and seemed determined on a resolute {518} opposition. He engaged Mr. Digges, and Mrs. Ward, Theophilus Cibber, and Maddox the wire dancer (the two last of whom were cast away going to Dublin), and also acceded to the terms proposed by Mrs. Fitzhenry. This lady, however, by this time began to entertain doubts of the payment of her salary, and demanded security for it; which demand, unprecedented, on a manager, so much incensed Mr. Sheridan, that he wrote a letter immediately to shew his resentment, and at the same time expressed his doubts of his being able to be in Dublin that season, as he had intended. This caused Mrs. Fitzhenry to engage with the rival theatre. The remainder of this very short season was productive of nothing but disgrace and disappointment; loss succeeded loss - the receipts fell short - the performers and tradesmen were unpaid - and on the 27th of April, 1759, the theatre on Mr. Sheridan’s account was entirely closed. During this period, however, Mr. Sheridan was not idle. He had composed his lectures on elocution, and began to deliver them in London, at Oxford, at Cambridge, and other places, with very great success. At Cambridge, on the 16th of March, 1759, he was honoured with the same degree he had received at Dublin, that of master of arts. In the winter of 1760, he engaged at Drury-lane with Mr. Garrick, on certain shares. He also represented Horatio, in the “Fair Penitent,” and John, in “King John,” to Mr. Garrick’s Lothario and Faulconbridge; and some characters, such as Hamlet and Richard, they each played with little difference as to the bulk of their audiences. This union, though favourable to both parties, was soon brought to an end. The marked approbation of his majesty to Mr. Sheridan’s King John, excited the jealousy of Mr. Garrick, who would not suffer the play to be afterwards performed. Differences ensued between them, meetings of friends followed, but without effect, and they parted with mutual signs of animosity. In the year 1760, King George the Second died; and with a new reign, under a young monarch, who loved the arts, and professed to encourage them, every person who had {519} any pretensions to genius, expected both notice and encouragement. Among these, Mr. Sheridan, who was on terms of intimacy with several in the confidence of the new sovereign, was not without his particular expectations, in which he was not altogether disappointed. He was one of the first to whom a pension was granted: and it was frequently his boast, that through his suggestion Dr. Johnson was offered the independence which he afterwards enjoyed from his majesty’s bounty. This honour has, however, been claimed by another gentleman, and each of them may have been entitled to it. It will not be thought very surprising, that on such an occasion two persons without any communication with each other, should think of and recommend the same person. For the two or three succeeding years, Mr. Sheridan was employed in delivering his lectures in different parts of the kingdom. His lectures were generally approved, though they sustained some slight injury from the ridicule of Mr. Foote, who produced a burlesque on them in 1762, at the theatre in the Haymarket.

In 1763, Mrs. Sheridan’s comedy, “The Discovery,” was performed at Drury-lane, in which Mr. Sheridan represented Lord Medway, though he had no engagement at the theatre; for which the proprietors allowed him the sixteenth night. About 1764, he went to France, and took up his residence at Blois, by order of his majesty, as it has been asserted. During his residence at this place he lost his wife, who died there on the 26th of September, 1766. Mr. Sheridan did not continue long in France after this event; and about the year 1767, he obtained an Irish act of parliament, protecting him from arrests on account of his debts in Dublin, amounting to £1,600 and having this season saved £800 he gave notice that he was ready to pay his creditors ten shillings in the pound, and desired them to call on him for that purpose, with an account of their respective demands. Mr. Faulkner, the printer of “The Dublin Journal” was one of his creditors. - This gentleman told Mr. Sheridan that he would not trouble {520} him with his demand till he dined with him: Mr. Sheridan accordingly called at Mr. Faulkner’s; and after dinner Mr. Faulkner put a sealed paper into his hand, which he told him contained his demand, at the same time requesting Mr. Sheridan to examine it at his leisure at home: when he came home, he found, under seal, a bond of his for £200 due to Mr. Faulkner, cancelled, together with a receipt in full of a book debt to the extent of £100. This was a man whom Mr. Foote held up to ridicule!

His next public appearance was in 1769, when he exhibited at the Haymarket an entertainment of reading, singing, and music, which he called “An Attic Evening Entertainment”; and in the summer of the same year he resumed his profession of an actor, by performing at the Haymarket the characters of Hamlet, Richard III, Brutus, and Othello. In 1770, he was engaged again at the same theatre; and in 1776, he acted several nights at Covent garden. After this he never performed again as an actor. The retirement of Mr. Garrick from the stage, in the year 1776, opened a new scene to Mr. Sheridan. The purchasers of the share in Drury-lane theatre, of which Mr. Richard Brinsley Sheridan was one, agreed to invest Mr. Sheridan with the powers of a manager, for which office his experience, his abilities, and integrity, well qualified him. He entered upon the office with a determination to reform some abuses which had crept in, and particularly such as had arisen from the caprice of several favourite actresses. In this pursuit, however, he found himself counteracted; when, disdaining to continue in his post on such ignominious terms, he relinquished his situation, after holding it about three years.

The theatres being shut against him as a performer, he now returned to his literary avocations. He also read at Hickford’s rooms, at Coachmakers’ Hall, and in the spring of 1785, at Freemasons’ Hall, in conjunction with Mr. Henderson. This was his last public exhibition. The next year he visited Ireland, and during his residence there he found his health decline, and in hopes of re-esta{521}blishing it, he came to England, and went to Margate, intending from thence, if he found no amendment, to proceed to Lisbon. A short time, however, shewed that he was past recovery. His strength gradually failed, and he died August 14, 1788. His corpse was interred at Margate. He produced a farce called “Captain O’Blonder,” which was written while a school-boy, and the copy lost. It was afterwards collected by some persons from memory, and frequently performed; but never, as Mr. Sheridan used to declare, with his consent. He altered “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Loyal Lovers,” &c.

Wife of the above, was born in Dublin, in May 1724. Her maiden name was Chamberlain, being the grand-daughter of Sir. Oliver Chamberlain. The first literary performance by which she distinguished herself, was a little pamphlet, during the time in which Mr. Sheridan was embarked in the theatrical dispute. So well-timed a work exciting the attention of Mr. Sheridan, he procured himself to be introduced to his fair patroness, whom he afterwards married. She was a person of the most amiable character in every relation of life. After lingering some years in a very weak state of health, she died at Blois, in. the south of France, September 26, 766.

Her works are, “Sidney Biddulph,” a novel in five vols. 12mo; “Nourjahad,”an eastern tale; “The Discovery,” a comedy; and “The Dupe,” a comedy. She also wrote some occasional poems and “A Trip to Bath,”a comedy, is ascribed to her pen.

Third son of the above, in whom talents seemed almost boundless, and wit inexhaustible, was born in the month of October 1751, in Dorset-street, Dublin. He was placed, at Harrow school soon after the Christmas recess of 1762; and appears to have been sent thither for the express {522} purpose of learning how to get through the world, as his mother, in a letter to one of her correspondents, observing on the change, remarks, “As Dick probably may fall into a bustling life, we have a mind to accustom him early to shift for himself.” Dr. Parr, (we are told,) who was then one of the sub-preceptors, was the first who awakened in his young pupil any ambition to display the dawnings of his genius, as he was naturally indolent to excess, and careless about his own interests, yet always witty, facetious, and entertaining. Such, it may be justly remarked, was Sheridan at the early age of eighteen, and precisely the same was he till within a few months of his decease. Mr. Sheridan never was sent to the university, the derangement of his family affairs is generally supposed to have precluded the possibility of such a measure. He quitted Harrow in his eighteenth year; and, after having figured at Bath as the admirer of the celebrated Miss Linley, and fought a couple of duels on her account, to satisfy her family of his serious intentions with regard to study &c. he entered himself a member of the Middle Temple on April 6th 1773, and they were married on the 13th of the same month; he being in his twenty-second, and she in her nineteenth year.

At the time when this marriage took place, Mrs. Sheridan was under an engagement to sing for the benefit of the three choirs, at their musical meeting, which was that year to be held at Worcester. On this occasion she had been paid before-hand: but such was the pride of her husband, that he insisted upon having the money returned, accompanied by a declaration, that Mrs. Sheridan would not appear any more in public as a singer. The intimation very naturally astonished the directors, and they strongly represented the great loss which the charity must sustain in the absence of one upon whose powerful attractions they had relied as certain of drawing a crowded assembly. In addition to this unanswerable appeal, they remonstrated with no less energy, though in delicate terms, upon the justifiable grounds of complaint which the subscribers would have to make upon a dereliction that did {523} not originate in absolute necessity. This argument had its effect, and the lady went down to Worcester, where she enraptured crowded audiences by her harmonious strains; the delight of which, however, was allayed by the painful reflection that they would never more be repeated. When the meeting was over, she acted with great liberality, by putting the money that had been paid to her into the plate. And although she was afterwards repeatedly solicited with the most liberal offers, at a time when their resources were extremely confined, Mr. Sheridan persisted in his resolution against her public appearance.

On the 17th of January, 1775, his comedy of the “Rivals” was produced at Covent-garden theatre, and failed entirely through the bad enactment of the Irish character. It was, however, reproduced with a new representative of Sir Lucius O’Trigger, and its success was very considerable. To Mr. Clinch, who so admirably represented the fighting Hibernian, our author considered himself so much indebted, that he presented him soon after with a farce for his benefit, entitled “St. Patrick’s Day; or, the Scheming Lieutenant.” This piece contains a great deal of broad humour, is said to have been written within forty-eight hours, and gratified the galleries exceedingly.

In the autumn of 1776, Mr. Sheridan’s comic opera of “The Duenna,” was submitted to the public; the success of which was unprecedented, as it run half a score of nights longer than the Beggar’s Opera.

Mr. Sheridan’s reputation had now reached the utmost pinnacle of dramatic fame, and yet his fortune had obtained but little increase. Gay, volatile, dissipated, and hospitable to excess, his table was open to the whole circle of his friends and admirers. Yet notwithstanding the notoriety of his expenses, and the deficiency of his revenues, such were his fascinating manners, talents, and reputation at this moment, that he contrived to enter into, and succeeded in a negociation [sic] with Garrick, for the purchase of a part of his share of the patent of Drury-Lane theatre. On {524} this occasion he associated himself with Dr. Ford and Mr. Linley: these gentlemen, in 1776, agreed to pay the sum of £30,000. to the English Roscius, who at the same time reserved to himself certain other claims on, and advantages from the house. On this occasion Mr. Sheridan is allowed to have displayed great talents at finance; for it must be obvious that he was incapable of advancing a single shilling; he, however, contrived by mortgage alone, to obtain the money, and fulfil all his engagements.

“A Trip to Scarborough”* first performed on the 24th of February, 1777, brought crowded houses to the great satisfaction of the new partnership; while the “School for Scandal,” literally filled their empty treasury. This far-famed comedy first delighted an English audience on the 8th of May, of the same year; and during the whole season obtained the rapturous commendations of all the gay, genteel, and fashionable circles. In point of morality it is however grossly deficient, as the audience, from the first scene to the last, are led rather to admire than detest the elegant profligacy of Charles Surface. The grace and dignity of the Countess of Derby, together with the singular and appropriate powers of a King, a Palmer, and a Smith, contributed not a little to heighten the success. This brilliant dramatic effort, which obtained for its author the title of the “Modern Congreve,” was never published by Sheridan, although it has several times been printed surreptitiously.

The unsuccessful piece of “The Camp,” which was brought out at the period we were at war with America, has been ascribed to Sheridan, and he possessed so much apathy in regard to his own fame, that he never took the trouble to deny it. Tate Wilkinson, however, has satisfactorily rescued his name from this disgrace.

The admirable farce of “The Critic; or, a Tragedy Rehearsed,” was performed for the first time at Drury-lane, on October 30th, 1779. The success was immense, on account of the novelty and endless humour of the

* This is not an original play, being merely altered from Sir John Vanbrugh’s comedy of the “Relapse.”

{525} satire. The chief shaft was aimed at Cumberland the dramatist. The character of Sir Fretful Plagiary was supposed to represent him exactly. The decease of Garrick in the same year, produced a monody from his pen, which was delivered by Mrs. Yates in the character of the Tragic Muse. He also wrote an admirable epilogue to Miss Hannah More’s tragedy of “Fatal Falsehood.” Of Mr. Sheridan’s liberality and feeling as a manager, the following is well worthy of relation:— A person who had written a dramatic piece upon some temporary circumstance, put it into the hands of the manager, who, with his wonted carelessness, threw it aside and forgot it, till the season elapsed, after which it could be of no use. When the author applied for his manuscript, and gently remonstrated on the treatment he had met with, Mr. Sheridan returned him his play, accompanied by a handsome letter of apology, enclosing a bank note of the value of £100. as an atonement for his neglect. Among the dramatic exhibitions which have been attributed to his genius, about this period, one of the lowest description was the pantomime of “Robinson Crusoe; or, Harlequin Friday,” which was solely indebted for its uncommon success to the popularity of the story, the beauty of Loutherbourg’s scenery, and the skill of the performers.

Mr. Sheridan had now enjoyed an uninterrupted career of applause for many years, without being enriched by labours, which would have rendered any other man in the nation, not only independent, but affluent. He would have still continued, perhaps, to write for the stage, and to have received and expended large sums annually, had not the secret whisperings of ambition, intimated a new road, to glory.

Mr., now Lord John Townshend, a younger son of the first Marquis Townshend, was, like himself, a poet, and it is not at all to be wondered, that the congeniality of their minds should have produced, first an acquaintance, and then an intimacy. It was this gentleman who first intro{526}duced Mr. Sheridan to Mr. Fox, and this incident converted the poet into a politician and a patriot. After some ineffectual attempts to obtain a seat in Parliament through patronage, Mr. Sheridan at length, in 1780, proposed himself as a candidate for the borough of Stafford. The mere expenses of this election are said to have cost him £1,000 a sum which he borrowed with some difficulty; and he was fortunate enough to be returned at so trifling an expense, although there was a petition against him, to the fifteenth Parliament of Great Britain, along with Mr. Monckton, uncle to Viscount Galway. What is not a little remarkable, he and this gentleman were colleagues during no fewer than six successive parliaments, for the same place; viz. those of 1780, 1784, 1790, 1796 1801, and 1802.

On the second reading of the bill, “for the better regulation of his Ma-jesty’s civil list revenue; and for abolishing several useless, expensive, and inconvenient places; and for applying the monies arising therefrom to the public service,” on February 26, 1781, he made his maiden speech in the house; and as it was in reply to Mr. Courtenay, it could not possibly have been a studied one.

The latter gentleman, having ridiculed all pretexts to virtue on the part of the Opposition, and hinted, that their sole object was place, power, and emolument; Mr. Sheridan, after a short and apposite exordium, observed, “that although it was difficult to answer any charge, which was accompanied by wit and irony, yet he was bound to notice two of the honourable gentleman’s similes at least. The one was, the insinuation that the Opposition was envious of those who basked in court sunshine, and desirous merely to obtain their places. Now I beg leave,” said he, “to remind him, that although the sun afforded a genial warmth, it also occasioned an intemperate heat, which tainted every thing it reflected upon. This excessive heat tended to corrupt as well as to cherish; to putrefy, as well as to animate; to dry, and soak up the wholesome juices of the body politic, and turn the whole of it into one mass of corruption. If those, therefore, who sat near him, did not enjoy so genial a warmth, as the honourable gentleman, and others, who, like him, kept close to the noble Lord in the blue ribbon, he was certain at least, that they breathed a purer air, an air less infected, and less corrupt. Another of the honourable gentleman’s allusions was not quite a new one. He had talked of the ‘machine of state,’ and of the ‘drag-chain of opposition.’ He would only observe upon this, that a drag-chain was never applied, but when a machine was going down hill; and then it was applied wisely. As to any thing else the gentleman has said, I shall not attempt to offer a reply; but shall {527} sit down, with observing, that the most serious part of his arguments appear to me to be the most ludicrous.”

Mr. Sheridan, now entirely relinquishing the Muses, became a regular attendant in St. Stephen’s chapel; and both there, and at all the public meetings of the time, was a strenuous opposer of the American war, and consequently, a violent foe to Lord North’s administration. On the conclusion of hostilities, he joined with many celebrated men, in a plan, for procuring a reform in Parliament; and actually sat in a convention for that express purpose, with Mr. Pitt, the Duke of Norfolk, the Rev. Mr. Wyvill, then chairman of the Yorkshire Committee; Sir Cecil Wray, Bart, and a multitude of other distinguished characters. On this, as on many similar occasions, he went much further than his party either wished, or intended; the Whigs, considered as a body, being supposed never to have been very fond of that measure. Notwithstanding this, he was now deemed so able, and at the Same time, so useful an assistant, that when the Rockingham party, in 1783, vaulted into the seat of power, he was immediately nominated under-secretary to his friend Mr. Fox, who was selected at that period, to preside over the foreign department. In this new and arduous situation, time sufficient for a display of his abilities was not allowed, for the Earl of Shelburne having been declared first lord of the treasury, by the especial intervention of the king, on the lamented demise of the Marquis of Rockingham, Mr. Fox resigned, after a few months enjoyment of office, and was of course followed by his secretary. Mr. Sheridan, who had before engaged in the “Englishman,” now joined in a similar periodical paper, called “The Jesuit”; but it ought to be here explicitly stated, that he was not the author of that bitter attack on a great personage, which afterwards produced a prosecution on the part of his majesty’s attorney-general, and a twelvemonth’s imprisonment to the publisher.

At length, a reconciliation having taken place between Mr. Fox and Lord North, who had bitterly attacked each {528} other, during the American contest, they soon gained the ascendancy in the House of Commons, by their united talents and influence; and Mr. Sheridan accordingly formed a part of the coalition administration, by being appointed to the confidential and important office of secretary of the treasury, in 1783.

In 1786, he ably and manfully opposed the extravagant plans of the late Duke of Richmond, for fortifying and protecting the dock-yards, by means of numerous, extensive, and expensive works; instead of recurring to the natural defence of Great Britain, arising out of a powerful navy. On this occasion, he alluded to the constitutional jealousy of the military power of the crown, which originated in this, - “That it was in the nature of kings to love power, and in the constitution of armies to obey kings.” He also observed,

“That the strong holds, now contended for, if maintained as they most be, in peace, by full and disciplined garrisons; if well provided, and calculated to stand regular sieges, as the present plan professed; and if extended to all the objects to which the system must inevitably lead, whether they were to be considered as inducements to tempt a weak prince to evil views, or as engines of power, in case of actual rupture; would in troth present ten times the means of curbing and subduing the country, that could be stated to arise, even from doubling the present military establishment; with this extraordinary aggravation attending the folly of consenting to such a system, that those very naval stores, and magazines, the seed and sources of our future navy, the effectual preservation of which was the pretence for these unassailable fortresses, would, in that case, become a pledge and hostage, in the hands of the crown, which in a country circumstanced as this was, must ensure an unconditional submission to the most extravagant claims which despotism could dictate.”

At seven in the morning, the House, which was very full, divided upon the question, and the numbers being equal, the speaker gave his vote on the side of Opposition, by which means the motion was lost.

In the spring of 1786, commenced the proceedings against Mr. Hastings, in which Mr.Sheridan was actively engaged for several years. The first difficulty encountered, by those who brought the charges, was an evident unwillingness on the part of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas to {529} produce the necessary documents. At length, Mr. Burke, on April 4, 1786, charged the late governor-general of Bengal, with high crimes and misdemeanours, and lodged nine articles against him, on the table of the House of Commons. The first of these, which comprehended the Rohilla war, was lost, eighty-seven only having voted for the motion, while one hundred and nineteen declared against it, on June 1st. On the 19th of the same month, Mr. Fox brought forward the Benares charge, which was carried by a majority of one hundred and nineteen to seventy-nine, the chancellor of the exchequer concurring in the vote.

On February 7th, 1787, in a committee of the whole house; Mr. Sheridan presented the fourth charge, viz. the resumption of the Jaghires, and the confiscation of the treasures of the Princesses of Oude, on which occasion, during a speech of five hours and a half, he commanded the universal attention and admiration of all who heard him. He commenced his speech by some pointed allusions to the conduct of Sir Elijah Impey, who had recurred to the low and artful stratagem of printed hand-bills of defence, in favour of Mr. Hastings, in respect to the present articles of accusation. Neither the informality on any subsisting evidence, nor the adducement of any new explanations on the part of the late-chief justice of Bengal, could make the slightest impression upon the vast and strong body of proof now intended to be brought forward. The long and unwearied attention paid by parliament to the affairs of Indla, the voluminous productions of their committees, - the repeated recommendations of His Majesty, - were all undeniable proofs of the moment, and magnitude of the consideration; and incontrovertibly established this plain, broad fact, that parliament had directly acknowledged that the British name and character had been dishonoured, and rendered detested throughout India, by the malversation and crimes of the principal servant of the East India Company. To some sarcasms propagated in another place he would ask, “Is parliament mis-spending its time by inquiring into the oppressions practised on millions of unfortunate persons; and endeavouring to bring the daring delinquent, who had been guilty of the most flagrant acts enormous tyranny, and rapacious peculation, to exemplary and condign punishment? Was it a misuse of their functions, to be diligent in attempting to wipe off the disgrace attached to the British name in India, and to rescue the national character from lasting infamy? Their indefatigable exertions in committees, - their numerous, elaborate, and dear clear reports, - their long and interesting debates, - their solemn addresses to the throne, - their rigorous legislative acts, - their marked detestation of that novel and base sophism in the principles of judicial inquiry, (the constant language of the governor-general’s servile dependents!) that crimes might be compounded, - that the guilt of Mr. Hastings was to honoured by his successes, - that {530} fortunate events were a full and complete set-off against a patent of oppression, corruption, breach of faith, peculation, and treachery, - and finally, their solemn and awful Judgment, that in the case of Benares, Mr. Hastings’s conduct was a proper object of parliamentary impeachment; had covered them with applause, and brought them forward in the face of all the world, as the objects of perpetual admiration. The vote of the last session, by which the conduct of this pillar of India, this corner-stone of our strength in the East, this talisman of the British territories in Asia, was censored, did the greatest honour to an English House of Commons, as it must be the forerunner of speedy justice on that character which was said to be above censure; but whose deeds were such, as no difficulties, no necessities could justify; for where is the situation, however elevated, and in that elevation, however embarrassed, that can authorise the wilful commission of oppression and rapacity?” As to the present charge, “He professed to God, that he felt in his own bosom the strongest personal conviction; and it was from that conviction, he believed the conduct of Warren Hastings in regard to the Nabob of Oude and the Begums, comprehended every species of human offence. He had proved himself guilty of rapacity, at once violent and insatiable, - of treachery, cool and premeditated, - of oppression, useless and unprovoked, - of breach of faith, unwarrantable and base, - of cruelty, unmanly and unmerciful. These were the crimes of which, in his soul and conscience, he arraigned Warren Hastings; and of which he had the confidence to say, he should convict him! As there were gentlemen ready to stand up his advocates, he challenged them to watch him, - to watch if he advanced one inch of assertion, for which he had not solid ground: for he trusted nothing to declamation. I desire credit,” added he, “for no fact which I shall not prove, and which I do not demonstrate beyond the possibility of refutation. I shall not desert the clear and invincible ground of truth, throughout any one particle of my allegations against Mr. Hastings, who uniformly aimed to govern India by his own arbitrary power, covering with misery upon misery the wretched people whom Providence had subjected to the dominion of this country; whilst in his favour, not one single circumstance, grounded on truth, was stated, - the attempt at vindication was false throughout.”

Mr. Sheridan now commenced his examination of Mr. Hastings’s defence. “Although he had gone so far back as the year 1775, for pretended grounds of justification from the charge of violence and rapacity, yet not one of the facts, as stated by him, but was fallacious. Groundless, nugatory, and insulting, were the affirmations of the ex-governor-general, that the seizure of treasure from the Begums, and the exposition of their pillaged goods to public auction, (unparalleled acts of open injustice, oppression, and inhumanity!) were in any degree to be defended by those encroachments on their property, which had taken place previously to his administration; or by those sales, which they themselves had solicited as a favourable mode of supplying their aid to the Nabob. Mr. Hastings wished to insinuate, that a claim was set up in the year 1775, to the treasure of the Begums, as belonging of right to that prince; and it would appear from a minute of council, that woman were entitled by the Mahomedan {531} only to the property within the Zenam where they lived. The Bow Begum had readily complied with this authority; the disputed property was accordingly given up; and no claim whatever was made to the residue, which was guaranteed to the Princesses of Oude, by Mr. Bristow, on the part of the Company. But Mr. Hastings having conceived a project of acquiring an immense sum of money by plunder left Calcutta in 1781, and proceded [sic] to Lucknow, as he said himself, with two great objects in his mind, namely, Benares and Oude. What was the nature of these boasted resources? - That he should plunder one or both, - the equitable alternative of a highwayman, who on going forth in the evening, hesitates which of the resources to prefer, - Bagshot or Hounslow. In such a state of generous irresolution, did Mr. Hastings proceed to Benares and Oude! At Benares, he failed in his pecuniary object. Then, and not till then, - not on account of any ancient enmities shewn by the Begums, - not in resentment of any old disturbances, but because he had failed in one place, and had but two in his prospect, did he conceive the base expedient of plundering these aged women. He had no pretence, - he had no excuse, - he had nothing but the arrogant and obstinate determination to govern India by his own corrupt will, to plead for his conduct. Inflamed by disappointment in his first project, he hastened to the fortress of Chunar, to meditate the more atrocious design of instigating a son against his mother; of sacrificing female dignity and distress, to parricide and plunder. At Chunar was the infamous treaty concerted with the Nabob’s visier, to despoil the Princesses of Oude of their hereditary possessions, - there it was that Mr. Hastings had stipulated with one, whom he called an independent prince; that as great distress had arisen to the Nabob’s government from the military power and dominion assumed by the Jaghierdars, he be permitted to resume such as he may find necessary; with a reserve, that all such, for the amount of whose Jaghiers the Company are guarantees, shall in case of the resumption of their lands, be paid the amount of theft net collections, through the resident, in ready money; and that no English resident be appointed to Furruckabad. No sooner was the foundation of iniquity thus instantly established, in violation of the pledged faith, and solemn guarantee of the British government; no sooner had Mr. Hastings determined to invade the substance of justice, than he resolved to avail himself of her judicial forms; and accordingly dispatched a messenger for the chief justice of India, to assist him in perpetrating the violations he had projected. Sir Elijah having arrived, Mr. Hastings, with much art, proposed a question of opinion, involving an unsubstantiated fact, in order to obtain even a surreptitious approbation of the measures he had pre-determined to adopt; ‘;the Begums being in actual rebellion, might not the Nabob confiscate their property?’ ‘Most undoubtedly,’ Was the ready answer of the friendly judge. Not a syllable of inquiry intervene as to the existence of the imputed rebellion; nor a moment’s pause,as to the ill purposes to which the decision of a chief justice might be perverted. It was not the office of a friend, to mix the grave caution and circumspection of a judge, with an opinion taken to sueh circumstances; and Sir Elijah had previously declared, that he gave his advice, not as a judge {532} but as a friend; a character he equally preferred, in the strange office which he undertook of collecting defensive affidavits on the subject of Benares.”

After the orator had expatiated, in a vein of irony, on the conduct of Sir Elijah, whom he styled in ridicule the “Oriental Grotius,” who had given “his premature sanction for plundering the Begums,” and “become the posthumous support of the expulsion and pillage of the Rajah Cheit Sing;” he fully and ably insisted on the gross perversion of both the judicial and executive power of India. “At the same moment,” continued he, “that the sword of government was turned to an assassin’s dagger, the pure ermine of justice was stained and disgraced with the basest and meanest contamination. Under such circumstances did Mr. Hastings complete the treaty of Chunar; a treaty which might challenge all the treaties that ever subsisted, for containing, in the smallest compass, the most extensive treachery. Mr. Hastings did not conclude that treaty until he had received from the Nabob a present, or rather a bribe, of £100,000. The circumstances of this present were as extraordinary as the thing itself. Four months afterwards, and not till then, Mr. Hastings communicated the matter to the Company. Unfortunately for himself, however, this tardy disclosure was conveyed in words which betrayed his original meaning; for with no common incaution, he admits the present was of a magnitude not to be concealed. And what was the consideration for this extraordinary bribe? No less than the withdrawing from Oude, not only all the English gentlemen in official situations, but the whole also of the English army; and that too at the very moment when he himself had stated the whole country of Oude to be in open revolt and rebellion. Other very strange articles were contained in the same treaty, which nothing but this infamous bribe could have occasioned; together with the reserve which he had in his own mind, of treachery to the Nabob; for the only part of the treaty which he ever attempted to carry into execution, was to withdraw the English gentlemen from Oude. The Nabob, indeed, considered this as essential to his deliverance, on account of their supposed rapacity. Accordingly, at the very moment he pocketed the extorted spoil of the Nabob, with his usual grave hypocrisy and cant, ‘Go,’ he said to the English gentlemen, “Go, you oppressive rascals, go from this worthy, unhappy man, whom you have plundered, and leave him to my protection. You have robbed him, - you have plundered him, - you have taken advantage of his accumulated distresses; but, please God, he shall in future be at rest; for I have promised him he shall never see the face of an Englishman again.’ This, however, was the only portion of the treaty which he even affected to fulfil; for as to all other parts, we learn from himself, that at the very moment he made it, he intended to deceive the Nabob. Accordingly, he advised general, instead of partial resumptions, for the express purpose of defeating his views; and instead of giving instant and unqualified assent to all the articles of the treaty, he perpetually qualified, explained, and varied them with new diminutions and reservations. Was there any theory in Machiavel, any treachery upon record, any cold Italian fraud, which could in any degree be put in com{533 }parison with the disgusting hypocrisy, and unequalled baseness which Mr. Hastings had shewn on that occasion! But there were some, who found an apology for the atrocity of these crimes, in the greatness of his mind; - but does not this quality arise out of great actions, directed to great ends? In them, and in them alone, we are to search for true and estimable magnanimity; to them only can we justly affix the splendid title and honours of real greatness. His course was an eternal deviation from rectitude, - he pursued the worst objects by the worst means, - he either tyrannised or deceived; and was by turns a Dionysius and a Scapin. As well might the writhing obliquity of the serpent be compared to the swift directness of the arrow, as the duplicity of Mr. Hastings’s ambition, to the simple steadiness of genuine magnanimity. In his mind all was shuffling, ambiguous, dark, insidious, and little; nothing simple, nothing unmixed; all affected plainness and actual dissimulation; - a heterogeneous mass of contradictory qualities; with nothing great but his crimes; and even these, contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster.”

Mr. Sheridan now shewed, by evidence, that the twofold accusation against the Begums was unjust; and that, first, they were not the ancient disturbers of the government; and, secondly, that the charge of having induced the Jaghierdars to resist the Nabob, was no less untrue - the fact, indeed, being fully substantiated, that no one of these ever did resist. He stated it to be incontrovertible, “that the Begums were not concerned either in the rebellion of Bulbudder, or the insurrection at Benares; nor did Mr. Hastings ever once seriously think them guilty. Their treasures were their treason; and Asoph ul Dowlah thought like an unwise prince, when he blamed his father for bequeathing him so little wealth. His father, Sujah ul Dowlah, acted wisely in leaving his son with no temptation about him, to invite acts of violence and rapacity. He clothed him with poverty as with a shield, and armed him with necessity as with a sword! - The third charge was equally false, - did they resist the resumption of their own Jaghierdars? Although they had resisted, there would not have been any crime, seeing that these were confirmed by solemn treaty; yet the Nabob himself, with all the load of obloquy imputed to him, never so much as accused them of stirring up opposition to his authority. To prove the falsehood of the whole of the charge, and to shew that Mr. Hastings originally projected the plunder; that he threw the whole odium in the first instance on the Nabob; and that he imputed the crimes to them before he had received one of the rumours which he afterwords manufactured into affidavits, would be seen from the dates of the various papers now about to be adduced; which would also implicate Mr. Middleton and Sir Elijah Impey.

“The Begums, by condition, by age, and by infirmities, were almost the only persons in India, who could not have thought of distressing that government, by which alone they could hope to be protected; and to charge them with a design to depose their nearest and dearest relatives, was equally odious and absurd. To ascribe to the princesses those insurrections which had constantly taken place in Oude, was wandering even {534} beyond the improbabilities of fiction; it might with equal probability have been insisted, that but for them, famine would not have pinched, nor thirst have parched, nor extermination have depopulated. Mr Hastings, wanting motive for his rapacity, had found it in fiction. But we are told, ‘that they complained of the injustice done to them.’ And, God at heaven! had they not a right to complain of the injustice, - after a solemn treaty violated, - after being plundered of all their property, - and on the eve of the last extremity of wretchedness, were they to be deprived of the last resource of impotent wretchedness, - complaint and lamentation! Was it a crime that they should crowd together in fluttering trepidation, like a flock of resistless birds on seeing the felon kite, who, having darted at one devoted individual, and missed hls aim, singled on a new object, and was springing on his prey with redoubled vigour in his wing, and keener vengeance in his eye. The simple fact is, having failed as to Cheit Sing, he felt the necessity of procuring a sum of money somewhere; for he knew that to be the never-failing receipt to make his peace with the directors at home! Let the fancy of the governor-general but conceive the proud spirit of Sujah Dowlah, looking down upon the ruin and devastation of his family, and beholding that palace which had been restored to him, plundered by that very army with which he himself had vanquished the Mahrattas; that very Middleton, who had been engaged in managing the previous violations, most busy to perpetrate the last; that very Hastings, whom he had left on his death-bed, the guardian of his wife, and mother, and family, turning all those dear relations, the objects of his solemn trust, forth to the merciless seasons, and a more merciless soldiery!

“I have heard of factions and parties in this House, and know that they exist. The prerogative of the crown finds its advocates among the representatives of the people; the privileges of the people find their opponents, even among the Commons of England, - there is no subject on which we are not broken and divided, - habits, connexions, parties, ail lead to diversity of opinion; but when humanity presents itself to observation, it finds no division among us, - it is attacked as the common enemy, and is never left until completely overthrown. It is not given to this House, to behold the objects of their compassion and benevolence; they cannot see the workings of the heart, the quivering lips, the trickling tears, the loud and yet tremulous joys of the millions whom their vote of this night would for ever save from the cruelly of corrupted power. But though they could not directly see the effects, is not the true enjoyment of their benevolence increased by the blessing being conferred unseen? Would not the omnipotence of Britain be demonstrated to the wonder of nations, by stretching its mighty arm across the deep, and saving by its fiat distant millions from destruction? And would the blessings of the people thus saved dissipate in empty air? No! - We shall constitute heaven itself our proxy, to receive for us the blessings of their pious gratitude, and the prayers of their thanksgiving. It is with confidence, therefore, that I move you on this charge, ‘that Warren Hustings be impeached.’”.

His speech occupied a period of nearly six hours in delivery; and so brilliant was he eloquence, and so argumentative the mode adopted on {535} the present occasion, that when Mr. Sheridan sat down, the whole House, as if fascinated with his eloquence, after a short pause, burst into an involuntary tumult of applause.

Mr. Burke declared it to be the most extraordinary effort he had ever witnessed; while Mr. Fox said, “all that he had ever heard, - all that he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapour before the sun.” Even Mr. Pitt acknowledged, “that it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient or modem times, and possessed every thing that genius or art could furnish, to agitate and control the human mind.” Some members, afraid of the impulse thus given to the question, moved for an adjournment of the debate, and the minister concurring, this was accordingly agreed to, notwithstanding the assertion of Mr. Fox, “that it was unparliamentary to defer coming to a vote, for no other reason, that had been alleged, than because members were too firmly convinced.”

Next day, however, Mr. Pitt having declared that Mr. Hastings was criminal on two great points, - the violation of the guarantee, and the seizure of the treasures, - and that he had greatly enhanced his guilt by stifling the orders of the Court of Directors, commanding a revision of the proceedings against the Princesses, the motion was carried by a majority of one hundred and seventy-five against sixty-eight.

Mr. Sheridan took also an active part in the debates on the affairs of the Prince of Wales. On June 3rd, 1788, Mr. Sheridan summed up the evidence on the Begum charge, before the Lords in Westminster-hall, and from that moment his character was established as one of thf first orators and statesmen in the House of Commons.

Soon after this, the French revolution became an object of great importance; and on the army estimates being moved for on February 9, both he and Mr Fox paid a tribute of applause to those who had produced that great event. He deprecated the unqualified abuse and abhorrence of Mr. Burke, and conceived that revolution to be fully as just, and necessary, and glorious, as our own in 1688. He at the same time defended the general view and conduct of the National Assembly, and couldn’t understand what was meant by the charge of “having over-turned the laws, the justice, and the revenues of their country. What were their laws? - the arbitrary mandates of capricious despotism. What their justice? - the partial adjudications of venal magistrates. What their revenues? - national bankruptcy.” Mr. Burke, in reply, declared, {536} “that henceforth his honourable friend and he were separated in politics.”

Nearly at the same time, Mr. Sheridan gave a bold and decisive opinion relative to the baseness, cruelty, and injustice of the slave trade. He incessantly urged the House to come to an immediate determination relative to that crying outrage; and added, that the power possessed by a West India planter over his slaves, was such, as no human creature ought to be suffered to exercise. On this subject, as well as on a reform of parliament, he was equally strenuous and uniform, whether in or out of place. Mrs. Sheridan, after a lingering illness, died at Bristol, on the 28th of June, 1792, in the thirty-eighth year of her age, and on the 7th of July she was buried in Wells cathedral. Independent of her vocal powers, she possessed a considerable genius for musical composition, and composed the whole of the music in the popular pantomime of Robinson Crusoe, and several songs. She also wrote poetry with much harmony and feeling.

On the 27th of April, 1795, Mr. Sheridan married Miss Hester Ogle, youngest daughter of the late Dr. Newton Ogle, Dean of Winchester. On his marriage with this lady, an estate at Pollesden, near Leatherhead, in Surrey, was purchased chiefly with her fortune; and there they occasionally resided, during several years. A grant from the Prince, of the Receiver-Generalship of the Duchy of Cornwall, estimated perhaps too high at £1,200 a year, was soon after added to his income.

He had also a valuable interest in Drury-lane theatre; and his appearance in the Court of Chancery, in defence of his claims, forms an epoch in the proceedings of that tribunal. On this occasion, he displayed an unusual portion of acuteness and penetration; he entered into the minutiae of accounts with a wonderful degree of precision; and while, as usual, he charmed all around him, Lord Eldon himself declared from the bench, that he had convinced him of every thing, but his “own prudence.’” When the mutiny broke out at the Nore, Mr. Sheridan {537} rose in his place in the House of Commons, and supported ministers with energy and eloquence; and when the kingdom was threatened with an invasion, he publicly, avowed, “that the time had now arrived, when His Majesty possessed an undoubted right to call on his subjects, of all ranks and descriptions, for their zealous co-operation, in supporting the due execution of the laws; and in giving every possible efficiency to the measures of government.” In 1799 the patriotic drama of “Pizarro” was produced, the success, of which was beyond all calculation - twenty-nine editions of a thousand each, were sold off instantly The unparalleled success of the above, may be fairly attributed to the peculiar situation in which this country stood in regard to France, and to the first-rate talents of Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, and Mrs. Jordan, who were all three in the zenith of their powers.

On the demise of Mr. Pitt, a coalition was formed between Mr. Fox and Lord Grenville; and they and their friends, constituting what was then termed “all the talents of the country,” immediately occupied the great offices of state. On this occasion, Mr. Sheridan was nominated a privy councillor; and obtained the office of treasurer of the navy, estimated at 4000£ per annum. It would have been happy both for himself and his family, if he had accepted a patent place for life of £2000 a year, as was suggested by Mr. Fox: but he declined this proposition; and on a new writ being issued for Stafford, he was re-chosen, foe the last time, on February 10th, 1806.

As his influence had obviously declined in that borough, at the general election which occurred in the course of the same, year, he offered himself, and was returned tot the city of Westminster, on which occasion he stood second on the poll, having 4642 votes, to 4966, on the part of his opponent, Mr. Paul. Notwithstanding, he was at that moment a very unpopular candidate; yet, so great was the dread lest the feeling of the people should conquer, that Mr. Sheridan not only obtained the support of all the public offices, but, indeed, of the whole {538} aristocracy residing within the bills of mortality. The expense of this contest, as well as of the petition that followed, was borne by means of a subscription, £1,000 of which was advanced by the late Duke of Queensberry; who, as it has been said, actually supposed not only his personal safety, but even his property to depend on the event!

In 1807, his former antagonist being dead, Mr. Sheridan now became a popular candidate; but being deficient in respect to one material ingredient in all contests of this nature, Lord Cochrane obtained a decisive majority. During this second contest, he maintained from the hostings, that it was his intention, were he returned, to attempt the accomplishment of two objects, highly conducive to the interests of his constituents; “the first of these was to regulate the conduct of the hired magistracy of Westminster; and the second, to prevent the publicans from being entirely dependent on the brewers.” He concluded by confessing, “that the chief motive of the present struggle, was to seat his son for Ilchester, and himself for Westminster; so that liberty might have two friends instead of one in the House of Commons!”

Having thus failed in the second city in the kingdom, Mr. Sheridan was nominated for the borough just alluded to, and continued to represent that place during two parliaments. But he no longer distinguished himself by the ardour of his attacks; the brilliancy of his replies; the pertinacity and promptness of his questions. In short, he but seldom attended the House, and seemed to have deserted his party, which soon availed itself of but too good an apology for that utter desertion and abandonment of him!

Mr. Sheridan terminated his political career on the 21st of July, 1812, with one of the most brilliant speeches he ever delivered, on the subject of the overtures for peace which had recently been made by France. Having declared resistance to Buonaparte even with the hazard of defeat as absolutely necessary, he concluded in these animated words {539} which were his last in the House of Commons. “If we fall, and if after our ruin, there should possibly rise an impartial historian, his language will be, ‘Britain fell, and with her fell all the best securities for the charities of human life, the power, the honour, the fame, the glory, and the liberties not only of herself, but of the whole civilised world.’ ”

Thus set this political luminary in the sphere which he had so many years enlivened by the brilliancy of his wit; and so often delighted by the power of his eloquence. Parliament was shortly afterwards dissolved, and Mr. Sheridan again tried his strength at Stafford, where however, notwithstanding the encouragement which he had experienced in the spring, he failed of success, nor, after his last speech, had he influence enough to command a seat for any other place.

Under these depressing circumstances did this extraordinary man retire from public life, without having the transient consolation of seeing that his departure was considered as a loss by those who had been used to court the aid of his talents. The world to him was now in a manner become a desert, in which there was little to cheer him amidst the gloom of neglect and. the blast penury, where he was continually tormented by the importunity of clamorous creditors, and pursued with unrelaxing severity by the harpies of the law.

Harrassed by continual vexations at a period when nature stands in need of repose and indulgence, it was not much to be wondered that a man so long accustomed to convivial pleasures should seek relief from pressure of increasing embarrassments in the intoxicating menus of forgetfulness. Unfortunately the habits of Mr. Sheridan had ever been of a description that unfitted him for application to business, and rendered him incapable of enduring misfortune with that firmness, which, if it does not remove trouble, takes away its sting. When, therefore, the trying season came, it found him unprepared to resist the violence of the storm, and unable to direct his steps by any plan {540} that could secure him from future calamity. In such a bewildered state he increased his difficulties by the efforts which he made to elude them, and accelerated his dissolution in endeavouring to drown the sense of his misery. Such is the heavy impost which men of eccentric genius have to pay for sacrificing their time and talents in uncertain pursuits, and to obtain a little ephemeral popularity. Mr. Sheridan always lived and acted without any regular system for the government of his domestic conduct; the consequence of which was, as might have been expected, that he became the sport of capricious friendship; and when the winter of his days approached, and he had separated from his political connexions, he experienced the folly of neglecting those resources which can alone support the mind in every exigency, and minister to its comfort in the dreariness of solitude. Home, though the abode of domestic virtue and affection, was no longer safe to a person so well known and so much sought after by numerous applicants; to avoid whose troublesome inquiries, and to gain a respite from anxiety, he passed much of his time in coffee-houses and taverns. Continual ebriety was the result of such a course of life; and the effects of it upon his constitution, which had been naturally a very robust one, soon appeared in his countenance and his manners.

Some idea of his extraordinary stamina may be formed from fhe following incident. A person going to bear the debates in the House of Commons, called at the Exchequer coffee-house, where his attention was fixed by a gentleman taking tea, with a parcel of papers before him. Afterwards he called for a decanter of brandy, which he poured into a large glass, and drank off without diluting it in the least, and then walked away. The spectator soon followed, and went into the gallery of the House, where, to his astonishment, he heard one of the longest and most brilliant speeches he ever listened to, delivered by this votary of Bacchus, who was no other than Mr. Sheridan.

But such libations, however invigorating they may be for a moment to the animal spirits, or even inspiring to genius, make dreadful inroads upon the vital system, and when persevered in, never fail to undermine the entire fabric. This was the case with Mr. Sheridan, upon whom the pernicious practice increased to such a degree, that at length his digestive powers were completely destroyed, his memory of course became impaired, and the symptoms of organic disease manifested themselves in a swelling of the extremities and an enlargement of the abdomen, which soon left nothing for hope.

The complication of disorders multiplied rapidly, and he was confined to his room, where, to aggravate the wretchedness of his situation, and the distress of his family, an officer forced his way and arrested him in his bed. After remaining a few days in the house, this callous being signified his intention of removing the dying prisoner to a spunging-house, which resolution he was only prevented from carrying into execution by the interposition of Dr. Baine, the physician, who said that his patient was in such an extremely weak and exhausted state, that to move him at all, even in his own house, would most probably be fatal; but that if he were to be taken away in a violent manner, the agitation would most certainly be attended by immediate death, in which case he should feel it to be his duty to prosecute the officer for murder. This declaration had the proper effect, and the unfortunate victim was suffered to remain in the bosom of his afflicted family, from whom he received every kind attention, and all the comfort that could be administered. As far as sympathetic solicitude could administer relief or comfort, Mr. Sheridan received every consolation from the kind attention of a numerous acquaintance and an affectionate family. But there is abundant reason to hope that his last moments were cheered by the more gratifying consolation that springs alone from faith and repentance. Some days before his death, the Bishop of London, who is a near relation of Mrs. Sheridan, desired Dr. Baine to ask if it would be agreeable to his patient to have prayers {542} offered up by his bed-side. When the commission was imparted to the sick, he assented with such an expression of fervent desire, that the bishop was instantly sent for, who lost no time in attending to the solemn call, and, accompanied by the physician, read several offices of devotion suited to the awful occasion. In these prayers Mr. Sheridan appeared to join with humility and aspiration, clasping his hands, bending his head, and lifting up his eyes, significant of that penitential frame of mind which becomes every human spirit in its passage out of time into eternity. After this he seemed to possess much internal tranquillity until life ebbed gradually away, and he departed, without any apparent struggle or agony, in the arms of his affectionate consort, on Sunday, at noon, July the 7th, 1816, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. As it was deemed advisable that the funeral should be conducted without pomp, and yet be marked by a proper respect to the talents of the deceased, the body was removed from Saville Row, to the house of Mr. Peter Moore, in Great George Street, Westminster, which being a short distance from the Abbey, rendered a walking procession the more convenient. He was buried on the Saturday following, near the remains of Garrick and Cumberland.

Mr. Sheridan has left behind him two sons, one by a former, another by the wife who survives him. To present our readers with a character of Sheridan we imagine is almost needless - the task is superseded by his life: suffice it to say, as a statesman he was incorruptible, and never, we believe, in a solitary instance did he speak or vote against his conscience. His speeches in the senate are distinguished as combining every quality that constitutes brilliant oratory. His wit was proverbial, many specimens of which are on record, and as a companion at the festive board he appears almost to have been without a rival; but his absolute neglect of prudence in the common affairs of life, involved him in continual distress, and he died as might have been conjectured, pennyless, heartbroken, and deserted.

An individual fully entitled to the epithet “Worthy,” a learned clergyman, and author of some valuable works on divinity, was born in the parish of Derriagbly, near Lisburn, in February 1707. H is family was originally English. His grandfather, an engineer, having been sent over by Charles I to inspect the Irish fortifications, settled in that country, and suffered many privations in Cromwell’s time. His father appears to have been, in the reign of William III, a gunsmith, and afterwards a farmer and a tanner. He died in his fiftieth year, leaving a widow and ten children. Philip, when about ten years of age, was sent to Lisburn school, where, being at first negligent, his father reformed him by sending him into the fields, and treating him as a menial; after this he applied diligently, and soon displayed an ardent thirst for knowledge. On the decease of his father, which happened when he was at school, his mother had to encounter many difficulties in bringing up her numerous family, and he laudably thought it his duty to relieve her from the expense of one at least, and applied still more closely to his studies. From school, in June 1724, he entered as a sizer in Dublin University, where Dr. Delany was his tutor, and ever after, his friend.

Here he soon obtained the reputation of a scholar, and also distinguished himself by his skill in fencing, cudgelling, and other manly feats, as well as in some college frolics from which he did not always escape uncensured. His temper was warm, and he entertained that irritable’ sense of honour which frequently involved him in quae* rels. On one occasion he had a quarrel with a fellow-student, who happened to be connected with Dr, Baldwin the provost, and who insinuated that Skelton was a Jacobite, an accusation which he repelled by the most solemn declaration of his adherence to the Hanover family, Baldwin, however, was prejudiced against him, and endeavoured to keep him out of a scholarship, but, mistaking him for another of the same malice was disap{544}pointed, and Skelton received this reward of merit in 1726. Baldwin, however, on other occasions did every thing in his power to make a college life uneasy to him; and Skelton, finding it impossible to gain his favour without disgraceful compliances, resolved to take his degree at the statuteable period, and quit the college. This, however, his enemy still endeavoured to prevent, and, on some idle pretence, stopped his degree.

Skelton’s only remedy was now to wait patiently till the next commencement, which would take place in about half a year. As the time approached, he contrived to foil the provost at his own weapons, and knowing his tyrannical and capricious temper, played him a trick, which his biographer relates in the following manner. A few days before the commencement, he waited on the provost, “and after paying his humble submission, said, ‘Mr. Provost, I am extremely obliged to you for stopping me of my degree last time, because it was what I wished for above all things, and I beg and beseech you may also stop me now, as my friends are forcing me to take it, and quit the college, contrary to my desire.’ ‘Ah, you dog,’ he replied, ‘what do you mean? do you wish to stay here contrary to your friends’ consent? Take your degree, sirrah, and quit the college, or I’ll make you smart for it.’ Skelton then began to cry, and whine, and sob, saying how greatly distressed he was at getting this unfavourable answer. ‘Don’t be growling here, sir,’ he said, ‘but go about your business, I’ll not agree to your request, you shall take your degree in spite of you, sirrah.’ Upon this, Skelton, with sorrowful countenance, though with joy at his heart, walked grumblingly out of the room.” The consequence of this was, that he commenced B.A. in July 1728, and had his name taken out of the college books, May 31st following, two years before the natural expiration of his scholarship. Notwithstanding this treatment, he always spoke of Dr. Baldwin as in many respects an excellent provost. He was ordained iu 1729, and obtained a curacy. In {545} 1732, he was nominated to the curacy of Monaghan, where his life was most exemplary, and his preaching efficacious. It was said, that the very children of Monaghan, whom he carefully instructed, knew more of religion at that time, than the grown people of any of the neighbouring parishes, and the manners of his flock were soon greatly improved, and vice and ignorance retreated before so powerful an opponent. His charities were extraordinary, for all he derived from his curacy was £40 of which he gave £10 a year to his mother, and for some years a like sum to his tutor, Dr. Delany, to pay some debts he had contracted at college. The rest were for his maintenance and his charities, and when the pittance he could give was insufficient for the relief of the poor, he solicited the aid of people of fortune, who usually contributed according to his desire, and could not indeed refuse a man who first gave his own before he would ask any of theirs. His visits to the gaols were also attended with the happiest effects. On one remarkable occasion, when a convict at Monaghan, of whose innocence he was well assured, was condemned to be hanged within five days, he set off for Dublin, and on his arrival was admitted to the privy council, which was then sitting. Here he pleaded for the poor man with such eloquence, as to obtain his pardon, and returned with it to Monaghan in time to save his life. In order to be of the more use to his poor parishioners, he studied physic, and was very successful in his gratuitous practice, as well as by his spiritual advice, and was the means of removing many prejudices and superstitions which he found very deeply rooted in their minds.

His fame, however, both as a preacher and writer, his extraordinary care as an instructor of a parish, and his wonderful acts of charity and goodness, began, about 1737, to be the subject of conversation, not only in the diocese of Clogher, and other parts of the North, but also in the metropolis; but still no notice was taken of him in the way of preferment. Dr. Sterne, the bishop of Clogher, {546} usually sent for him, after he had bestowed a good preferment upon another, and gave him, “by way of a sop” ten guineas, which Mr. Skelton frequently presented to a Mr. Arbuthnot, a poor cast-off curate, who was unable to serve through age and infirmity. At length, Dr. Delany, who had been his tutor at college, perceiving him to be thus neglected, procured for him an appointment to the curacy of St. Werburgh’s, in Dublin. This would have been highly acceptable to Mr. Skelton, and Dr. Delany would have been much gratified to place such a man in a situation where his merits were likely to be duly appreciated: it is painful to relate in what manner both were disappointed. When he was on the point of leaving the diocese of Clogher, Bishop Sterne perceiving that it would be to his discredit if a person of such abilities should leave his diocese for want of due encouragement, sent a clergyman to inform him, “that if he staid in his diocese he would give him the first living that should fall” Relying on this, he wrote to Dr. Delany, and the curacy of St. Werburgh’s was otherwise disposed of. The first living that fell vacant was Monaghan, where he had so long officiated, which the bishop immediately gave to his nephew, Mr. Hawkshaw, a young gentleman that had lately entered into orders! It would even appear, that he had made his promise with a determination to break it; for, when he bestowed the preferment on his nephew, he is reported to have said, “I give you now a living worth £500 a year, and have kept the best curate in the diocese for you, who was going to leave it: be sure take his advice, and follow his directions, for he is a man of worth and sense.” But Skelton, with all his “worth and sense”, was not superior to the infirmities of his nature. He felt this treacherous indignity very acutely, and never attended a visitation during the remainder of the bishop’s life, which continued for a series of years; nor did the bishop ever ask for him, or express any surprise at his absences. Under Mr. Hawkshaw, however, he lived not unhappily, Mr. Hawkshaw submitted to his instruction, and; fol{547}lowed his example, and there was often an amicable contest in the performance of their acts of duty and charity.

In 1742, he accepted the office of tutor to the late Earl of Charlemont; but, owing to a difference with his lordship’s guardian, soon resigned his charge, and returned to his curacy.

On the death of Dr. Sterne, the see of Clogher was filled by Dr. Clayton, author of the “Essay on Spirit,” a decided Arian; and between him and Skelton there could consequently be no coincidence of opinion, or mutuality of respect. In 1748, Mr. Skelton having prepared for the press his valuable work, entitled &147;Deism revealed,&148; he conceived it too important to be published in Ireland, and therefore determined to go to London, and dispose of it there. On his arrival, he submitted his manuscript to Andrew Millar, the bookseller, to know if he would purchase it, and have it printed at his own expense. The bookseller desired him, as is usual, to leave it with him for a day or two, until he could get a certain gentleman of great abilities to examine it. Hume is said to have come accidentally into the shop, and Millar shewed him the MS. Hume took it into a room adjoining the shop, examined it here and there for about an hour, and then said to Andrew, “print” By this work Skelton made about £200. A few months after its publication the Bishop of Clogher, Dr. Clayton, was asked by Sherlock, Bishop of London, if he knew the author. “O yes, he has been a curate in my diocese near these twenty years.” - &147;More shame for your lord ship,” answered Sherlock, “to let a man of his merit continue so long a curate in your diocese.” After a residence at London of about six months, during which he preached some of the sermons since published in his works, Mr. Skelton returned to his curacy in Ireland, and in 1750, a large living became vacant in the diocese of Clogher. Dr. Delany and another bishop immediately waited on Bishop Clayton, and told him that if he did not give Skelton a living now, after disappointing them so often, they would take him out of his diocese. This, how{548}ever, was not entirely effectual: Clayton could not refuse the request, but made several removals on purpose to place Skelton in the living of Pettigo, in the wild part of the county of Donegal, worth about £200 a year, the people uncultivated, disorderly, fond of drinking and quarrelling, and, in a word, sunk in profound ignorance. He used to say, he was a missionary sent to convert them to Christianity, and that he was banished from all civilized society. He often declared that he was obliged to ride seven miles before he could meet with a person of common sense to converse with. With such difficulties, however, Skelton was born to contend. He always had a conscientious feeling of the wants of his flock, with a strong impelling sense of duty. His biographer has given a very interesting account of the means, pious and charitable, which he took to meliorate the condition of his parish, which, for the sake of brevity, we must omit; suffice it to say, they were effectual; but his situation affected his mind in some degree, and he became liable to occasional fits of the hypochondriac kind, which recurred more or less in the after-part of his life.

In 1757, a remarkable dearth prevailed in Ireland, and no where more than in Mr. Skelton’s parish. The scenes of distress which he witnessed would now appear scarcely credible. He immediately set himself to alleviate the wants of his flock, by purchases of meal, &c. at other markets, until he had exhausted all his money, and then he had recourse to a sacrifice which every man of learning will duly appreciate. He resolved to sell his books, almost the only comfort he had in this dreary solitude, and relieve his indigent parishioners with the money. Watson, a bookseller in Dublin, who had advertised them for sale without success, at last bought them himself for £80 and immediately paid the money. Soon after they were advertised, two ladies, Lady Barrymore and a Miss Leslie, who guessed at Skelton’s reason for selling his books, sent him £50 requesting him to keep his books, and relieve his poor with the money; but Skelton, with{549} many expressions of gratitude, told them he had dedicated his books to God, and he must sell them; and accordingly both sums were applied to the relief of his parishioners. Every heart warms at the recital of such an act of benevolence, and all reflections on it would lessen the impression. One other circumstance may be added. The bookseller sold only a part of the books in the course of trade, and those that remained, Mr. Skelton, when he could afford it, took from him at the price he sold them for, but insisted on paying interest for the sum they amounted to, for the time Mr. Watson had them in his possession. In 1758, Dr. Clayton, bishop of Clogher, died, and was succeeded by Dr. Garnet, who treated Mr. Skelton with the respect he deserved, and in 1759, gave him the living of Devenish, in the county of Fermanagh, near Enniskillen, worth about £500 a year, and thus he was brought once more into civilized society. When leaving Pettigo, he said to the poor, &147;Give me your blessing now before I go, and God’s blessing be with you. When you are in great distress, come to me, and I’ll strive to relieve you.&148; In this new charge, he exerted the same zeal to instruct his flock both in public and private, and the same benevolence toward the poor which had made him so great a benefit to his former people. In 1766, the bishop of Clogher removed him from Devenish to the living of Fintona, in the county of Tyrone, worth at least £100 more than the other. He was now in the fifty-ninth year of his age. “God Almighty,” he used to say, “was very kind to me: when I began to advance in years and stood in need of a horse and servant, he gave me a living. Then he gave me two livings, one after another, each of which was worth a hundred a year more than the preceding. I have therefore been rewarded by him, even in. this world, far above my deserts.”

At Fintona, he shewed himself. the same diligent, kind, and faithful pastor as when on his former livings; but two circumstances occurred here very characteristic of the man. Having discovered that most of his protestant parishioners {550} were dissenters, he invited their minister to dine with him, and asked his leave to preach in his meeting on the next Sunday; and consent being given, the people were so pleased with Mr. Skelton, that the greater number of them quitted their own teacher. After some time, Skelton asked him how much he had lost by the desertion of his hearers? He told him £40 a year, on which he settled that sum on him annually. We mentioned in a former page, that Mr. Skelton had studied physic with a view to assist the poor with advice and medicines. By this practice, at Fintona, he found that Dr. Gormly, the physician of the place, lost a great part of his business; on which Skelton settled also 40£ a year on him.

In 1770, he published his works by subscription in 5 vols. 8vo. for the benefit of the Magdalen charity. In his latter days, when the air of Fintona became too keen for him, he passed some of his winters in Dublin, and there was highly valued for his preaching, which, in the case of charities, was remarkably successful. During a dearth, owing to the decline of the yarn manufactory at Fintona, he again exhausted his whole property in relieving the poor, and again sold his books for £100. He said he was now too old to use them; bat the real cause was, that he wanted the money to give to the poor, and the year after he bestowed on them £60. It was one of his practices to distribute money, even in times of moderate plenty, among indigent housekeepers, who were struggling to preserve a decent appearance. He was also the kind and liberal patron of such of their children as had abilities, and could, by his urgent application and interest, he advanced in the world.

His infirmities increasing, after fifty years labour in the ministry with a diligence without parallel, he now found himself incapable any longer of the discharge of his public duties, and in 1780, took his final leave of Fintona, and removed to Dublin, to end his days. Here he received great respect from many of the higher dignitaries of the church, and in 1781, the university offered him the degree {551} bf doctor of divinity, which he declined. In 1784, he published by subscription a sixth volume of his works, and in 1786, he published his seventh volume. In the same year, he also published a short answer to a catechism, written by an English clergyman, and used at Sunday schools, which he supposed to contain an erroneous doctrine with respect to the state of men after death, and sent a copy to all the bishops of England and Ireland. The Archbishop of Dublin was so convinced by it, that he stopped the use of the catechism in his diocese.

Mr. Skelton died May 4, 1787, and was buried near the west door of St. Peter’s church-yard. His character hat been in some degree displayed in the preceding sketch taken from his “Life,” by the Rev. Samuel Burdy, 1799, 8vo. With the exception of some oddities of on- duct and expression, in which he somewhat resembled Swift and Johnson, his life was truly exemplary in all its parts, and his writings deserve to be held in higher estimation.

THIS celebrated naturalist was born at Killeagh, county of Down, on the 16th of April, 1660. His father, Alexander Sloane, a native of Scotland, and head of the Scotch colony in the north of Ireland, in the reign of James I was collector of taxes for that county, and died in 16SB. Young Sloane early manifested his attachment for those studies which he afterwards so successfully cultivated, and his perseverance in them was so intense, as to occasion, in his sixteenth year, a spitting of blood, which’ confined him to his chamber for three years. Off his recovery from this dangerous attack, he applied1 himself to the study of medicine in general, but more particularly of chemistry and botany, in his cultivation of which sciences, even at this early age he was liberally asritted by those truly scientific men, Boyle and Ray. Having spent four years in London in the prosecution of these his favourite studies, {552} he accompanied the learned Dr. Tancred Robinson and another student, on a visit to France; and during his stay at Paris, attended the lectures of Du Verney and Tournefort, by whose means he became acquainted with the celebrated botanist of Montpelier, Magnol, whom he is said constantly to have attended in his botanical excursions. With so strong an attachment to the science, aided by the instructions of men of such acknowledged talent, it is no wonder that, on his return to England at the latter end of 1684, he had it in his power to communicate much useful information, and many rare and valuable seeds and plants to his friend Ray, whose Historia Plantarum contains, in its numerous acknowledgments to Dr. Sloane, (for he had taken the degree of M.D. while on the Continent,) a grateful memorial of his early talents* The abilities which were thus made known to the world, soon found in the illustrious Sydenham a friend and protector, who took him into his house, and zealously promoted his interest in the way of practice. On the 21st January, 1685, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society; and in April 1687, entered into the College of Physicians. But, however gratifying to his feelings were these testimonials, and however flattering the prospects which he might fairly have entertained, the love of science induced him to abandon all these advantages by embarking for the island of Jamaica, as physician to the Duke of Albemarle. He left England on the 12th of September, 1687, and in his passage touched at Madeira, Barbadoes, Nevis, and St. Kitt’s, at each of which places be made the best use of the little time he remained there, constantly making some addition to his collection, and to his stock of knowledge. During his stay in Jamaica, which did not exceed fifteen months, being cut short by the death of the Duke of Albemarle, he set about collecting the objects of natural history, which that island affords, with such unremitted diligence, that, had he not, to use the words of his French eulogist, converted, as it were, his minutes into hours, he could not have made those numerous acquisitions which {553} contributed so largely to extend the knowledge of nature, while they laid the foundation of his own future fame and fortune. It is, however, to be remarked, that Dr. Sloane was the first man of learning who had taken so long a voyage for the sole purpose of improving his favourite science; and that the botanists of Europe were so completely ignorant of the productions of America, that until his return from Jamaica, it was a doubt with Ray himself, with which, to use his own words, he had long been tormented, whether the new world presented any species of plants in common with the old; a doubt, which was removed by Dr. Sloane, who furnished him with a catalogue of the indigenous plants of Jamaica, likewise natives of England, which he published in his Synopsis. Add to this, that Dr. Sloane was well acquainted with the discoveries of the age, that he had an enthusiasm for his object, and was at an age when both activity of body, and ardour of mind concur to vanquish difficulties; and it will hardly appear strange, that he returned home with eight hundred species of plants, besides a proportionate number of subjects from the animal kingdom, or that such a collection made in so short a time, was regarded with wonder and astonishment.

He returned to London in May 1689; but it was not till 1696, that he published the Prodromus of his History of Jamaica plants, preparatory to the publication of his large work, of which it may be considered as the index, under the title of “Catalogus Plantarum quae in Insulâ Jamaicâ sponte proveniunt,” arranged nearly according to the method of Ray.

In 1707, appeared the first volume of his “Voyage to Madeira, Barbadoes, Nevis, St. Christopher’s, and Jamaica; with the Natural History of the Herbs and Trees, four-footed Beasts, Fishes, Birds,” &c. &c. containing the first part of the vegetable kingdom. The second volume, containing the remainder of the vegetable and the animal kingdom, and making the whole number of plates two hundred and seventy-four, was not published till 1725. The {554} delay which took place in the publication of this work is principally attributed to the time which he expended in the arrangement and preservation of his museum, which, by many valuable acquisitions, (particularly of Courten’s collection in 1702, and of Petiver’s in 1718, had, at the period of the publication of the second volume, as we are informed by the introduction, been increased to two hundred volumes of preserved plants, and more than 26,200 articles of natural history. Much of this delay may also be reasonably attributed to his professional avocations, in which he had, speedily after his return, arrived at great eminence.

In 1694, he was chosen physician of Christ’s hospital, in which station, which he retained till 1750, he afforded a rare specimen of liberality, by annually appropriating the emoluments which he received from that institution, to the relief of those connected with it who appeared to him most in need of it. He had previously, in 1693, been chosen secretary to the Royal Society, in which office, which he held till 1712, he revived the publication of the Philosophical Transactions, which had been discontinued since 1687, and to which he became a frequent and valueble contributor. In 1708, during the war with France, he was elected a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. His professional fame was by this time so well established, that honours began to fail thick upon him; he was frequently consulted by Queen Anne, who was blooded by him in her last illness; and, on the accession of George I he was created a baronet, and appointed physician-general to the army, which was followed by his election in 1719, to the presidency of the College of Physicians.

In 1721, he gave the freehold of his botanical garden at Chelsea, consisting of nearly four acres, to the Society of Apothecaries, on condition of their annually delivering to the Royal Society fifty new plants, until the number should amount to two thousand, all specifically different from each other; a list of which was to be published yearly {555} in the Philosophical Transactions. This condition was complied with, and even exceeded by the Society of Apothecaries, who continued to deliver the plants, which are still preserved in the archives of the Royal Society, till 1773, when the number of specimens amounting to $550, it was discontinued.

On the death of Sir Isaac Newton in 1727, he succeeded him as president of the Royal Society, to which he presented one hundred guineas and the bust of its founder Charles II, and in the same year he was made physician to George II. In 1733, however, he resigned the presidency of the College of Physicians, and in 1740, be also tendered his resignation to the Royal Society, which they reluctantly accepted. In May 1741, he removed his museum to Chelsea, which manor he had previously purchased, and whither he himself retired. Here, however, as in London, he received the visits of persons of rank, and of British and foreign “literati, and never refused admittance or advice to any, whether rich or poor, who came to consult him concerning their health. He was extremely courteous and obliging, and always ready to shew and explain his curiosities to all who gave him timely notice of their visit. He kept an open table once a week for his learned friends, particularly these of the Royal Society. He was a great benefactor to the poor, and governor of almost every hospital in London, to each of which, besides giving £100. in his life-time, he left a considerable legacy. On the 11th of January, 1752, in the ninety-second year of his age, he closed a life prolonged by habits of temperance, and rendered useful by habits of exertion, and on the 18th of the same month was buried at Chelsea, in the same vault with his lady, whom he married in 1695, and who died in 1724. He left behind him two daughters, one married to George Stanley, Esq. and the other to Lord Cadogan.

Anxious to prevent the destruction and dissipation of his library and museum, the former containing fifty thousand volumes, including about three hundred and fifty books of drawings, and three thousand five hundred and sixteen manuscripts, besides a multitude of prints, and the latter containing about twenty-three thousand coins and medals, and (according to the general view of its contents, published the year before his death) upwards of thirty-six thousand six hundred subjects of natural history, exclusive of plants, he directed in his will that they should be offered to the public for £20,000, declaring at the same time that they had cost him upwards of £50,000 The offer was readily accepted, and an act of parliament for their purchase, together with the collection of MS formed by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and then offered to the public by his daughter, the Duchess of Portland, and for placing them, together with the Cottonian collection, in one general repository, was passed in 1753. For this purpose Montague House was purchased, and the several collections having been deposited there, and regulations for the proper government of the institution having been formed, it was opened to the public, subject to those regulations, in 1759, under the title of the British Museum.

Bishop of Down and Connor, a learned divine and philosopher, was born at Lisburn, in the county of Antrim, in 1665, and was educated in the university of Dublin, of which he was elected a fellow in 1684, in the nineteenth year of his age. He soon afterwards took his degree of D.D. During the troublesome times in 1689, he retired for safety to England, where he was recommended to the Smyrna Company, and appointed chaplain to their factories at Constantinople and Smyrna. Here he remained four years, and in 1693, returned to England, and was made chaplain to King William III whom he attended four years in Manders. His first promotion was to the deanery of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, in 1695, from whence he was advanced to the bishopric of Down and Connor in 1699, and was soon after admitted into the privy council. He died at Bath, in October 1720. Prior to his decease, he printed four sermons, and was the author of five papers in the Philosophical Transactions.

WAS a member of the Irish bar, and attained ultimately the highest rank of professional dignity. He was born of a respectable family in the King’s County; and at an early age entered the university of Dublin, where he obtained, by his genius and application, eminent distinction in classical and scientific acquirements. From college he proceeded to the Temple, London; and, after the usual quarantine of five years, he was called to the Irish bar in 1769, and although, added to his talents and other attainments, possessed of a respectable portion of legal know-ledge, yet he remained, like many of his fellow-candidates for professional success, long unnoticed. The buoyancy of his abilities in time bore him to the surface, and he floated on by a gradual progress to eminent success. Mr. Smith was of a character not adapted to the bustling executive of life. His deportment was calm, gentle, and unassuming; and he won his way by means not usually considered promising with men of the world, by modesty and merit, sustained by feelings and principles which would not submit to any conduct incompatible with delicacy and honour.

In 1783, he became a member of the House of Commons, and continued in parliament till 1794; and no man ever more eminently attracted the respect and esteem of both sides of the House. He maintained a steady, honourable, and independent course, neither looking to party nor promotion; but was at all times ready to resist with firmness any encroachment on the constitution, whether by the crown or its opponents.

As a public speaker his manner was frigidity itself; but his arguments were impressive, and his style was elegantly {557} polished. Many years ago, he delivered a speech in the Irish House of Commons, upon one of the Catholic bills, in which, amongst other departures from the cruel system which separated that persecuted sect from all social connexion with their protestant fellow-subjects, there was a clause for permitting catholics and protestants to intermarry; a permission previously debarred by the penalties of transportation to any clergyman who knowingly performed the marriage ceremony, and of voidance to the marriage itself. The clause was strenuously resisted by many of the high church members; but Mr. Smith, who supported the whole of the bill, sustained this clause in a style of impassioned eloquence, with all the charities of a Christian, all the gallantry of a liberal gentleman, and all the fervour of a heart flowing with the sacred flame of conjugal love. The House was astonished, the applause was unbounded, and the clause passed. A short time afterwards, a gentleman of the bar repeated this passage of Mr. Smith’s speech to Baron Yelverton, (who was a zealous advocate for the same cause,) with high encomium and surprise that the frost of the philosopher had not extinguished the fire of the patriot, nor the ardour of the genial passion. But Baron Yelverton observed, that &147;if the cheering sun-beams could shed summer upon Saturn, revive torpidity to action, and teach the ice of the Poles to dissolve, was it wonderful that the united rays of patriotism and notice beauty should melt logic into pity and stoicism into love?”

In the year 1794, the parliamentary duties and forensic labours of Mr. Smith were terminated by his elevation to the judgment seat, as one of the barons of his majesty’s court of exchequer; and never did an appointment meH with more of public and private approbation, and especially from that bar to which he had been so long an honour and an ornament. As a judge, he was most patient; every advocate was heard by him with calm but earnest attention, and the juniors with parental kindness; for, to all concerned his wish was “to do justice for truth’ sake {559} his conscience.” His judgments were eminently correct, and, like his eloquence, strictly logical. In 1799, he was created a baronet. During the absence of Lord Chancellor Clare, he acted as lord commissioner for the custody of the great seal, from Michaelmas term 1800, to Trinity term 1801; and in the latter year he was appointed master of the rolls, in which office he continued until 1806; when from the decline of his health, and the severe attacks of the gout, he was obliged to resign his office, and he retired with a pension for life; and made room for the appointment of Mr. J. P. Curran as his successor.

The health of Sir Michael Smith now began rapidly to break, at no distant period after his resignation of the rolls. His last illness was severe, but short; and his departure for a better world was soothed by the consolations of Christianity and the attentions of his relatives. His son, afterwards Sir William Cusack Smith, attended him in his last moments with filial piety.

It was a curious occurrence in the history of jurisprudence in Ireland, that this father and son were at the same time both going judges of assise on the north-east circuit in 1801, an incident unprecedented in the history of these islands, since the time of Sir Thomas More, who was chancellor while his father was chief justice of the King’s Bench. On Sir Michael Smith’s final resignation, the whole Irish bar, with unanimous consent, presented to him the following address, as an honourable testimony of their esteem and veneration:—

"Sir,
In departing from the bench, you will permit the sincerest esteem and unqualified approbation of the bar to accompany you in your honourable retirement. We cannot forget, and we are happy to acknowledge, that by your mild, gracious, and unassuming deportment, the dignity of the high station you filled was sustained without austerity or arrogance; and that the well-mixed qualities of the scholar, the lawyer, the gentleman, and the judge, conciliated affection, and impressed respect. Scorning to offer the gross incense of adulation, but desirous to render a just tribute to merit, we entertain an ardent hope that though your judicial functions have ceased, your example may have operation, and that the chief blaming of the country, equal justice, may continue to be dispensed with an integrity above suspicion, and with manners void of offence.”

It is but justice to add his answer:—

{560}

I thank you from my heart for this kind and affectionate address; the terms of which excite a feeling, to which no language of mine can do justice. To acquire and to deserve the esteem and approbation of that enlightened and liberal profession to which you belong, was the first ambition of my early life. To have obtained them, which your address assures me of, will be the pride and comfort of my declining age. It is now more than seven and thirty years since I had the honour to be enrolled as one of your respectable body, and during the whole of that long period, I never ceased, nor, while life and memory remain, shall I cease, to love, esteem, and admire the spirit, talents, and liberality of the Irish bar. “May they be perpetual” is, and to the latest moments of my existence, shall be the fervent prayer of, GENTLEMEN,

Your ever obliged,

Faithful, and affectionate humble servant, MICHAEL SMITH.” Harcourt Street, 121 h July, 1806.

A DRAMATIC writer of some eminence, was born at Dublin, in 1659, and was admitted a student of Trinity College, March SO, 1676. In his eighteenth year he left his native country, and removed to the Middle Temple, London, when he devoted his time to the more amusing pursuits of play-writing and poetry, and forsook the uncongenial study of the law. His “Persian Prince; or, Loyal Brother,” was introduced on the stage in 1682, at a time when the Tory interest was triumphant, and the character of the Loyal Brother was doubtless intended to compliment James Duke of York, who afterwards rewarded him. After his accession to the throne, Southern went into the army, and served as ensign in Earl Ferrers’ regiment, when the Duke of Monmouth landed. This affair being over, he retired to his studies, and wrote several plays, by which he is supposed to have gained considerable sums. In the preface to his tragedy called “The Spartan Dame,” he acknowledges, that he received from the booksellers as a price for this play £150 which was thought in 1721, the lime of its being published, very extraordinary. {561}

He was the first who raised the advantage of play-writing to a second and third night; which Pope mentions in these lines:

Tom whom heav’n sent down to raise
The price of prologues and of plays.
                       —Verses to Southern, 1742.

The reputation which Dryden gained by the many prologues he wrote, made the players always solicitous to have one of his, as being sure to be well received by the public. Dryden’s price for a prologue had usually been four guineas, with which sum Southern once presented him; when Dryden, returning the money, said, “Young man, this is too little, I must have six guineas.” Southern answered, that four had been his usual price; “Yes,” says Dryden, “it has been so, but the players have hitherto had my labours too cheap; for the future I must have six guineas.” Southern also was industrious to draw all imaginable profits from his poetical labours. Dryden once took occasion to ask him, how much he got by one of his plays? Southern said, after owning himself ashamed to tell him, 700£; which astonished Dryden, as it was more by 600£ than he himself had ever got by his most successful plays. But it appears that Southern was not beneath the arts of solicitation, and often sold his tickets at a very high price, by making applications to persons of quality and distinction; a degree of servility, which Dryden might justly think below the dignity of a poet. Dryden entertained a high opinion of Southern’s abilities; and prefixed a copy of verses to a comedy of his, called “The Wife’s Excuse,” acted in 1692. The night that Southern’s “Innocent Adultery” was first acted, which has been esteemed by the most affecting play in any language, a gentleman took occasion to ask Dryden, “what was his opinion of Southern’s genius?” who replied “that he thought him such another poet as Otway.” Such indeed was Dryden’s opinion of his talents, that being unable to finish his “Cleomenes,” he consigned it to the care of Southern, who wrote one half of the fifth act of that tra{562} gedy, and was with reason highly flattered by this mark of the author’s confidence and esteem. Of all Southern’s plays, ten in number, the most finished is “Oroonoko; or, the Royal Slave”; which is built upon a real fact, related by Mrs. Behn in a novel. Besides the tender and delicate strokes of passion in this play, there are many noble sentiments poetically expressed. Southern died May 26, 1746, aged eighty-five. He lived the last ten years of his life in Tothill-street, Westminster, and attended the Abbey service very constantly; being particularly fond of church music. He is said to have died the oldest and the richest of his dramatic brethren. Oldys says, that he remembered Mr. Southern “a grave and venerable old gentleman. He lived near Covent-garden, and used often to frequent the evening prayers there, always neat and decently dressed, commonly in black, with his silver sword and silver locks; but latterly it seems he resided at Westminster.” The late poet Gray, in a letter to Mr. Walpole, dated from Burnham in Buckinghamshire, in September 1737, has also the following observation concerning this author: “We have old Mr. Southern at a gentleman’s house a little way off, who often comes to see us: he is now seventy-seven years old, and has almost wholly lost his memory; but is as agreeable an old man as can be; at least I persuade myself so when I look at him, and think of Isabella and Oroonoko.” Mr. Mason adds in a note on this passage, that “Mr. Gray always thought highly of his pathetic powers, at the same time that he blamed his ill taste for mixing them so injudiciously with farce, in order to produce that monstrous species of composition called Tragi-comedy.”

DISTINGUISHED by his biographer Floyd for his gallant behaviour, and the imminent dangers to which he was exposed during the war between William and James in Ireland, is introduced here as entitled to the gratitude of {563} his country, as one of the principal founders of the staple of Irish commerce, the linen trade. He was born July 23, 1655, at Callow, in the county of Limerick, which county he afterwards represented in parliament, till called to the peerage by the title of Baron Southwell of Castlemattress. In his office of commissioner of the revenue, which was first bestowed on him by King William, he much encouraged and promoted the trade and commerce of Ireland; the injured merchant ever finding a speedy redress to his grievances, from his impartial administration of justice. To his interest principally, was owing the settlement at Lisburn of the ingenious Mr. Lewis Cromelin, who is generally allowed to have been of the utmost importance to that branch of trade, by the manufactures he brought and settled there, and very instrumental in bringing it by his skill and industry to considerable perfection, for which he received a parliamentary reward. In 1709, upwards of six thousand poor Germans, who had been driven by the calamities of war from the Palatinate, sought a refuge in England, through which country they were dispersed; until several hundred families were sent to Ireland, many of whom, by the generosity of Sir Thomas Southwell, were settled on his estate in Limerick, where principally through his encouragement and protection, they had flourished so much as to form, in 1760, the population of three villages. This worthy and patriotic citizen died suddenly, August 4, 1720, and was buried at Rathkeale.

WAS descended from the ancient family of that name in the county of Clare, and was a skilful and fearless commander, but was unfortunately slain in a duel, under the following extraordinary circumstances. Four years preceding the catastrophe, a naval officer inquired of Lieutenant Cecil if he knew Captain Stackpole of the Statira frigate. Lieutenant Cecil replied he did, and had the {564} highest opinion of him as an intrepid and skilful seaman, adding at the same time that he believed him capable of drawing occasionally a long bow. This answer was publicly talked of in the gun room of the Statira; and at length reached the ears of Captain Stackpole, who, having ascertained that the words were spoken, declared that he would call Lieutenant Cecil to an account for them, when and wherever he met him. It was so far fortunate that they did not meet for four years; but the opportunity at last offered, when the Statira was laying in the harbour of Port Royal, Jamaica, and the Argo, of which Cecil was senior lieutenant, happened to enter that port. Immediately as Captain Stackpole was aware of the circumstance, he sent his first lieutenant, Mr. White, on board the Argo with a message to Lieutenant Cecil, purporting he must either meet him immediately, or make a suitable apology for the slanderous words he had used. Lieutenant Cecil in reply said, that four years having elapsed since the words were spoken, which he was charged with having uttered, it was quite impossible for him to recollect how far they were correct or not; but as a brother officer, and a man of honour, had quoted the words as his, he could not act otherwise than avow them. As to an apology, he wished Captain Stackpole to understand, that under all the circumstances, he should have had no objection to apologise to any other officer in his majesty’s navy, but to him it was impossible, the captain of the Statira being reputed throughout the navy as a good shot, and having been the friend and companion of Lord Camelford. In consequence of this reply, the parties met at a place called Park Henderson, at a quarter before five on the following morning, April 28, 1814; took their ground at ten paces, and fired as nearly together as possible, when Captain Stackpole received the ball of his adversary in his right side, fracturing the first rib, and passing through the lungs, which almost instantaneously deprived him of life. He died without speaking a word, or even uttering a groan. Immediately after the affair he was removed on board the Statira, and from thence, on the following morning, to the place of his interment (Port Royal church-yard). His funeral was attended by Rear-Admiral Brown, all the navy, and most of the army, who saw the military honours due to his rank paid.

Captain Stackpole’s character in the navy was of the first possible standing, and his challenge to fight the Statira against the American frigate the Macedonian, had so endeared him to every officer and man on board his ship, that there were but few that could refrain from tears on learning his unhappy fate.

How mysterious are the decrees of the Most High. The same individual, Lieutenant Cecil, who took the life of Stackpole, was himself engaged in a second duel a few months afterwards, on nearly the same ground, was slain, and was buried within a yard of his former antagonist.

AN historian, poet, and divine of the sixteenth century, was born in Dublin, probably about 1545 or 1546. His father, James Stanyhurst, was a lawyer, recorder of Dublin, and speaker of the House of Commons in several parliaments. He published, in Latin, “Pise Orationes”, “Ad Corcagiensem Decanum Epistolæ,” and three speeches, in English, which he delivered as speaker, at the beginning of the parliaments of the 3rd and 4th Philip and Mary, and the 2nd and 11th of Elizabeth. He died December 27, 1573, leaving two sons, Walter and Richard* Of Walter our only information is, that he translated “Innocentius de Contemptu Mundi.”

Richard had some classical education at Dublin, under Peter White, a celebrated schoolmaster, whence he was sent to Oxford in 1563, and admitted of University college. After taking one degree in arts, he left Oxford, and undertook the study of the law with diligence, first at Fumival’s inn, and then at Lincoln’s-inn, where he resided for some time. He then returned to Ireland, married, and turned {566} Roman Catholic. Removing afterwards to the continent, he is said by A. Wood to have become famous for his learning in France, and the Low Countries. Losing his wife, while he was abroad, he entered into orders, and was made chaplain, at Brussels, to Albert, Archduke of Austria, who was then governor of the Spanish Netherlands. At this place he died in 1618, being universally esteemed as an excellent scholar in the learned languages, a good divine, philosopher, historian, and poet. He kept up a constant correspondence with Usher, afterwards the celebrated archbishop, who was his sister’s son. They were allied, says Dodd, “in their studies as well as blood; being both very curious in searching after the writings of the primitive ages. But their reading had not the same effect. The uncle became a Catholic, and took no small pains to bring over the nephew.” Stanyhurst published several works, the first of which was written when he had been only two years at Oxford, and published about five years after. It was a learned commentary on Porphyry, and raised the greatest expectations of his powers, being mentioned with particular praise, as the work of so young a man, by Edmund Campion the Jesuit then a student of St. John’s college. It is entitled, “Harmonia, seu catena dialectica in Porphyrium,” London, 1570, folio. 2. “De rebus in Hibernia gestis, lib. iv.” Antwerp, 1584, 4to. According to Keating, this work abounds, not only in errors, but misrepresentations, which Stanyhurst afterwards acknowledged. 3. &147;Descriptio Hiberniæ,” inserted in Hollinshed’s Chronicle. 4. “De vita S. Patricii, Hibernia Apostoli, lib. ii.” Antwerp, 1587, 12mo. 5. “Hebdomada Mariana” Antwerp, 1609, dvo. 6. “Hebdomada Eucharistica,” Douay, 16)4, 8vo. 7. “Brevis præmonitio pro futura concertatione cum Jacobo Usserio,” Douay, 1615, 8vo. 8. “The Principles of the Catholic Religion.” 9. “The four first books of Virgil’s Æneis, in English hexameters,” 1583, small 8vo, black letter. To these are subjoined the four first Psalms; the first in English lambics, though he confesses, that “the Iambical quantitie relisheth somwhat {567} unsavorly in our language, being, in truth, not al togeather the toothsomest in the Latine.” The second is in elegiac verse, or English hexameter or pentameter. The third is a short specimen of the asclepiac verse; thus, a Lord, my dirye [sic] foes, why do they multiply.” The fourth is in sapphics, with a prayer to the Trinity in the same measure. Then follow, “certayne poetical conceites,” in Latin and English: and after these some epitaphs. The English throughout is in Roman measures. The preface, in which he assigns his reasons for translating after Phaer, is a curious specimen of quaintness and pedantry.

Speaking of Stanyhurst Mr. Warton says, “With all his foolish pedantry Stanyhurst was certainly a scholar. But in this translation* he calls Choraebus, one of the Trojan chiefs, a Bedlamite; he says, that old Priam girded on his sword Morglay, the name of a sword in the Gothic romances: that Dido would have been glad to have been brought to bed, even of a cockney, a Dandy-prat hop-thumb; and that Jupiter, in kissing her daughter, bust his pretty prating parrot.” Stanyhurst is styled by Camden, “Eruditissimus ille nobilis Richardus Stanihurstus.”

Stanyhurst had a son William, born at Brussels in 1601. He became a Jesuit, and a writer of reputation among persons of his communion. He died in 1663. Sotwell has given a list of his works, of which we shall mention ooly “Album Marianum, in quo prosa et carmine Dei in Austriacos beneficia, et Austriacorum erga Deum obsequia recensentur,” Louvaine, 1641, folio.

*Virgil’s Æneid.