that loveth pleasure shall be poor, and he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich ;" and that certain principles of moral rectitude are so interwoven with the very frame of civilized life, as not to be violated without subjecting the transgressor to the penalties of public indignation or contempt. But wealth, and popularity, and honour, and pleasure, are still the bones and sinews of Mr. Moore's morality, and while they continue so, he cannot aspire even to the lowest niche in the temple of true philosophy.

Postponing for a while the question of Sheridan's happiness in these prosperous and brilliant circumstances, we must rub away a little of the varnish which Mr. Moore has used to soften the darker shades of his seducing picture, and fairly explain the nature of those exertions of ingenuity which he seems to consider only as agreeable stimulants to an inventive and active mind.— They were exertions of ingenuity in accelerating the downward course of his fortune by adding to the weight which propelled it. Exertions of evasion, of delay, of contrivance for momentary relief at the expense of credit and reputation, and too often of feeling and principle; exertions which, however disguised by sophistry or palliated by fashion, degrade the gentlemanly spendthrift to the level of the vulgar swindler, without his excuses of ignorance or temptation. We agree with Mr. Moore, that Sheridan did not intend to be dishonest; and we trace with pleasure many proofs of honourable feeling in the midst of his wild prodigality. But we must repeat, that dishonesty to a certain extent is inseparable from profusion; and that no man ever reduced himself to ingenuity or chance for the supply of his extravagance, without at the same time a strong temptation to exercise invention at the expense of integrity.

The allusion to Sheridan's domestic transgressions is made in the same Epicurean spirit. His frequent infidelities to a beautiful and affectionate wife are gently designated as "triumphs out of the sphere of domestic love," and vanity, the most heartless and contemptible motive that ever actuated the breast of a libertine, is gravely suggested as an apology for sins which involved the outrage of every moral, grateful, and honourable feeling.Mr. Moore hints in another place, that Sheridan was punished by suffering in his turn the jealousy for which he thus gave occa sion. But no just reproach seems ever to have attached to the conduct of Mrs. Sheridan, whose tender affection for her family, and amiable domestic habits in the few intervals of retirement which their dissipated life admitted, show her character in so attractive a light, that we cannot help wishing for a nearer acquaintance with the spiritual state of her mind than these memoirs afford us. We know by experience that habit or ignorance will for a long time reconcile practices, which an awakened conscience afterwards laments; and we believe, that under the near view of dissolution much may take place in the penitent heart, of which the partial friends are unconscious, or to the detail of

which they might be incompetent from want of knowledge, or want of sympathy. It belongs only to Him who formed us, and fixed the bounds of our habitation, to judge what allowance shall be made for mistaken views, or unfavourable circumstances; and though we would earnestly guard those who live under a brighter atmosphere, against the danger of trusting to palliations which in their case are illusory, it is not, we trust, a spurious charity, in reading the dying scenes of this interesting woman, to hope that the Spirit which breathed peace into her heart, may have taught her to seek it in the view of that cross which is the only source of safe or Christian consolation.

But we have broken the order of our remarks, and must return to Sheridan's country-house.

"Among his own immediate associates, the gaiety of his spirits amounted almost to boyishness. He delighted in all sorts of dramatic tricks and disguises; and the lively parties with which his country house was always filled, were kept in momentary expectation of some new device for their gratification or amusement. It was not unusual to despatch a man and horse seven or eight miles for a piece of crape, or a mask, or some other trifle for these frolics. His friends, Richardson and T ckell, both men of wit and humour, and the latter possessing the same degree of light animal spirits as himself, were the constant companions of all his social hours, and kept up with him that ready rebound of pleasantry, without which the play of wit languishes,"

"Between Tickell and Sheridan there was a never-ending skirmish of wit, both verbal and practical; and the latter kind, in particular, was carried on between them with all the waggery, and not unfrequently the malice of schoolboys ”—pp. 75..80.

Here is a scene of wild and childish gaiety, which might well deceive the youthful or superficial observer, and (though it shews no trace of usefulness, no rational exercise of talent, no manly government of the passions, no reflection upon the past, or care about the future,) might lead him to say, surely this must be happiness"—and such has been Mr. Moore's inference from appearances as flattering as mirth and pleasure can present. But he has undesignedly afforded us the means of removing this delusion, by laying open to the reader the mind of one of those witty friends," who are described as the constant companions of Sheridan's social hours.

It is plain, from Mr. Moore's introductory remark, that he sees not the sting to which we trace the bitter feeling mingled with the humour of this letter of Richardson. We meant to have quoted it partially, as well on account of its length, as because its levity can be neither agreeable nor edifying to our readers: but on reflection we are induced to give it almost entire, that we may not be charged with having produced a garbled case in support of our opinion.

"There is a letter," says Mr. Moore, "written one night by Richardson at Tunbridge, (after waiting five long hours for Sheridan,) so full of that mixture of melancholy and humour, which chequered the mind of this interesting man, that,

as illustrative of the character of one of Sheridan's most intimate friends, it may be inserted here:

"Dear Sheridan,

"After you had been gone an hour or two, I got moped d-n-bly. Perhaps there is a sympathy between the corporeal and the mind's eye. In the temple I can't see far before me, and seldom extend my speculations on things to come, into any fatiguing sketch of reflection. From your window, however, there was a tedious scope of black atmosphere, that I think won my mind into a sort of fellowtravellership, passing me again through the cheerless waste of the past, and presenting hardly one little rarified cloud to give a dim ornament to the future. Not a star to be seen; no permanent light to gild my horizon; only the fading belps to transient gaiety in the lamps of Tunbridge. No Law Coffee-house at hand, or any other house of relief. No antagonist to bicker one into the controul of one's cares by a successful opposition, nor a softer enemy to soothe one into an oblivion of them."

me.

"It is damned foolish for ladies to leave their scissors about; the frail thread of a worthless life is soon snipped. I wish to G-d my fate had been true to its first destination, and made a Parson of me: I should have made an excellent country Joll. I think I can with confidence pronounce the character that would have been given of 'He was an indolent and good bumoured man, civil at all times, and hospitatable at others, namely, when he had money to be so, which, truth to say, happened but seldom. His sermons were better than his preaching, and his doctrine better than his life. Though often grave, and sometimes melancholy, he nevertheless loved a joke, the more so when overtaken in his cups, which a regard to the faith of history compels us to subjoin, fell out not unfrequently. He had more thought than was generally imputed to him, though it must be owned that no ma nalive ever exercised thought to so little purpose. And he now rests with those, who being rather not absolutely vicious than actively good, confide in the bounty of Providence to strike a mild average between the contending negations of their life, and to allow them in their future state, what he had ordained them in this earthly pilgrimage, a snug neutrality and a useless repose.'

"P. S. Your return only confirmed me in my resolution of going: for I had worked myself, in five hours' solitude, into such a state of nervous melancholy, that I found I could not help the weakness of crying, even if any one looked me in the face."

We trust that our readers have gone along with us in our deductions from this melancholy letter of Richardson, and the still more melancholy catastrophe of Tickell. If Sheridan's sanguine mind and buoyant spirits prolonged for a while the vivacity of hope and the zest of thoughtless enjoyment, it was only to exhibit in a fuller and sadder detail, the vanity of worldly hopes, pleasures, and friendships. We cannot, however, believe that even at this period Sheridan was altogether free from the gloomy visitings which harrassed his companions. The difficulties by which (to use Mr. Moore's words,) his peace and character were afterwards undermined, had already begun their operations; and much of his intercourse even with these chosen friends, related to matters far different from the partnership of wit and

gaiety which their intimacy exhibited to the world. If we could suppose that he yet felt no compunction for his licentious course of life (a supposition contradicted by expressions which we could collect both from these memoirs and from other sources,) the sting of retributive jealousy was sharp enough to destroy the relish of all his pleasurable pursuits: and if, as his biographer hints, the spring of his libertinism was vanity, that wretched passion must have been effectually mortified by the thought, that with all his vagrant triumphs he might yet forfeit that one which involved his honour, his happiness, and the remnant of his early and unsophisticated affections.

As it is our object to draw from experience the lessons which we would enforce upon a higher principle, we shall here avail ourselves of Mr. Moore's narrative, to describe, in the language of a man of the world, the nature of that tie in courtesy called friendship, but in sober truth companionship, which united these gay associates.'

"If congeniality of dispositions and pursuits were always a strengthener of affection, the friendship between Tickell and Sheridan ought to have been of the most cordial kind; for they resembled each other in almost every particular; in their wit, their want, their talents, and their thoughtlessness. It is but too true, however, that friendship in general gains far less by such a community of pursuit, than it loses by the competition that naturally springs out of it; and that two wits or two beauties form the last sort of alliance in which we ought to look for specimens of sincere and cordial friendship. The intercourse between Tickell and Sheridan was not free from such collisions of vanity. They seem to have lived indeed in a state of alternate repulsion and attraction; and, unable to do without the excitement of each other's vivacity, seldom parted without trials of temper as well as of wit. Being both, too, observers of character, and each finding in the other rich materials for observation, their love of ridicule could not withstand such a temptation, and they freely criticized each other to common friends, who, as is usually the case, agreed with both." p. 224.

"whose loss (says Mr.

Ten years after the death of Tickell died Richardson; Moore) was felt as strongly by Sheridan as any thing can be felt by those who, in the whirl of worldly pursuits, revolve too rapidly round self, to let any thing rest long upon their surface. With a fidelity to his old habits of unpunctuality, at which the shade of Richardson might have smiled, he arrived too late at Bagshot for the funeral of his friend; but succeeded in persuading the good-natured Clergyman to perform the ceremony over again. Mr. John Taylor, a gentleman whose love of good fellowship and wit had made him the welcome associate of some of the highest men of his day, was one of the assistants at this singular scene, and also joined in the party at the inn at Bedfont afterwards, where Sheridan, it is said, drained the 'cup of memory' to his friend, till he found oblivion at the bottom." p. 317,

How pregnant with melancholy instruction is the first short sentence of this passage; referring, as it does, to one whose native character seems to have been eminently warm and affectionate, yet in whom we can trace, through every event of his life, the predominance of that selfish spirit which the world engenders and encou

rages; and which often exists in an odd combination with a sort of careless and constitutional generosity, as if to show that without the impress of religion, all the best qualities of the natural man are destitute of sterling and productive value. The anecdote which closes the paragraph contains the same mixture of the pathetic and the ludicrous which we have observed in Richardson's letter; and which, in fact, must pervade all the memorials of dissipated genius and perverted wit. Surveyed by the eye of a Christian, these memorials suggest matter for deep and mournful reflection: but how mournful is the picture of sacred ceremonies profaned in the very presence and house of death, of tender regrets, and perhaps incipient convictions, drowned in the stupifying cup of inebriety, no man of the world can know till he stands in person upon the brink of that grave where every refuge of lies shall fail, where this world with all its pursuits shall appear but as a shadow that departeth, and the tremendous realities of eternity shall force themselves upon a mind which has either not thought upon them at all, or has perhaps soothed some sentimental presages, some whisperings of conscious immortality, with speculating upon a heaven of its own in

vention.

Every page of these memoirs presses upon us the conviction (to which experience seems also to have led Mr. Moore,) that selfishness and vanity are invariably inmates of the human heart, and almost universally the springs of human conduct, when not controlled and counteracted by religion. Selfishness, indeed, is a vice which few will directly acknowledge, and still fewer will defend: but vanity, which is only a modification of selfishness, is treated with more indulgence, as an innocent foible, and though sometimes ridiculed or disclaimed as an infirmity, is seldom reprehended or combated as a corruption. We have already seen this despicable passion pleaded in-excuse for Sheridan's immoralities, of which it was in fact an aggravation but we would here call the attention of our readers to a more common, and still more dangerous exhibition of it, in the affectation of a certain superiority to the belief of divine revelation, with a sort of sentimental declamation upon its value to those who are credulous enough to receive it. This reflection has been suggested to us by the general strain of religious allusion in these volumes; and especially by the following passages, one from a speech of Sheridan's, the other from the pen of Mr. Moore. Would that experience did not make the application general! or that a friendly hint from us could check the thoughtless or presumptuous levity which scatters firebrands, arrows, and death, and says, "Am I not in sport ?"

It is remarkable, that this profession of faith, if such it can be called, occurs in a defence of the French Republicans, and refers to charges which their proceedings proved they considered as no discredit.

“As an argument to the feelings and passions of men, the Honourable Member, (Mr. Burke,) had great advantages in dwelling on this topic; because it was a subject