in other doctrines, can be perfect without that virtue. A man is answerable to the law of society for his actions; but, for his opinions, he is only responsible to that Being which moulded his powers, and left free the propensities of his mind. Akin with this antipathy against admitting the Catholics to a proper share in the blessings of a constitution, which they were the first to found, and are always foremost to defend, was a strange notion entertained by him, that all the evil of life was immediately the result of an agency, which the devil maintained amongst mankind. Superadded to this infatuation was a conviction drawn from a heated explanation of the Scriptures, that the millennium was about to be consummated, without intervention or delay. But these exceptions, from a character of general distinction and virtue, are perhaps more to be regretted than censured with any excessive asperity; for the inconstant incidents of human existence have over and over again made it palpably evident, that neither sense nor learning, strength of mind, nor goodness of heart, will at all times secure us from the excesses of burning zeal, or the delusions of exalted imagination.

The termination of the life of a good man now drew on, and he completed his career with amiable resignation and equanimity. The decay of his strength had been gradual, and without suffering, and the final exhaustion of his breath ensued without a struggle or a sigh. He died and was buried at Fulham, where a modest tablet in the north side of the church attests the place of his grave. The African Institution subsequently erected a tablet with a bust in profile to his memory in Westminster Abbey, of which the execution was entrusted to Chantry, and the composition of the following epitaph to William Smith, Esq., the member for Norwich :

Sacred to the Memory of

GRANVILLE SHARP,

ninth son of Dr. Thomas Sharp,

Prebendary of the Cathedrals and Collegiate Churches of York, Durham and Southwell,

And grandson of Dr. John Sharp, Archbishop of York. Born and educated in the bosom of the Church of England, He ever cherished for her institutions the most unshaken regard,

66

while his whole soul was in harmony with the sacred strainGlory to God in the highest, on earth peace and good will towards men-"

On which his life presented one beautiful comment

of glowing piety and unwearied beneficence.

Freed by competence from the necessity, and by content from the desire, of lucrative occupation,

He was incessant in his labours to improve the condition
of mankind.

Founding public happiness on public virtue,

He aimed to rescue his native country from the guilt and
inconsistency

of employing the arm of Freedom to rivet the fetters of Bondage, and established for the Negro race, in the person of SOMERSET, the long-disputed rights of human nature.

Having in this glorious cause triumphed over the combined

resistance

of Interest, Prejudice, and Pride.

He took his post among the foremost of the honourable band associated to deliver AFRICA from the rapacity of EUROPE, By the abolition of the Slave Trade.

Nor was Death permitted to interrupt his career of usefulness, till he had witnessed that act of the British Parliament

by which the ABOLITION was decreed.

In his private relations he was equally exemplary:

and having exhibited through life a model of disinterested virtue, he resigned his pious breath into the hands of his Creator, in the exercise of charity, faith, and hope, On the sixth day of July, A. D. MDCCCXIII. in the Seventy-eighth year of his Age.

READER!

If,

on perusing this tribute to a private individual, Thou shouldest be disposed to suspect it as partial, or to censure it as diffuse,

know that it is not panegyric, but history.

Erected by the AFRICAN INSTITUTION of London, A.D.
MDCCCXVI.

846

RIGHT HONOURABLE

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, M.P.

THE family of the Sheridans has inherited genius from Nature in lineal entail. The Rev. Dr. Thomas Sheridan, the friend of Dean Swift, is commemorated by the first men of his time as a classical master of high repute and deep learning. He is represented to us as a man singularly ill-starred, but eminently good-humoured; a fiddler and a wit, who kept his pen and violin incessantly in motion.

Dr. Sheridan translated the Satires of Persius, and the Philoctetes of Sophocles. After remaining at the head of a school for some time with great success, he sold his interest in it for 400. and soon ran through the money; then exchanged his living, got cheated, and at last died, as he had lived, totally careless of monied matters. His son, Thomas, added much to the literary character of the family, but little or nothing to its stock of prudence or economy. He was educated at Westminster School, and preferred by the honest dint of talent to a king's scholarship; but, unable to retain the advantages of this elevation from want of the moderate sum of 14. for fees, he was obliged to forego the chances of preferment, and return to Ireland. There, however, he succeeded in graduating at Trinity College, Dublin, and, as the readiest means of distinction and emolument within his contracted reach, adopted the stage for a profession. The powerful influence of his fellow-students rapidly applauded him into public favour; and his own assiduity retained the meed as soon as it was conferred. He became, in quick succession, the principal performer, manager, and proprietor of the Dublin Theatre; and held his office for eight years, under every circumstance of

personalfand popular advantage, until a political ferment destroyed his house, and drove him from the country.

This misfortune occurred in 1754, when he brought forward Miller's translation of Voltaire's Mahomet.' A strong party was at that time opposed to the Court, who snatched up every line in which liberty was alluded to, and encored it with vociferation, as a triumphant application to the asserted corruption of the ministerial party. The manager, unwilling to make his theatre the scene of political reprobation, expunged the bold passages, and thereby provoked additional outcries. The audience demanded the favourite lines, and hooted the actors from the stage, who, fearful for their own favour, hinted that they were restricted from complying with the wishes of the house. Upon this information, Sheridan was called for; but refusing to appear, the theatre was utterly demolished, amidst the loudest asseverations that he never again should be permitted to appear on the Dublin stage.

During this moment of adversity, a pamphlet, written in his favour by a lady, made its appearance, which. so struck his attention, that he solicited an introduction to the authoress, a Miss Chamberlain, and ultimately, by one and the same accident, lost a theatre and gained a wife. After vainly attempting the institution of a large classical school, he came over to England, with a family of three sons. Here he quickly added to his former reputation by occasional performances at the principal theatres, and more particularly by a series of rhetorical lectures, delivered with great applause at Oxford, Cambridge, and in London. Thomas Sheridan is farther to be remembered as the compiler of an English Pronouncing Dictionary: his lady also put in a very favourable claim to literary distinction by her Sydney Biddulph,' a novel; 'Nourjahad,' an oriental tale; and the comedies of the 'Discovery,' the 'Dupe,' and the Trip to Bath.'

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Of these intellectual parents, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, born in Dorset-street, Dublin, was the third son. After imbibing the elements of education under his mother, he was transferred to a private academy, kept by Mr. White, in Grafton-street, Dublin. When his mother surrendered him to this his first master, she pronounced him an impenetrable dunce; and it was a eurious

circumstance, that, extraordinary as his powers were subsequently proved to be, he attained no distinction while a school boy. In 1762 he was sent to Harrow, where he fagged his part, incorrigibly indifferent to all emulation, and acquired just enough of rote learning to escape the cat. The brightness of his eye, and the vivacity of his manners, conciliated a general regard: his masters, Dr. Sumner and Dr. Parr, were early satisfied that his mind was cast in no ordinary mould, but, though a latent talent was discovered, it was not developed, and neither art nor persuasion availed to lay open the energies of his mind.

Being taken from Harrow before he attained his eighteenth year, he is supposed to have had his taste polished, and his intimacy with the classical authors of England guided by irregular but able lessons from his father. The limited means of the family precluded the benefit of an entrance into either of the Universities; but he was made a student of law at the Temple, and early inspired to seek fame in literature. These adverse circumstances, however, far from constituting a matter of regret, ought, perhaps, to demand our congratulation; for had not Sheridan been forced into exertion by the most imperious of impulses, the age, in all probability, would never have received the illustration of his genius. One of his first literary efforts, the first too that ever met the light of print, was a translation of the Greek poems of Aristænetus, written in conjunction with a former school fellow, named Halhed, during the year 1770, and published without any success, by Wilkie, of St. Paul's Churchyard, in 1771. Two more projects were soon after entered into by the same firm ;-the first an opera, in three acts, upon the model of Midas, and to be called Jupiter and the second, a literary periodical, which Sheridan wished to call Hernan's Miscellany, and Halhed the Reformer.' But the opera was never finished, and only one paper of the periodical was composed, when Sheridan, now just passed twenty-one, fell upon a train of events which wrought an essential change in his affairs.

Visiting Bath with his father, in 1772, he first saw Miss Linley, the celebrated theatrical singer, and daughter to the well-known musical composer of the same name. This lady is painted to us by her cotemporaries, as no less admirable for the accomplishments of a liberal education than for the charms of a captivating