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it is but fair to remember the injuries and sufferings that he had himself undergone. He rejected the proposal of an amicable conference, and told the Presbyterian divines, "That not the bishops, but they had been seekers of the conference, and desired alterations in the Liturgy; and that therefore there was nothing to be done till they had brought in all they had to say against it in writing, and all the additional forms and alterations which they desired." During the course of that conference he did not appear often, and did not engage in all the disputation, and yet was well known to have a principal hand in disposing of all such affairs. In 1663 he was translated to the archbishopric of Canterbury, vacant by the death of the Archbishop Juxon. In 1665, during the time of the Great Plague, he firmly continued at Lambeth, notwithstanding the extremity of the danger, and with his diffusive charity preserved great numbers alive that would otherwise have perished. Also by his affecting letters to all the bishops he procured great sums to be returned out of all parts of his province. The same year he was one of those who promoted the Corporation or Five Mile Act. On the removal of Lord Clarendon from the chancellorship of the University of Oxford he was chosen to succeed him, on December 20, 1667, but resigned that office the 31st of July, 1669. He had before honourably lost the king's confidence by advising him to put away his mistress Barbara Villiers, and he never recovered it. He soon after retired from public business, and for the last years of his life he resided chiefly at his palace at Croydon. He died at Lambeth, November 9, 1677, in the eightieth year of his age; and, according to his own direction, was buried in Croydon church in Surrey, where a stately monument was soon after erected to his memory by his nephew and heir Sir Joseph Sheldon.

Dr. Sheldon's character has been represented with the discordance that must be expected in the reports of contending parties. Dr. Samuel Parker, bishop of Oxford, who had been his chaplain, says in his Commentarii de Rebus Sui Temporis,' that "he was a man of undoubted piety; though he was very assiduous at prayers, yet he did not set so great a value upon them as others did, nor regarded so much worship as the use of worship, placing the chief point of religion in the practice of a good life. . . . He had a great aversion to all pretences to extraordinary piety, which covered real dishonesty, but had a sincere affection for those whose religion was attended with integrity of manners." Bishop Burnet, in his History of his own Time,' does not give him so favourable a character. He says that he was a very dexterous man in business, had a great quickness of apprehension, and a very true judgment, but thinks he engaged too deeply in politics. "He had an art, that was peculiar to him, of treating all that came to him in a most obliging manner; but few depended much on his profession or friendship. He seemed not to have a deep sense of religion, if any at all; and spoke of it most commonly as of an engine of government and a matter of policy." In public spirit and munificence he sustained after an exemplary manner the character of a great prelate. He expended large sums upon the Episcopal houses of the sees of London and Canterbury, and particularly the palace at Lambeth, where he rebuilt the library and made additions to its contents. At Oxford, besides several sums given to different Colleges, he immortalised his bounty to that university by the erection at his sole expense of the celebrated theatre which bears his name. The architect employed was Sir Christopher Wren; the building was completed in about five years, and was opened with great solemnity, July 9, 1669, before the vice-chancellor, heads of houses, &c. The expense of this building was more than fourteen thousand pounds, and he bequeathed "two thousand more, to be employed," says Wood, “in buying land, whose revenue might support the fabric, and the surplusage be applied to the learned press." In this theatre are held public meetings of the university for an annual commemoration of the benefactors and the recitation of prize compositions, and occasionally for conferring degrees on distinguished personages. We are assured that from the time of Sheldon's being bishop of London to that of his death, it appeared in his book of accounts that upon public, pious, and charitable uses he bad bestowed sixty-two (or according to other accounts seventy-two) thousand pounds. As a writer he is only known by 'A Sermon preached before the King, at Whitehall, upon June 28, 1660, being the day of Solemn Thanksgiving for the Happy Return of his Majesty, on Psalm xviii. 49,' London, 4to, 1660.

SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE, was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in Sussex, on August 4, 1792, the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, the representative of a family of ancient standing in that county. His mother was a daughter of Charles Pilfold of Effingham Place. He was brought up with his sisters till ten years of age, being instructed in Greek and Latin by Mr. Edwards, the clergyman of Warnham, in which parish Field Place is situated. He was next, a delicate shy boy with an almost feminine softness of manners and appearance, sent to school at Sion House near Brentford, where he suffered much from the discipline of the master and the oppression of the elder boys-"the harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes," as he termed such evils in the introductory stanzas of The Revolt of Islam.' But he was fond of reading, quick of apprehension, and amidst an apparent neglect of his tasks and the consumption of a vast amount of trashy tales and romances, contrived to secure a tolerable amount of scholarship. At thirteen he was removed to Eton, where

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his refusal to fag brought upon him the anger of the other boys and the reprehension of the masters. But though a shy and diffident boy, he possessed a spirit of unconquerable boldness, and the attempts to subdue him only produced a vehement hatred of the injustice, which he did not scruple to record in his poems in after-life. He gained no distinction at Eton, though he improved his Greek and Latin, particularly Latin, in which he wrote hexameters with great facility. He voluntarily translated several books of Pliny's Natural History,' but stopped at the astronomy. In Greek he read the 'Symposium' of Plato, with Dr. Lind, one of the Eton masters, of whom he makes favourable exception as to his behaviour towards him, and whom he is said to have depicted in the old man who liberates Laon in the 'Revolt of Islam,' and in the hermit in Prince Athanase.' He also learned French and German, and paid considerable attention to chemistry, for which he always retained a liking. In 1808 he left Eton and returned home; here he completed two romances, begun at Eton, Zastrozzi,' an extravagant fiction, and St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrusian,' a feeble imitation of Godwin's 'St. Leon;' and he fell in love with a cousin, to whom he addressed some rather pretty verses, and to whom he subsequently dedicated his Queen Mab.' He also in conjunction with his relation Captain Medwin, wrote a poetical romance called Ahasuerus, or the Wandering Jew,' which was sent to Campbell, with a view to publication, but which Campbell returned, saying there were only two good lines in it, and which was thrown aside, found, and four cantos of it ultimately published in 'Frazer's Magazine' in 1831. While at Field Place, struck with the beauty of some of the productions of Mrs. Hemans (then Felicia Browne) he opened a correspondence with her, but the subjects he chose were such that her mother requested the correspondence might cease, and it did.

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At Michaelmas term 1810 he went to Oxford, and was entered at University College. He studied and wrote incessantly. Soon after his arrival he published anonymously a volume of poems entitled 'Posthumous Poems of my Aunt, Margaret Nicholson,' in which he ridiculed the sentimentality affected by many of the persons most conspicuous for their atrocities in the French revolution. It was altogether a worthless production, and he never claimed it, though it was well known to be his. Mr. Hogg, the author of a series of papers which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine' in 1832, under the title of 'Shelley at Oxford,' is the authority for this. In his second year at Oxford he had printed in London anonymously 'A Defence of Atheism.' It appears to have been a scholastic thesis, intended to excite discussion, rather than a serious avowal of confirmed opinions, and as such copies were forwarded to the heads of colleges. His secret was not kept; he was known as the author; and at Lady-Day in 1811 he was summoned before the master and two or three fellows of his college, a copy of the pamphlet was produced, and he was asked if he were the author. He declined acknowledging, though he would not deny it, and he was expelled. He always complained of this as a great injustice, and it embittered his feelings towards the institutions of his country and those who supported them. His father was greatly displeased, for some time refusing to receive him, the interval being passed by him in London, where he employed himself, actuated to a considerable degree by resentment, by completing his Queen Mab,' but which was not printed till 1812. In August he returned to his father, who, without the slightest sympathy with his pursuits, or any just appre ciation of his qualities, was yet proud of his son's talents. He desired now that he should adopt politics as a pursuit, a course utterly opposed to Shelley's feelings and opinions; and he finally offended his father irreconcileably by marrying, in August 1811 at Gretna Green, Miss Harriet Westbrooke, the daughter of a retired hotel-keeper. The marriage was unfortunate; the parties had not seen each other above half-a-dozen times before the match was concluded, and they soon found that they were not at all adapted for each other. Shelley's father refused to advance funds, and the newly-married pair were involved in pecuniary difficulties. Shelley seems to have always treated her with kindness, though his poems contain many allusions to his intellectual sufferings during their union. At length, in 1813, by mutual consent they separated, Shelley delivering her into the hands of her father. In 1814 he visited the Continent in company with Mary Wollstonecraft, the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstone craft, who afterwards became his wife, with whom he traversed France, Switzerland, and Germany, and returned to England in the autumn. Early in 1815 he came to an arrangement with his father, by which he secured an income of 800l. a year. He lived for a time in Devonshire, and then removed to Bishopsgate, near Windsor, where in 1815 he wrote his Alastor.' Two children had been the issue of his first marriage, who had been left with their mother, and in the care of her father. In 1816 his wife drowned herself, and he went to Bath to claim his children; but Mr. Westbrooke refused to give them up, and commenced a suit in Chancery, alleging that from the atheistical doctrines propounded in Queen Mab,' he was not a proper person to have the custody of them. In March 1817 Lord Chancellor Eldon pronounced his judgment, committing the children to the care of the grandfather, and restraining the father from intermeddling with them, but ordering that he should pay the expense of maintaining them. After the decision he again left England for Geneva, and in passing through Switzerland met and formed an intimacy with Lord Byron.

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In 1817 Shelley returned to England, and after a short sojourn with Leigh Hunt, with whom he first became intimate in 1813, he hired a house at Marlow, where he resided nearly a year, and composed his 'Revolt of Islam,' which contains many passages allusive to his suffer ings from the Chancery decree which took his children from him, and much vehement declamation as to bad laws and their evil administration. While settled at Marlow he was distinguished by the most active benevolence to the poor, and experienced an attack of ophthalmia caught while attending on them. Rosalind and Helen' was also commenced while at Marlow, but was not completed till the following year at Lucca. In March 1818 he quitted England never to return. He was unwell and depressed, but recovered on reaching Milan; and while travelling about Italy he wrote three acts of his 'Prometheus Unbound.' In March 1819 he reached Rome, where he remained some time, and translated Plato's 'Symposium,' removing to Florence towards the end of the year, where he added a fourth act to his 'Prometheus.' In May 1819 he was again at Rome, where he wrote his tragedy of 'The Cenci,' which was offered to Mr. Harris, then manager of Covent Garden Theatre, for representation, Shelley considering that the character of Beatrice was adapted for Miss O'Neil; but Harris pronounced the subject of the tragedy to be so objectionable that he could not even submit the part to that lady for her perusal, but promised however that another tragedy, with a less offensive plot, should be accepted. While at Rorie Shelley lost his eldest son by his second marriage, and he removed successively to Florence, Leghorn, and the baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa. In 1819 he wrote The Witch of Atlas,' after a pedestrian excursion to Monte San Pelegrino. In 1820 he wrote Julian and Maddalo,' in which, under those names, he has given a dialogue between himself and Lord Byron. In 1821 he produced his Epipsychidion;' 'Adonais,' a monody on the death of Keats; and 'Hellas,' written to promote the cause of the Greeks, whose insurrection under Ypsilanti had just commenced. He had previously written odes in favour of the efforts making for freedom in Spain and Naples; but these matters were not in his vein, and they are laboured and ineffective. On the 8th of July, 1822, with a Mr. Williams, who like himself was greatly attached to aquatic excursions, he left Leghorn in a small sailing-boat to return to his wife and family at St. Arengo; but they were caught in a storm, and perished. His body was washed ashore, and as the quarantine laws of Tuscany required that everything so found should be burnt, all the efforts of Mr. Dawkins, the English charge-d'affaires, could only procure permission that his ashes, when the body was consumed, should be given up to his family. The incremation was performed in the presence of Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and others; and his ashes were subsequently deposited in a tomb in the Protestant burying-ground at Rome, near the grave of Keats. We have thus gone through the chief events of his life, and given the dates of his principal publications, but in addition he had written a multitude of minor poems, some of singular beauty, tales, and miscellanies in prose, and many translations, of which those from Schiller's 'Wallenstein' and from Calderon possess great excellence. His translations from the Greek are exquisite, and drew loud praises from the "Quarterly Review.' They may be considered as the best in our language. His version of Faust,' a fragment of which is published, though admirable in spirit and effect, is not faultless with regard to meaning. Several of his prose productions and a selection from his letters were published by his widow in 2 vols. in 1840.

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SHELLEY, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.

$76 and he believed in the immortality of the soul. If his works are examined impartially it will be found that what he really meant to attack were the vices, the corruptions, and the atrocities which had been committed under the name of religion. In all his poems he uniformly denounces vice and immorality in every form; and his descriptions of love, which are numerous, are always refined and delicate, with even less of sensuousness than many of our most admired writers. It is true that he decried marriage, but not in favour of libertinism; and the evils he depicts or laments are those arising from the indissolubility of the bond, or from the opinions of society as to its necessity, opinions to which he himself submitted by marrying the woman to whom he was attached. His general conduct indeed tends to show that his opinions were by no means inflexible, and it is probable that had life been spared him, he might with maturer years have worked himself free from many errors. When, in 1821, his 'Queen Mab' was piratically published, he wrote to the Examiner' a letter disavowing its issue, and in it he says:-"Whilst I exonerate myself from all share in having divulged opinions hostile to existing sanctions, under the form, whatever it may be, which they assume in this poem, it is scarcely necessary for me to protest against the system of inculcating the truth of Christianity or the excellence of Monarchy, however true or however excellent they may be, by such equivocal arguments as confiscation or imprisonment, and invective and slander, and the insolent violation of the most sacred ties of nature and society."

His strength of imagination is at once the source of the beauty and the defects of his poetry. The "airy nothings" which he embodies in gorgeous forms and happy similitudes, expressed in the most harmonious language, draw the reader on almost imperceptibly, until perhaps stern common sense will ask what he really means, and whether the instances of vice, misrule, and disorder, which he depicts, are not magnified by his fancy from some almost imperceptible realities. As a consequence, his poems possess but little human interest: his characters are abstractions; his scenes of felicity are Utopian; the whole seems little better than a splendid phantasmagoria. One exception may be made-‘The Cenci;' here the characters are well developed, but under such horrible circumstances, that the heroic self-sacrifice and soft womanly feelings of Beatrice even under the influence of her burning revenge, with the marvellous har mony of the versification in which she expresses herself, cannot reconcile us to her, or overcome our feelings of disgust to the whole drama. Mrs. Shelley states that he fancied he had an equal fondness for poetry and for metaphysics, but that the former preponderated. She thinks that he possessed "two remarkable qualities of intellect a brilliant imagination, and a logical exactness of reason." His logic was of that character in which imagination first laid down the premises, and his conclusions might be then admissible; but of a logical faculty in the ordinary sense he had almost none as far as exhibited in his writings. His bold and striking impersonations form a distinguishing characteristic of his poetry. He gives to inanimate objects the attributes of humanity or volition with surprising effect. But even in his best efforts there always remains an obscurity and a dreaminess which will probably ever prevent his poems being extensively read. He more than once attempted satire; but he wants point and heartiness; he is vehement, but not earnest. In many of his lyrics, where the shortness of his subject prevented his wandering into his selfformed world, his defects are in a great degree avoided, and he is often peculiarly happy. In his 'Prometheus Unbound' he has shown himself thoroughly impregnated with the spirit of the Grecian drama. It is full of the spirit of beauty; and the inexhaustible play of fancy and imagination flashing through every part of it dazzles the mind so that we see but indistinctly; and here, as in all his other poems, his command of language has been equalled but by few. His reputation as a poet has gradually widened since his death, and has not yet reached its culminating point. He was the poet of the future-of an ideal futurity and hence it was that his own age could not entirely sympathise with him. He has been called the 'Poet of Poets'-a proud title, and in some respects deserved.

On the death of his father, Sir Timothy Shelley, in 1844, his son by his second wife, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, who was born in 1819, succeeded to the title and estates; his son by the first marriage having died young.

Of his character as a man and a poet there was for a considerable time much discrepancy of opinion. In a notice of his death, the Gentleman's Magazine' for September 1822, says he was well known by "his infamous novels and poems," and he was frequently accused of being an atheist and a blasphemer, an accusation sanctioned by the judgment of the lord chancellor in removing his children from his care. We cannot help thinking that a man so just, so honest, so benevolent, so faithful in friendship as he frequently proved himself, so bold in defence of the oppressed, so tolerant of opposition, and so amenable to the laws of society even where he disapproved of them, so thorough a hater of vice, meanness, and all sorts of tyranny, could scarcely have been an intentional blasphemer in the sense in which that term is usually accepted. The mistake has arisen we think in a misapprehension of his character, and a want of consideration of the circumstances in which he was placed. No man perhaps was more essentially a poet; "glancing from earth to heaven" he was indeed of SHELLEY, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, was born in 1798. In "imagination all compact;" and the strength of his creative faculty, 1816, while in Italy, she wrote her powerful and striking romance of like that displayed in early childhood, overpowered even his expe-Frankenstein,' which commanded an extensive popularity in England, rience. It is told that when fully grown he occupied himself for and is still a favourite with the admirers of the wild and wonderful, hours in sailing paper boats; no doubt with as true a realisation of while the extremely ingenious and consistent development of the his inward ideas as a child with a doll. His imagination gave them character of the monster excites and sustains a human interest amidst reality and importance, and they were bases for vast superstructures all its improbabilities. Though her success was great in this her first like the soap-bubbles of Sir Isaac Newton. effort, it did not induce Mrs. Shelley to resume her pen for some time. She devoted herself to promoting the comfort and guarding the health of her husband with affectionate solicitude, which he gratefully acknowledged and repaid. Just previous to his unfortunate death however she had finished 'Valperga,' a novel, afterwards printed in 3 vols., for which Shelley says in one of his last letters that she had been offered 400%., which he designed for the relief of the necessities of his father-in-law, W. Godwin. After her husband's death she published 'Falkland,' 'The Last Man,' and 'The Fortunes of Perkin

Brought up under a coarse, hard, immoral, and unforgiving father, he was early forced to look on the evil prevailing in life, and led to doubt the truths of a religion which his father professed but did not practise. To these doubts, before his judgment could rectify them, he gave a "local habitation and a name." The harshness he experienced aroused resentment without bringing conviction of his errors. He was blind and perverse in his notions of Christianity, but he is nowhere an atheist. He always acknowledges an over-ruling power,

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Warbeck,' each in three volumes. She also wrote 'Rambles in Germany and Italy,' an account of her journeys with her husband. In 1839 she published an edition of his poetical works, with a few biographical notes added, in which the more offensive passages of Queen Mab' are omitted; and in 1840 a selection from his letters and a few specimens of his prose writings. In all these she pays a most affectionate tribute to his goodness of heart and the other amiable qualities which she states invariably secured him the love of all who knew him. She died in London, on the 1st of February 1851. SHENSTONE, WILLIAM, an English poet, was born November, 1714, at the Leasowes, Hales Owen, Shropshire. He was sent to Pembroke College, Oxford, in the year 1732, and remained there some time, taking nó degree. He amused himself in a desultory manner, travelling about and writing poetry, till 1745, when he commenced residing on his patrimony at his native place. The remainder of his life was spent in rural occupations. He took great pride and spared no expense in the cultivation of his garden, and in his latter years became much involved in consequence. He died February 11, 1763. A very beautiful Latin epitaph on his cousin, and a few stanzas like that quoted by Johnson in his Life of him, full of genuine and simple feeling, redeem his poems from the charge of utter insipidity and lifelessness. They consist of elegies, pastorals, and odes, &c. His principal poem and the best of his longer pieces is The Schoolmistress,' and next in rank may be placed his Elegies. Johnson has pretty accurately hit off his character in the concluding sentence of his Life of Shenstone-"The general recommendation of Shenstone is easiness and simplicity; his general defect is want of comprehension and variety, Had his mind been better stored with knowledge, whether he could have been great, I know not; he could certainly have been agreeable." A spirit of mortified ambition, ill suited to the retirement which he professed to court, appears in all his writings. SHERARD, WILLIAM, better known as the patron and fellowlabourer of other botanists than by his own writings, was born at Bushby in Leicestershire, in the year 1659. He received his early education at Merchant Taylors' School, and was entered as a student of St. John's College, Oxford, in 1677, and became a Fellow of the same college in 1683. He was travelling tutor successively to Charles, second viscount Townshend, and to Wriothesley, lord Howland, son of Lord Russell who was executed. During this period of his life he made two tours on the Continent, in Holland, France, Italy, &c.; and then made the acquaintance of Boerhaave, Hermann, Tournefort, Vaillant, Micheli, and of most others of the ablest botanists of the time. He is believed to have been the author of an anonymous work called 'Schola Botanica,' published at Amsterdam, in 1689, giving an account of the plants then growing in the botanic garden at Paris. In 1700 he communicated a paper to the Royal Society, on the making of Japan and Chinese varnishes, which was inserted in the 22nd volume of their 'Transactions.'

In 1702 he was appointed British consul at Smyrna, having previously been one of the commissioners for the sick and wounded at Portsmouth. Smyrna afforded him an opportunity of pursuing botany; here he laid the foundation of his great 'Herbarium,' which is still a national treasure, and cultivated with great care and attention many rare and exotic species of plants. In 1718 he returned to England, and received the degree of LL.D.

In 1721 he returned to the Continent, and Vaillant, the African traveller, being then in a dying state, Sherard succeeded in transferring the manuscripts and drawings of this great traveller to Boerhaave, who published them in the 'Botanicon Parisiense,' in 1727. In this work Boerhaave was materially assisted by Sherard. In his various visits to the Continent Sherard became intimate with Dillenius, who was professor of botany at Giessen; and in 1721 he invited him to come over to England to superintend the botanic garden of his brother Dr. James Sherard, at Eltham. This invitation was accepted by Dillenius, and forms an important point in the history of botany in this country.

Sherard was a quiet unassuming man, who loved the study of natural history for its own sake. He seemed to prefer assisting others in their labours to producing anything of his own. He was thus the fellow-labourer of Catesby, in the Natural History of Carolina,' and also of Dillenius, in the publication of the 'Hortus Elthamensis.' He died at Eltham, August 12, 1728. At his death he bequeathed his great Herbarium, containing upwards of 12,000 species of plants, to the University of Oxford, and also left 30007. for the purpose of endowing a botanical chair in the same University. This was undoubt edly the greatest service done by Sherard to botany; although at present it has not perhaps produced the fruit which might have been anticipated.

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DILLENIUS was the first who occupied the chair of botany founded by Sherard. He was born at Darmstadt in 1687. He came over to England in 1721. He published in this country a new edition of Ray's 'Synopsis,' illustrated with twenty-four plates, in 1724. The Hortus Elthamensis' appeared in 1732. His greatest work, and one which has had a most important influence on the study of botany, is the 'Historia Muscorum,' published in 1741. Although the name would indicate that the mosses were the only subjects treated on, it included observations on all the families of cryptogamic plants. It contains a

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fund of original research, and many modern observers would do well to consult this volume before announcing their observations as entirely new. Sherard during his life wished to have completed or continued Bauhin's 'Pinax,' a work intended to have been a description of all the plants then known, and for this purpose he collected a great mass of materials. It was his wish at his death that this should be done by the new professor at Oxford, but either Dillenius did not feel com petent to the task, or was too much occupied with his 'Historia.' for the continuation of the 'Pinax' never appeared. He died April 2, 1747. His Herbarium is now with that of Sherard at Oxford, which, containing as it does specimens from Linnæus, Tournefort, and other eminent botanists of that day, is, next to the Herbarium of Linnæus himself, one of the most authentic and valuable botanical records that exists.

SHERBURNE, SIR EDWARD, descended from an ancient family residing at Stainhurst in Lancashire, was born in London, on the 18th of September 1618. In his younger days he had the advantage of the instructions of the celebrated Thomas Farnaby, who then taught a school in Goldsmith's Rents; but in 1636, Farnaby removed from London, and transferred his pupil to the care of Charles Aleyn, who had been one of his ushers, and who is known as the author of some very inferior historical poetry. In 1640 Sherburne set out on the grand Continental tour, from which he was suddenly recalled to solace the few remaining days of his father, who died in 1641, leaving his son in possession of the post which he had enjoyed of the clerkship of his majesty's Ordnance. The rebellion however prevented his retaining this situation for any length of time. Being indeed a Roman Catholic and firm royalist, he was ejected by a warrant from the House of Lords in April or May 1642, and harassed by a long and expensive confinement in the custody of the usher of the black rod. After his release he entered actively into the service of the king, who created him commissary-general of the royal artillery. Various fortunes now awaited him. He witnessed the memorable battle of Edge-hill; he attended the king at Oxford, where he took his Master's degree on December 20th, 1642, and pursued his studies for some time; he went to London in 1646, where he was plundered of all his property, and finally compelled to hide himself for safety in the chambers of a relation in the Middle Temple. About 1651 fortune once more smiled upon him, and he was appointed by Sir George Savile, who had then recently returned from abroad, superintendent of his affairs, and shortly afterwards was made travelling tutor to Sir John Coventry, with whom he visited different parts of the Continent between the years 1654 and 1659. On the Restoration he obtained with considerable trouble his old situation in the Ordnance, but at the revolution of 1688 was again ejected from it upon refusing to take the necessary oaths. He had received the honour of knighthood January 6th, 1682. There is every reason however to believe that his latter days were embittered by the evils of poverty, as we find him in 1696 presenting a supplicatory memorial to the Earl of Romney, then master-general of the Ordnance, and another to the king. Whether either of these applications was attended with success is not known. He continued his retirement till his death, which took place at London, on November 4th, 1702.

Sherburne was the author of poetical translations of two pieces from Seneca, the 'Medea,' and the 'Troades,' published respectively in 1648 and 1679. These works procured him considerable reputation in his time; but his fame at present principally rests on the translation of 'Manilius,' published at London in 1675, in a handsome folio volume, and enriched by an appendix containing lives of scientific men. This appendix is particularly valuable to the scientific historian as containing much information regarding Sherburne's contemporaries not to be met with elsewhere.

SHERIDAN, DR. THOMAS, translated the 'Satires of Persius' into prose, and also the Philoctetes' of Sophocles into verse; but neither of these translations is worthy of being rescued from the neglect into which they have fallen. His talents were more of a social nature -punning, quibbling, and fiddling, according to Lord Cork, with an incessant flow of animal spirits.

Dr. Sheridan was born in 1684 in the county of Cavan. His parents were poor; but he was placed by a friend at Trinity College, Dublin, where he made considerable progress in classical literature. He afterwards took orders, and then set up a school in Dublin. Swift, who was his friend, procured him in 1725 a living in the south of Ireland of about 150l. a year, but his recklessness or impudence spoiled all his expectations; for he preached a sermon on the 1st of August (the anniversary of King George's birthday) on the text, "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." On this being known he was struck off the list of chaplains to the lord-lieutenant and forbidden the castle. He bore this however with a light heart, and soon after changed his living for one in Dunboyne; but owing to the cheating of the farmers, and other causes, the income was lowered to 80l. a year. As this did not suit him, he speedily gave it up for the free school of Cavan, where he had a salary of 801. a year besides his scholars. He was through life indolent, careless, slovenly, and indigent. His animal spirits seemed to supply every other deficiency, and to have preserved him cheerful amidst all his poverty and distress; but his habits as well as his temperament were careless and ill-regulated, and prevented any strict attention to his duties. His indolence or imprudence made him sell

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his situation for 4067., alleging as an excuse the "moist and unwholesome air of Cavan;" but we find him afterwards making no attempt to establish himself elsewhere. This 400l. was soon spent, and the "ill-starred, good-natured, improvident man," as Lord Cork calls him, fell into sickness and distress, which was terminated by death, September 10, 1738. Lord Cork, speaking of him, says, "Not a day passed without a rebus, an anagram, or a madrigal. His pen and fiddlestick SHERIDAN, THOMAS, M.A., the author of the 'Dictionary of the English Language,' was the son of the above, and born at Quilca, the residence of Swift, in 1721. Swift was his godfather, and treated him with uniform kindness. His education was commenced by his father, who subsequently sent him to Westminster School, where he was a king's scholar. He afterwards entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his degree of Master of Arts. When his father died he was without a profession, and destitute of all expectations; but having conceived that exalted and extravagant idea of oratory which haunted him through life, he determined on its restoration. To this end he devoted himself to the stage as the first qualification for understanding the art of oratory. He appeared as Richard III. in January 1743, and "met with the greatest encouragement."

In 1744 he accepted an engagement at Covent Garden Theatre, and in 1745 he played with Garrick at Drury Lane, where some of his friends, more kind than judicious, endeavoured to set him up as a rival of Garrick. The consequence was a quarrel between the two, which lasted for life. Sheridan then returned to Dublin, and became manager of the theatre there; and he effected, after a long struggle, a very praiseworthy reform in the "goings ou "behind the scenes. For eight years he continued his management with success, till in 1754 he was driven from it by one of the popular tumults so common in those days. In this year, when "the rancour of political party arose to the greatest height that it had almost ever been known to do in Dublin, Mr. Sheridan unfortunately revived Miller's 'Mahomet.' In this play were many passages respecting liberty, bribery, and corruption, which pleased the anti-courtiers as expressive of their opinions in regard to certain persons at that time in power, and therefore they insisted on those passages being repeated, which the actor complied with. The absurdity however of such repetitions, merely as destroying the effect of the tragedy, having occurred to the manager, the same speeches, when again called for by the audience on the succeeding night, were refused by the actor; and he being obliged to hint the cause of his refusal, the manager became the object of their resentment. On his not appearing to mollify their rage by some kind of apology, they cut the scenery to pieces with their swords, tore up the benches and boxes, and, in a word, totally despoiled the theatre; concluding with a resolution never more to permit Mr. Sheridan to appear on that stage." (Chalmers's Biog. Dict.') He afterwards (1756) returned to Dublin aud his management, the agitation having subsided; but though he was received with great favour by the audience, yet Barry and Woodward having erected another theatre, and decoyed some of his principal performers, as well as a London company, this with other causes quite ruined him, and he was obliged to give up all concern in the theatre.

It was then that he again relied on his indestructible faith in oratory, and the immense advantages to accrue from it. He published a plan, in which he proposed to his countrymen the establishment of an academy for the accomplishment of "youth in every qualification necessary for a gentleman." In the formation of his design, he considered the art of oratory to be one of the essentials; and to give a stronger idea of the utility of that art, he opened his plan to the public in three orations, which were also to be the proofs of his fitness for the office of superintendent of the academy, for which post he offered himself. The proposal was in some degree carried into execution; but for some reason Sheridan was excluded from any share in conducting it. Sheridan however was not a man to be daunted, especially on the question of oratory, and we find him in 1759 lecturing in England on that subject. He had published an 8vo volume entitled 'British Education: the source of the disorders in Great Britain. Being an essay towards proving that the immorality, ignorance, and false taste which so generally prevail, are the natural and necessary consequences of the present defective system of education; with an attempt to show that a revival of the art of speaking and the study of our own language, might contribute in a great measure to the cure of those evils. The title is amusing; but it seems to have imposed on the public, for the lectures which he composed in confirmation of it, and delivered in London, Oxford, and Cambridge, met with immense success: at the last place indeed he was honoured with the degree of Master of Arts. In 1760 he again appeared at Drury Lane, but disagreements with Garrick soon put a stop to his engagement.

On the accession of George III. a pension was granted him, which so enraged Doctor Johnson, that he exclaimed, "What, give him a pension!-then I must give up mine." This was of course repeated to Sheridan, and he never forgave it. Through the various volumes of 'Boswell' there occur many notices of Sheridan, but the Doctor's contempt is nowhere disguised. Sheridan continued to lecture, and was "himself the great sublime he drew." In Scotland he was honoured with so much attention that a society was formed, called 'The Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English

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Language in Scotland.' Among the directors were the names of Drs. Blair, Ferguson, and Robertson.

But by all his discussion and lecturing, his universal panacea for the ills of moral England came to be examined, and when in 1769 he proposed his plan of education for the young nobility and gentry of Great Britain,' he found the public enthusiasm already cooled. This plan was addressed to the king, in which with an amusing but lofty condescension he made a tender of his services, and offered to “dedicate the remainder of his days to its execution," observing, that “if the design be not executed by myself, it never will be by any other hand." But in spite of all this heroic dedication of services, he excited no notice. This did not however damp his ardour in the least; he endeavoured to support his plan by writing, by lecturing, and by sarcasms against the taste of the times which could so neglect him; and the whole farce was wound up by his resolution, on the declara tion of the American Independence, of "benefiting the new world with the advantages ungratefully neglected by his own country." In 1769, 1770, and 1776 he performed at the Haymarket and Covent Garden, his last appearance as an actor. On the retirement of Garrick the purchasers of the share in Drury Lane, of which his son was one, agreed to make him the manager; but he held the post only three years, when he relinquished it as not tenable except on ignominious terms. He then produced his Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language,' which was ridiculed by Johnson, who thought an Irishman very unfit to teach the English their own language. His 'Life of Swift' followed-a heavy and indiscriminating performance. He died in the sixty seventh year of his age, August 14, 1788. His other works are the 'Course of Oratorical Lectures' and the farce of 'Captain O'Blunder.'

SHERIDAN, FRANCES, wife of the above, was born in Ireland 1724, but of English parentage, being the grand-daughter of Sir Oliver Chamberlayne. Her first acquaintance with Sheridan was curious enough. At one of his most embarassing periods, when there had arisen a violent party dispute relative to the theatre in which he had newly embarked all his money and expectations, she published a wellwritten and forcible pamphlet, in his favour, which disinterested kindness so excited his attention that he lost no time in being introduced to her-they were mutually pleased with each other, and the orator soon proposed marriage, and was accepted. She is uniformly described as a most accomplished and amiable woman, of whom Doctor Johnson was very fond (Boswell's 'Johnson,' ii.), and whose novel of 'Sidney Biddulph' he greatly admired, addressing her the very flattering remark, that he doubted whether "upon moral principles she was at liberty to put any one to so much pain as her story had put him." Her Nourjahad' has delighted all readers of romance, and will continue to do so; though probably on other accounts than "the excellent moral and inculcation of a future state of retribution" which so delighted James Boswell. She also wrote two comedies, 'The Discovery' and 'The Dupe,' but they are feeble and prosy, and are now become rarities. She died at Blois, after a lingering illness, September, 1766. This date is on the authority of a letter of her husband's deploring that event, which is dated October, 1766; the 'Biographia Dramatica' and Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary' (which copies the former almost verbatim) place her death as late as 1767. SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY BUTLER (for thus was he christened after Brinsley Butler, earl of Lanesborough, though he usually dropped the Butler), was the son of Thomas and Frances Sheridan. He was born in Dorset Street, Dublin (not at Quilca as the 'Biographical Dictionaries' declare), in September, 1751. He was educated at Dublin, and subsequently at Harrow, but at both places was pronounced to be an impenetrable dunce,' with whom neither severity nor indulgence could avail. On leaving Harrow indeed his ignorance was so great that he could not spell, and he wrote 'think' for thing. At the age of eighteen however he joined his friend Halhed in a translation of the Epistles of Aristænetus.'

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Sheridan's life was throughout a dramatic one; not in the high or poetical sense, but in that of intriguing comedy and practical joking, and he certainly displayed throughout as perfect a contempt for principle or sincerity as any comedy hero we could desire. His first important step in this life, marriage, was of this nature, and partakes of that intriguing spirit. His own brother and his friend Halbed were both in love with Miss Linley, an accomplished singer, then only sixteen; they confided their passion to him, but he outwitted them both, and eloped with the lady to France, where they were secretly married. He then fought a duel with a "married blackguard who had worried and defamed her;" and then brought her back to England, where having extorted her father's permission, he repeated the nuptial ceremony by licence in 1773. They tell an anecdote of his driving her from the oratorios, disguised as a hackney coachman, during the interval of the two weddings, when she was residing with her angry friends and still pursuing her profession. Sheridan would not consent to his wife's employing her talents for their subsistence: it offended his pride, and this pride Dr. Johnson applauded, but very erroneously in our opinion. Yet Sheridan did not refuse to subsist, during the early part of their marriage, upon the three thousand pounds "which a good-natured old gentleman had settled upon Miss Linley in default of being able to marry her."

Necessity however soon drove him to literature, and in January

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1775 he produced his first comedy of The Rivals. On the first night it was damned; but this was chiefly the fault of one of the actors and of those inexperiences which usually attend 'first nights,' and it soon met with the success which it so well deserved. In this comedy there is nothing new, and little that is true, but everything tells admirably. The incidents are various and bustling; the characters well opposed; though all, except the tetchy wayward Falkland, are copies of well-known originals. Mrs. Malaprop is not only a farcical exaggeration of Mrs. Slipslop (whose very jokes are easily perpetrated when once an author plunges into such a vein of impossible fun); but that mispronunciation which was natural in a housekeeper trying to be pedantic, is insupportable in the aunt of Lydia Languish. But Sheridan trusted very little to nature. Acres is quite as much a caricature; and Lydia Languish is so clumsily overdone as almost to fall pointless. Fag is a wit of the first order, dressed as a footman. Sir Anthony Absolute, though old, is nevertheless admirable, and cleverly sustained. To a severe criticism this comedy exhibits many faults, yet the same severity must admit its abundant merits of wit, animal spirits, situation, story, and selection of character.

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The gaiety of success, and, as some say, gratitude to Mr. Clinch, who played Sir Lucius O'Trigger, but more probably the same pressing necessity, "who has no law," produced the farce of St. Patrick's Day, or the Scheming Lieutenant,' in the course of the ensuing spring. This farce turns upon the old trick of the lover deceiving the credu lous father, a trick so often used by Molière, and imitated by every farce-writer since that immortal wit. The summer of that year was devoted to 'The Duenna,' which Hazlitt calls "a perfect work of art: the songs are the best that ever were written, except those in the 'Beggar's Opera;' they have a joyous spirit of intoxication in them, and strains of the most melting tenderness." But we must observe that neither incidents nor characters are new. The dialogue however is witty, terse, and polished. "His table songs," observes Leigh Hunt, are always admirable. When he was drinking wine he was thoroughly in earnest." He was now in the full flush of popularity and prosperity, and became one of the proprietors of Drury Lane Theatre; but how, nobody can tell, for where he got the money has ever remained an impenetrable secret. In the year 1777 he made some trivial alterations in Vanburgh's 'Relapse,' and produced it under the title of 'The Trip to Scarborough.' In 1777 also he produced 'The School for Scandal,' of which Leigh Hunt remarks, "with the exception of too great a length of dialogue without action in its earlier scenes, it is a very concentration and crystallisation of all that is sparkling, clear, and compact, in the materials of prose comedy." The characters, though not new, are generally well drawn, and inimitably selected. Selection is one of the first arts of a dramatist. Having to illustrate a moral or develope a problem, his great care should be that the characters which he selects do really of themselves go towards the building up and elucidation of the whole. Thus, Sir Peter and Sir Oliver, Charles and Joseph, Mrs. Candour and Lady Sneerwell, with Sir Benjamin, Snake, Crabtree, &c., have each a distinct part in the drama. Of these we prefer Mrs. Candour, who is exquisitely drawn, and who serves to turn the balance in favour of Sheridan's scandal-scene, in comparison with the scene in Wycherley's 'Plain Dealer' (Act ii., sc. 1), from which it is imitated. Charles Surface is a very disagreeable and boasting character, and destitute of the honourable or gentlemanly feeling to which he pretends. He is not only an unprincipled spendthrift, but he attempts to carry it off with a high hand, and with maxims which may be well enough over the bottle, but are foolish sophisms when applied in life thus, when he has money, he prefers sending it to Mr. Stanley, who has applied to him for charity, than to his lawful creditors; and swaggers off with "Justice is an old lame hobbling beldame, and I can't get her to keep pace with generosity for the soul of me." His treatment of Lady Teazle in the screen scene is still more offensive. Charles has a cant about him as well as Joseph; but he is always a favourite with the audience, because he is, or pretends to be, a dashing fellow of the very best intentions, and only addicted to cheating his tradesmen out of a little pardonable sociality. The School for Scandal' however remains the finest model of the witcomedy in the language; it has not the heartiness, the flesh and blood vitality of the 'Beaux Stratagem,' nor the more elaborate wit of Congreve; its language is more polished and exquisite than Farquhar's, and more easy and less obviously elaborate than Congreve's; but all three dwindle into insignificance beside the poetic comedy of Shakspere. In 1779 he wrote the Critic,' one of the wittiest farces in the language. "In some of its most admired passages, little better than an exquisite cento of the wit of the satirists before him. Sheridan must have felt himself emphatically at home in a production of this kind; for there was every call in it upon the powers he abounded in -wit, banter, and style; and none upon his good-nature." (Leigh Hunt, Critical Sketch prefixed to Sheridan's works.') But indeed it has need of all its brilliant writing to support the length of the dialogue without action; and when it comes to the rehearsal of the tragedy, it soon becomes tiresome. Good acting however will always keep it on the stage.

Sheridan's political career was illuminated by a few bright flashes of eloquence and perpetual wit, but he had neither the depth nor the perseverance of a statesman; and consequently, though he sometimes

BIOG. DIV. VOL. V.

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helped his party with a promising effort, "gradually degenerated into a useless though amusing speaker, familiarly joked at by the public, admired but disesteemed by his friends." He had made the acquain tance of Charles James Fox, through whose good offices he got elected for the borough of Stafford in 1780. His connection with Fox, more than any decided opinions of his own, led him to support the Whig party, to which he continued faithful to the last. Under the Rocking ham administration he became under-secretary of state, but he resigned on the death of the marquis. His celebrated speech on the occasion of Warren Hastings's trial was a tremendous effort of eloquence, and will never be forgotten.

In 1792 Sheridan's wife died; and in 1795, being then in his forty. fourth year, he married Miss Ogle, the dean of Winchester's daughter -"young, accomplished, and ardently devoted to him." She brought him five thousand pounds, and with this and fifteen thousand more which he contrived to raise by the sale of Drury Lane shares, an estate was bought in Surrey, where he was to live in love and happiness till his drink and his duns could endure it no longer. After an interval of nine years since his last play, he again, in 1798, contributed to the stage the 'Stranger' and 'Pizarro,' both adaptations from the wretched pieces of Kotzebue.

Sheridan's theatrical career terminated with these pieces; and now his prospects seemed every day more lowering. His difficulties always great, became now insupportable from the want of health, youth, and animal spirits to prompt him to fresh exertions, or to enable him to bear them with better grace. He lived in a perpetual but inefficient struggle; resorting to many a degrading shift, which may tell well enough as jokes, but which preyed upon him seriously enough. His friends (among them the prince-regent, his former boon companion, whose dull pompous entertainments were enlivened by Sheridan's wit) had forsaken him now that sickness and distress had enfeebled the brilliancy and animation of his conversation. Money was no longer to be borrowed; duns were no longer to be pacified with promises; everything was indicating ruin, and he died near his dying wife, amidst the threats of bailiffs, and deserted by all but his physician Dr. Bain, and his poetical friends Mr. Rogers, Mr. Thomas Moore, and Lord Holland, on Sunday, the 7th of July 1816, in Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.

(Moore, Life of Sheridan; Leigh Hunt, Biographical and Critical Sketch, prefixed to Moxon's edition of Sheridan's Works; Boswell, Life of Johnson; Biographia Dramatica; Hazlitt, Lectures on the Comic Writers.)

SHERIF-ED-DEEN (MOOLLAH ALI SHERIF-ED DEEN YEZDI), a native of Yezd in Persia, and a celebrated Persian historiau, who flourished about the beginning of the 15th century of our era. Few particulars have reached us as to his parentage or personal history. He was by profession a doctor of the Moslem law, and appears to have resided principally at the court of Shiraz, under the patronage of Ibraham Sultan, who acted as viceroy of Fars for his father ShahRokh, the youngest son and successor of Timour. Here Sherif-ed-deen completed, A.D. 1424 (A.H. 328), the work on which his reputation is principally based, entitled the Zuffer-Nameh,' or 'Book of Victories,' which gives, in the Persian language, a detailed and copious account of the life, reign, and conquests of Timour, drawn from the authentic records in the possession of his descendants. The first part, or introduction, however does not exist in any copy found in European libraries; and we are acquainted with it only through the quotations of Hadji-Khalfa, who mentions it as containing an excellent account of the geography of Zagatai, or Turkestan, with genealogical notices of the various tribes. The style of the Zuffer-Nameh' is characterised by Sir William Jones as 'most beautiful and elegant;" and Khondemir compares the diction to "a sparkling succession of pearls, diamonds, and precious stones;" but a European reader is fatigued by the endless metaphors and profusion of laboured ornaments with which every phrase is overloaded. "His geography and chronology," says Gibbon, "are wonderfully accurate; and he may be trusted for public facts, though he servilely praises the virtue and fortune of his hero. His encomiums on Timour are indeed carried to the most fulsome extent of oriental panegyric; but both gratitude and interest would combine to produce this effect; and the bias thus shown is in some measure useful as enabling us to qualify the equally exaggerated invectives of another biographer of Timour, the Syrian Arabshah." A French version of the Zuffer-Nameh' was published at Paris, in four vols. 12mo, 1722, by M. Petis de la Croix, under the title of 'Histoire de Timur-Bec, connu sous le nom du grand Tamerlane, Empereur des Mogols et Tartares,' &c.; but it is far from being a close translation of the original. A Turkish version has also been printed at the imperial press of Constantinople.

SHERLEY. [SHIRLEY.]

SHERLOCK, WILLIAM, D.D., was born in Southwark about 1641, and studied at Peter House, Cambridge. At an early period of life he had the living of Saint George, Botolph-lane. In 1681 he obtained the prebend of St. Pancras, in the church of St. Paul's, London; and in 1684 or 1685 was elected master of the Temple. His political conduct at the revolution is said to have been as ambiguous as that of his son on the accession of the house of Hanover, and he exposed himself to the severe censure of the Jacobite party, who had hoped to retain him. It was on this occasion that he published his 'Case of

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