puted him to watch the motions of the enemy off Rochfort. On the morning of the 25th of September he had, after four months' perseverance in this service, the good fortune to fall in with a squadron of the enemy, consisting of five large frigates and two corvettes full of troops. In the action that ensued, Sir Samuel was severely wounded, and was afterwards under the necessity of suffering his right arm to be amputated. He succeeded, however, in taking four of the frigates, all very fine ships, one of which bore the French commodore's pendant. For his conduct on this occasion, and in consideration of his former services, and of the recent loss of his arm, his majesty was graciously pleased to grant him a pension of £500 per annum.

At the general election, 1806, Sir Samuel Hood's professional services having gained him a just portion of well-earned popularity, he had the honour to be returned one of the representatives in parliament for the city of Westminster. Throughout the fifteen days' poll he maintained a decided superiority of numbers, and at the last found the honour, which his colleague termed a popular peerage, conferred on him by the votes of 5478 of his fellow-citizens.

In 1807, during which year he was elected for Bridport, he commanded the naval part of the armament against Madeira; and, early in 1308, received the thanks of parliament for his services. He was next

employed in his old ship, the Centaur, with Captain Martin, in the Implacable, to assist the Swedes against the Russians, from whom he succeeded in taking a seventy-four-gun ship; and, but for the slow sailing of his allies, would have made more important captures. In 1808 he commanded the squadron in which the British troops embarked at Corunna, where he displayed so much zeal and ability, that, early in the next year he was honoured with the thanks of parliament, made rear-admiral of the White, and created a baronet, with remainder to his nephew. In 1810 he became rear-admiral of the Red, and, in the following year, proceeded to take the chief command in the East Indies. In 1812 he was made a knight-commander, and shortly before his death, which took place on the 24th of December, 1815, a knight grand-cross of the Bath.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

BORN a. d. 1751.—died A. D. 1816.

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN was born in Dublin, in the month of September, 1751. His father and grandfather were both men of literary reputation. His mother also was an authoress, and amongst other productions of her pen, wrote a comedy called The Discovery,' which Garrick pronounced to be a chef d'œuvre in its line.

At the age of seven, Richard was, with his elder brother Charles, placed under the tuition of Mr Samuel Whyte, a well-known and highly respectable teacher. "It may be consoling," says Mr Moore, "to parents who are in the first crisis of impatience at the sort of hopeless stupidity which some children exhibit, to know that the dawn of Sheridan's intellect was as dull and unpromising as its meridian day was bright; and that in the year 1759, he who in less than thirty years'

afterwards, held senates enchained by his eloquence and audiences fas cinated by his wit, was, by common consent both of parents and preceptor, pronounced to be a most impenetrable dunce.'" In the year 1762 Richard was sent to Harrow, where he little distinguished himself, although he seems to have persuaded Parr, who was that time one of the ushers, that he really knew a good deal, and Parr affirms that both he and the head-master, Dr Sumner, discovered talents in the boy which neither of them could bring into action while he remained a schoolboy. His father, unfortunately, could not afford to send him to the university, and he appears to have trifled away several years after leaving Harrow in sheer idleness, if we except a few desultory efforts at composition both in prose and verse, of which Mr Moore has preserved a few specimens in his interesting biography.

While only on the verge of manhood, Sheridan conceived a passion for Miss Linley, the far-famed Maid of Bath,' who "appears to have spread her gentle conquests to an extent almost unparalleled in the annals of beauty." He had numerous rivals, and amongst others his elder brother, Charles, and his earliest and most intimate friend Halhed, then studying at Oxford; but he soon triumphed over them all, and appears to have been privately married to Miss Linley in France, in the month of March, 1772, though the young couple were re-married in England. in April, 1773.

Sheridan now entered his name on the books of the Middle Temple, but he was altogether unfit for a profession demanding such close and strenuous attention as that of law. He made a little by writing for the newspapers, a labour in which his wife cheerfully and ably assisted him; but the main dependence of the young couple was the interest of £3000 which a Mr Long, who was one of Miss Linley's rejected suitors, had generously settled upon her. During this period, the hap piest in their lives, the young couple lived in retirement at East Burn

ham.

On the 17th of January, 1775, Sheridan's powers as a dramatic writer were proved by the bringing out of his first comedy, The Rivals,' at Covent-garden. Its success was decisive; and was followed up by the opera of The Duenna,' which took a run unparalleled in the annals of the drama, having been acted no less than seventy-five times in one season. Soon after this, Sheridan became proprietor of Garrick's moiety of the patent of Drury Lane. Mr Moore is unable to explain how or where the young dramatist got the money necessary to effect this purchase; he managed, however, to procure it, and place himself in the situation of patentee and manager of that expensive establishment. In 1777 he placed his fame as a dramatic writer on its highest pinnacle, by the production of The School for Scandal.' "It would be something of the latest," says the Edinburgh reviewer of Mr Moore's biography, "to engage now in a critique on the Rivals' or the 'School for Scandal; and it would be useless. The public and general judg ment is right; both in the very high rank it has assigned to these pieces, and in the exceptions with which it has qualified its praise. They are all over-sparkling with wit, and alive with character; and nothing, so much better in its substance than the real conversation of polite society, ever came so near it in manner. But there is too much merely ornamental dialogue, and, with some very fine theatrical situations, too

much intermission in the action and business of the play; and, above all, there is too little real warmth of feeling, and too few indications of noble or serious passion thoroughly to satisfy the wants of English readers and spectators-even in comedy. Their wit is the best of them and we do not mean to deny that it is both genuine and abundant. But it is fashioned too much after one pattern; and resolved too often into studied comparisons, and ludicrous and ingenious similes. There is a degree of monotony in this; and its very condensation gives it something of a quaint, elaborate, and ostentatious air. The good things are all detached, and finished, and independent, each in itself; and, accordingly, they do not inform the style with a diffusive splendour, such as the sun sheds on a fine landscape, but sparkle in their separate spheres, more in the manner of nightly illuminations in a luxurious city. It is but a forked and jagged lightning, compared to the broad flashes of Shakspeare, that kindle the whole horizon with their wide and continuous blaze! It is not fair, perhaps, to name that mighty name, in estimating the merits of any other writer. But, since it is done, it may serve still farther to illustrate what we mean, if we add, that, where Sheridan resembles him at all in his wit and humour, it is rather in the ostentatious and determined pleasantries of such personages as Mercutio or Benedict, than in the rich and redundant inventions of Falstaff, the light-hearted gayety of Rosalind, the jollity of Sir Toby, or the inexhaustible humours and fancies of his clowns, fairies, fools, constables, serving-men, and justices. What a variety! what force, what facility, and how little depending upon point, epigram, or terseness of expression !"

The School for Scandal' was speedily followed by another successful comedy, entitled 'The Critic.' But politics, not literature, was the great business of Sheridan's life, and to this sphere of action we must now turn our attention.

"His first appearance before the public as a political character," says Mr Moore, "was in conjunction with Mr Fox at the beginning of the year 1780, when the famous resolutions on the state of the representation, signed by Fox as chairman of the Westminster committee, together with a report on the same subject from the sub-committee, signed by Sheridan, were laid before the public." Previous to this, however, Sheridan had written numerous political articles and pamphlets on the whig side; and had got into habits of intimacy with the leaders of that party. By means of Mr, subsequently Lord John Townshend, he became acquainted with Fox. "I made the first dinher party," says his lordship, "at which they met; having told Fox that all the notions he might have conceived of Sheridan's talent and genius, from the comedy of The Rivals,' &c. would fall infinitely short of the admiration of his astonishing powers, which, I was sure, he would entertain at the first interview. The first interview between them (there were very few present, only Tickell and myself, and one or two more) I shall never forget. Fox told me, after breaking up from dinner, that he had always thought Hare, after my uncle, Charles Townshend, the wittiest man he had ever met with, but that Sheridan surpassed them both infinitely." Sheridan's admiration of Fox was equally great; and the congeniality of their minds soon produced a close friendship. With Windham he had been previously intimate; and his acquaintance with