431 



, SHERIDAN, RICHARD. 



SHERLOCK, WILLIAM, D.D. 



tat 



1775 he produced his first comedy of 'The Rivals.' On the first 

 night it was damned ; but thia 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 over- 

 done as almost to fall pointless. Fag is a wit of the first order, 

 dressed as a footman. Sir Anthony Absolute, though old, is neverthe- 

 less 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. 



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 Moliere, 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 con- 

 centration and crystallisation of all that is sparkling, clear, and com- 

 pact, 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 bis 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 audimnce, 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 wit- 

 comedy in the language ; it has not the heartiness, the flesh and blood 

 vitality of the ' Beaux Stratagem,' nor the more elaborate wit of Con- 

 greve ; 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. I)IV. VOL. V. 



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 Rockiug- 

 ham administration he became undersecretary of state, but he resigned 

 on the death of the marquis. His celebrated speech on tbe 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 happi- 

 ness 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 bis 

 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 ; Bos well, 

 Life of Johnson ; Biographia Dramatica ; Hazlitt, Lectures on the 

 Comic Writers.) 



SHERIF-ED-DEEN (MOOLLAH ALI SHERIIT-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 Shah- 

 Rokh, 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 intro- 

 duction, 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 Khoudemir 

 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 fact?, 

 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 lt>81 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 



' 2 i 



