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•worse. He acted like too many clergymen who are in haste to get married when very young, and from hence proceeded all the miseries of his life." Sheridan owned Quilca, a small country seat in the County of Cavan, where Swift, who wrote an amusing account of its " blunders and deficiencies," often sojourned with Esther Johnson and Mrs. Dingley. Not con- tent with two residences alone, a fancy sprung in his head, Swift wrote, " that a house near Dublin would be commodious for himself and his boarders to lodge in on Saturdays and Sundays. Immediately, without consulting with any creature, he takes a lease of a rotten house at Eath- farnham, the worst air in Ireland, for 999 years, at £12 a year. . . He expends about £100 on the house and garden wall, and in less than three years contracts such a hatred to the house that he lets it run to ruin." Swift was greatly distress- ed at Sheridan's extravagant habits, and hoping to remove him from a position in life which involved ruinous expendi- ture, obtained for him a nomination to the mastership of the Eoyal School of Armagh. This Sheridan unwisely declined, on the advice of some of the Fellows of College. Swift then procured for him a living in the south of Ireland, and a chaplaincy to the Lord- Lieutenant ; but Sheridan spoiled all by his foolish imprudence in preaching a ser- mon at Cork on the King's birth-day, from the text, " Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." He was forbidden again to appear at the Castle, although Swift interceded for him in vain. He subsequently obtained the living of Dunboyne, near Dublin, from which, with his unbusiness-like habits, he was able to extract but £80 a year. His son says his grief for Esther Johnson's loss was almost as great as the Dean's, " He admired her above all human beings, and loved her with a devotion as pure as that which we would pay to angels." His latter years were embittered by a quarrel with Swift, resulting from an over- long visit of his at the deanery. Yet in November 1736, we have a very warm letter of his, dated from Quilca, to Mrs. Whiteway, enquiring after her health and that of the Dean. In it he deplores the Protestant exodus then going on from the north of Ireland to America — " the dismal circumstance of some thousands of families preparing to go oflF. . . Some squires will have their whole estates left to them- selves and their dogs." Sheridan died at Eathfarnham, loth October 3==' 1738, aged about 54- His marriage appears to have been moat unfortunate. In his vrill we
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find but five shillings bequeathed to hia " unkind wife, Elizabeth." Dean Swift, in his sketch of Sheridan, penned shortly after his death, speaks of her in the coarsest terms; and we must charitably suppose that nothing but approaching mental ill- ness induced him to reflect as he did upon Sheridan himself in the same document. There are no fewer than 142 references to Sheridan in the index to Scott's Life of Swift. The Earl of Orrery writes of him as "ill-starred, good-natured, improvident, . . a punster, a quibbler, a fiddler, and a wit. Not a day passed without a rebus, an anagram, or a madrigal. His pen and his fiddle-stick were in continual motion, and yet to little or no purpose." In 1725 Dr. Sheridan published a translation of the Philoctetes of Sophocles, and in 1739 ^^^ Satires of Persius in English verse. '^ "^
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Sheridan, Thomas, son of preceding, was born at Quilca, in the County of Cavan, in 1721. Swift was his godfather. He was educated at Westminster School and at Trinity College, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1739. After his father's death he remained without a profession, and was destitute of expectations. He went on the stage, and in January 1743 met with decided success in the character of " Eichard III." Next year he played at Covent-garden ; and in 1745, with Gar- rick, at Drury-lane. Eeturning to Dublin, he leased Smock-alley Theatre (upon the site of which the church of St. Michael and St. John is now built) and effected reforms in the decorum and moralities of the stage. In 1754 he was driven from this theatre by a popular tumult, conse- quent on his bravely protesting against insults offered by some of the audience to certain actresses. He visited Dublin again in 1756, and in 1759 made a lecturing tour on oratory (his favourite study), in London, Oxford, and Cambridge, also in Scotland. In 1760 he again ap- peared at Drury-lane ; but disagreements with Garrick led him to abandon the stage. On the accession of George III., a Civil List pension was granted him, whereupon Dr. Johnson exclaimed: " What, give him a pension — then I must give up mine." Johnson had a very low opinion of his talents, according to Boswell, who quotes him as saying : " Why, sir. Sherry is duU, naturally dull ; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what now see him. Such an excess of stupidity is not in nature. . . Sheridan cannot bear me. I bring his declamation to a point. I ask him a plain question, ' What I do you mean to teach 1 ' Besides, sir,
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