523 SHERIDAN. purpose of learning how to get through the world, as his mother, in a letter to one of her correspondents, observing on the change, remarks, “As Dick probably may fall into a bustling life, we have a mind to accustom him early to shift for himself.” Dr. Parr, (we are told,) who was then one of the sub-preceptors, was the first who awakened in his young pupil any ambition to display the dawnings of his genius, as he was naturally indolent to excess, and careless about his own interests, yet always witty, facetious, and entertaining. Such, it may be justly remarked, was Sheridan at the early age of eighteen, and precisely the same was he till within a few months of his decease. Mr. Sheridan never was sent to the university, the derangement of h i s family affairs i s generally supposed t o have precluded the possibility o f such a measure. He quitted Harrow i n h i s eighteenth year; and, after having figured a t Bath a s the admirer o f the celebrated Miss Linley, and fought a couple o f duels o n her account, t o satisfy her family o f his serious intentions with regard t o study &c. h e entered himself a member o f the Middle Temple o n April 6th 1778, and they were married o n the 13th o f the same month; h e being i n his twenty-second, and she i n her nineteenth year. A t the time when this marriage took place, Mrs. She ridan was under a n engagement t o sing for the benefit o f the three choirs, a t their musical meeting, which was that year t o b e held a t Worcester. On this occasion she had been paid before-hand; but such was the pride o f her husband, that h e insisted upon having the money returned, accompanied b y a declaration, that Mrs. Sheridan would not appear any more i n public a s a singer. The intima tion very naturally astonished the directors, and they strongly represented the great loss which the charity must sustain i n the absence o f one upon whose powerful attrac tions they had relied a s certain o f drawing a crowded assembly. I n addition t o this unanswerable appeal, they remonstrated with n o less energy, though i n delicate terms, upon the justifiable grounds o f complaint which the sub scribers would have t o make upon a dereliction that did
