ments of the modern stage. But, though styled an adaptation (Gosse, Introduction to Shirley, in Mermaid Series), it has little except the plot in common with the older play. The play was Sheil's most successful dramatic effort. For the copyright he received from Murray a hundred guineas, and his share from the theatre amounted to 400l. In September he visited Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Talma. Of his impressions of the great actor he subsequently gave an interesting account in the ‘New Monthly Magazine’ (July 1822). His next tragedy, ‘The Huguenot,’ was advertised for production at Covent Garden in the spring of 1820; but the marriage of Miss O'Neill caused it, greatly to his disappointment, to be postponed till 1822, when it failed from inadequate preparation. His ‘serious drama’ of ‘Montoni,’ performed for the first time on 3 May 1820, proved hardly more successful, and after three or four representations was withdrawn. He was more fortunate in the assistance he rendered John Banim [q. v.] in ‘Damon and Pythias;’ but the 100l. which he took as his share in the profits led to a disagreement and estrangement of many years between them.
Notwithstanding his reputation as a dramatic writer and his assiduous attendance at the Four Courts, Sheil's progress at the bar was slow. For this his adoption of the unpopular side on the veto question was undoubtedly largely responsible, and his irritation at the delay in conceding emancipation, owing, as he regarded it, to O'Connell's fatuous refusal to conciliate protestant opinion in the matter of securities, was intensified when the latter, in his annual address to the catholics of Ireland on 1 Jan. 1821, advised a suspension of the emancipation agitation in favour of parliamentary reform. Sheil, who saw his own prospects of advancement receding indefinitely, rushed into the fray with an angry counterblast, wherein, as he said, he trusted to ‘be able to supply any absence of comparative personal importance upon my part by the weight of argument and of fact.’ O'Connell replied to his ‘iambic rhapsodist’ in a strain of mingled banter and wrath. In the end Sheil returned to the completion of his new tragedy, an adaptation of Massinger's ‘Fatal Dowry.’ The play was subsequently performed at Drury Lane in the winter of 1824 and met with a cordial reception, but its withdrawal after the first night in consequence of Macready's illness damped the interest felt in its reproduction three months later. The visit of George IV to Ireland in the summer of 1821, followed by the appointment of Lord Wellesley as viceroy, helped, if it did nothing more, to effect a reconciliation among the catholics themselves, and at a meeting on 7 Jan. 1822 Sheil seconded an address moved by O'Connell congratulating the new viceroy and the country on his appointment. But the hopes they had both formed of a more liberal administration under Wellesley's auspices were disappointed; and a year later, on 12 May 1823, the Catholic Association came into existence. In the meanwhile there appeared the first of those well-known ‘Sketches of the Irish Bar’ which Sheil, in conjunction with his friend W. H. Curran, contributed to the ‘New Monthly Magazine.’ The series extended over several years, and, the articles being unsigned, the credit of their authorship was at the time generally but incorrectly ascribed to Sheil alone. Those which properly belonged to him, with others of a more general or political character, were after his death republished under the title ‘Sketches Legal and Political,’ and afford in a pleasant way considerable information regarding the chief actors and events of his time.
Convinced at last that nothing but extreme pressure would extort emancipation from parliament, Sheil joined heartily in O'Connell's agitation, and was one of the first to whom the latter expounded his scheme of a catholic rent. A petition to both houses of parliament drawn up by him, setting forth the manifold abuses in the administration of justice in Ireland, and adopted at a meeting of the association on 14 June 1823, was presented by Brougham, and in the course of the discussion that ensued Peel sarcastically described the language of it ‘as being more in the declamatory style of a condemned tragedy than of a grave representation to the Legislature.’ Sheil retorted with a reference to Peel's ‘plebeian arrogance.’
Early in 1825 O'Connell, Sheil, O'Gorman, and others, proceeded to London to protest against a bill that had been introduced for the suppression of the Catholic Association. Their efforts were unavailing, but their visit was not without a beneficial influence in promoting the progress of a catholic relief bill, which passed its third reading in the commons on 10 May, but was lost in the lords owing to the opposition of the Duke of York. Of their journey to London and their reception by the chiefs of the whig party Sheil, after his return to Ireland, published a graphic account in the ‘New Monthly Magazine.’ But his own examination before the committees of both houses contrasted unfavourably with O'Connell's; for
