Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. By Lloyd C. Sanders. (Walter
Scott.)—This little volume, like so many of its fellows, is written rather to fill a place in the " Great Writers Series," than because the biographer has anything specially worth saying about his subject. Mr. Sanders, however, has given us a very straightforward and businesslike piece of work, and has devoted more attention to verifying the leading facts of Sheridan's life than to repeating the more or less apocryphal anecdotes that have gathered about his name. His estimate of the dramatist, the actor, and the politician, leaves little to desire. In judging Sheridan as a man, his biographers have boon too fond of seizing the opportunity of enforcing easy and obvious moral lessons. This is not always safe, and one of them having begun a short sermon on the evils of improvident marriages, had to stop short with the confession that Sheridan's first marriage was as happy as it was improvident. Mr. Sanders, possibly under the influence of reaction, is rather apt to go to the other extreme, where lenience verges upon laxity. Too much, no doubt, is often made of the misery of Sheridan's closing years, and in dilating on his recklessness and improvidence, it is forgotten that for over thirty years he made a handsome income out of Drury Lane Theatre, and that he only wont under after it was burnt down. Mr. Sanders accepts the Regent's version of his rupture with Sheridan, as told in the " Croker Papers," that Sheridan obtained £4,000 from him to contest Wooten Bassett, and then allowed his solicitor to spend the money in paying debts. We may hope that in this statement the speaker showed no more than his usual accuracy. Mrs. Norton, who complained that there was no good Life of her father in existence, never carried out her intention of supplying the want. The omission cannot now be remedied, but probably we know all that is best Worth knowing about him.
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