SHERIDAN, Thomas, author of the General Dictionary of the English Language, was the son of Dr Sheridan, and the father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and was born at Quilca, in Ireland, the residence of Dean Swift, in 1721. He was treated with uniform kindness by the great satirist, who was his godfather, and who showed him what tenderness he could during his life. He received his early education in his father's house, and was subsequently sent to Westminster, till the funds failed, when he was compelled again to retrace his steps. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his degree. On his father's death, in 1738, he found himself suddenly unprovided for. Having caught up, or having been born with, a grand idea of the extraordinary moral effects to be accomplished by the use of the oratorical art, he resolved to devote his life to its exposition. As the first step in his great vocation, he entered a theatre in Smock Alley, where he personated Richard III., "with the greatest encouragement," in January 1743. Next year he went to London, to reap new laurels at Covent Garden, and in 1745 he was set up as a rival to Garrick, who could brook no competitor. Sheridan found it to be for his interest to return to the Irish metropolis, whose inhabitants had not yet forgotten the
enthusiastic orator of a few years ago. Here he became manager of the theatre, and during the ensuing eight years of his superintendence, the metropolitan stage seems to have risen considerably in respectability. At an unlucky hour he attempted to humour the political tastes of the public by playing Miller's Mahomet. This took exceedingly well. But where was it to end? Like a tiger that has tasted blood, the fierce mob became restless and wild, and insisted upon its accustomed treat. The manager said gravely that there must be an end to these brawls, when the audience rose, and, in its fury, slashed the scenery with sword-blades, tore up the benches and boxes, and ended by totally despoiling the building. Thus ended Sheridan's first school of oratory. In 1751 appeared his greatest contribution to the art of oratory, for this was the year in which his illustrious son, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was born. His faith in the omnipotence of this ancient art continued. He published a plan for an academy to educate "youth in every qualification necessary for a gentleman," and in which oratory was to be the beginning, middle, and end of their scholastic accomplishments. The orator gave three separate orations to prove the quality of the future superintendent, and to illustrate the vital force of his great discovery. The audience shrugged their shoulders, and gave the conduct of their institution into other hands.
Sheridan was not to be daunted. In 1759 he was lecturing the English on his favourite hobby. He had published an essay on British Education: the source of the disorders in Great Britain, 1755, in which he humbly attempted to show the British public, that the source of all their evils, both public and private, was to be traced to a neglect of the ancient and venerable art of public speaking. The British public seem temporarily to have been taken by it. Sheridan lectured himself into an M.A. at Cambridge, and achieved other wonders equally notable by the fascination of his speech at London and Oxford. In 1760 he again tried Drury Lane, but Garrick still recollected his old affront, and Sheridan had to go about his business. He published A Course of Lectures on Elocution in 1762, fraught with the old burden. George III. granted him a pension, on which he might have practised oratory to the great edification of the British people and the no small delight of himself; but some busybody whispered the fact to Samuel Johnson, who blustered out, in his violent way, "What, give him a pension! then I must give up mine." On this coming to Sheridan's ears it wounded him mightily; but he had recourse again to oratory as his panacea. Next he moved northward, to try the effect of his eloquence upon the cool heads of the Scottish metropolis. The northern worthies seem to have been moved by the force of his persuasive tongue. Blair, Ferguson, and Robertson were enrolled as directors of a society for the promotion of public speaking. How long this Irish importation flourished in Edinburgh does not appear. Moving south, he published in 1769 his Plan of Education for the Young Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain. Ireland found herself again excluded from the benevolent endeavours of this reforming educationist. He dedicated, in his loftiest manner, this small work to the king, observing at the same time, that "if the design be not executed by myself, it never will be by any other hand." It must have gratified his majesty to find so devoted a subject; but nothing seems to have come out of all this kneeling and prostration at the foot of the throne. He continued to lecture and vend sarcasms against the miserable taste of the age, when America suddenly declared her independence. He then informed his audience that he had come to the resolution of "benefiting the new world with the advantages ungratefully neglected by my own country." Sheridan subsequently performed at the Haymarket and at Covent Garden, up to 1776; and on Garrick's retirement from Drury Lane he was appointed
Sherif-ed-Deen-Yezdi
Sherlock.
manager. He held this post for the next three years. He published, on his retirement, his Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vols. 1780; and an edition of Swift's works, in 17 vols. 1784, with a Life of Swift prefixed, a lumbering work, which had better not have been written. He visited Ireland in 1786, and returned to England, where he died at Margate, on the 14th of August 1788, in his sixty-seventh year. There is ascribed to Sheridan a farce called Captain O'Blunder.