ed his predecessors of their
ideas, with as much skill and effrontery as he did his contemporaries
of their money. It was his ambition to appear indolent; but he was, in
fact, particularly, though not regularly laborious. The most striking
parts of his best speeches were written and rewritten, on separate
slips of paper, and, in many cases, laid by for years, before they
were spoken. He not only elaborately polished his good ideas, but,
when they were finished, waited patiently, until an opportunity
occurred of uttering them with the best effect. Moore states, that
the only time he could have had for the pre-arrangement of his
conceptions, must have been during the many hours of the day which he
passed in bed; when, frequently, while the world gave him credit for
being asleep, he was employed in laying the frame-work of his wit and
eloquence for the evening.

"Like that of his great political rival, Pitt, his eloquence required
the stimulus of the bottle. Port was his favourite wine; it quickened,
he said, the circulation and the fancy together; adding, that he
seldom spoke to his satisfaction until after he had taken a couple of
bottles. Arthur O'Leary used to remark, that, like a porter, he never
was steady unless he had a load on his head.

"He also needed the excitement of wine when engaged in composition.
'If an idea be reluctant,' he would sometimes say, 'a glass of port
ripens it, and it bursts forth; if it come freely, a glass of port is
a glorious reward for it.' He usually wrote at night, with several
candles burning around him.

"The most serious appointments were, to him, matters of no importance.
After promising to attend the funeral of his friend Richardson, he
arrived at the church after the conclusion of the burial service;
which, however, to their mutual disgrace, he prevailed on the
clergyman to repeat. But, notwithstanding his liability to the charge
of desecration, even in more than one instance, he professed, and it
is but charitable to presume that he felt, in his better moments, a
deep sense of the worth of piety. He had ever considered, he said,
a deliberate disposition to make proselytes in infidelity, as an
unaccountable depravity, a brutal outrage, the motive for which he had
never been able to trace or conceive.

"Sheridan enjoyed a distinguished reputation for colloquial wit. From
among the best of the occasional dicta, &c. attributed to him, the
following are selected:--

"An elderly