powers, and knows that they must show themselves sooner or later.
Sheridan found himself labouring under the same natural obstacles as
Demosthenes--though in a less degree--a thick and disagreeable tone of
voice; but we do not find in the indolent but gifted Englishman that
admirable perseverance, that conquering zeal, which enabled the Athenian
to turn these very impediments to his own advantage. He did, indeed,
prepare his speeches, and at times had fits of that same diligence which
he had displayed in the preparation of 'The School for Scandal;' but his
indolent, self-indulgent mode of life left him no time for such steady
devotion to oratory as might have made him the finest speaker of his
age, for perhaps his natural abilities were greater than those of Pitt,
Fox, or even Burke, though his education was inferior to that of those
two statesmen.

From this time Sheridan's life had two phases--that of a politician, and
that of a man of the world. With the former, we have nothing to do in
such a memoir as this, and indeed it is difficult to say whether it was
in oratory, the drama, or wit that he gained the greatest celebrity.
There is, however, some difference between the three capacities. On the
mimic stage, and on the stage of the country, his fame rested on a very
few grand outbursts--some matured, prepared, deliberated--others
spontaneous. He left only three great comedies, and perhaps we may say
only one really grand. In the same way he made only two great speeches,
or perhaps we may say only one. His wit on the other hand--though that
too is said to have been studied--was the constant accompaniment of his
daily life, and Sheridan has not left two or three celebrated bon-mots,
but a hundred.

But even in his political career his wit, which must then have been
spontaneous, won him almost as much fame as his eloquence, which he
seems to have reserved for great occasions. He was the wit of the House.
Wit, ridicule, satire, quiet, cool, and easy sneers, always made in good
temper, and always therefore the more bitter, were his weapons, and they
struck with unerring accuracy. At that time--nor at that time only--the
'Den of Thieves,' as Cobbett called our senate, was a cockpit as vulgar
and personal as the present Congress of the United States. Party-spirit
meant more than it has ever done since, and scarcely less than it had
meant when the throne itself was the stake for which parties played some
forty years befor