the _proper stage,_
they would, no doubt, receive what the hon. gentleman's abilities always
did receive, the plaudits of the audience; and it would be his fortune
_sui plausu gaudere theatri_. But this was not the proper scene for the
exhibition of those elegancies.' This was vulgar in Pitt, and probably
every one felt so. But Sheridan rose, cool and collected, and quietly
replied:--

'On the particular sort of personality which the right hon. gentleman
has thought proper to make use of, I need not make any comment. The
propriety, the taste, the gentlemanly point of it, must have been
obvious to the House. But let me assure the right hon. gentleman that I
do now, and will at any time he chooses to repeat this sort of allusion,
meet it with the most sincere good humour. Nay, I will say more:
flattered and encouraged by the right hon. gentleman's panegyric on my
talents, if ever I again engage in the compositions he alludes to, I may
be tempted to an act of presumption--to attempt an improvement on one of
Ben Jonson's best characters, the character of the _Angry Boy_, in the
"Alchemist."'

The fury of Pitt, contrasted with the coolness of the man he had so
shamefully attacked, made this sally irresistible, and from that time
neither 'the angry boy' himself, nor any of his colleagues, were anxious
to twit Sheridan on his dramatic pursuits.

Pitt wanted to lay a tax on every horse that started in a race. Lord
Surry, a _turfish_ individual of the day, proposed one of five pounds on
the winner. Sheridan, rising, told his lordship that the next time he
visited Newmarket he would probably be greeted with the line:--

'Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold--.'

Lord Rolie, the butt of the Opposition, who had attacked him in the
famous satire, 'The Rolliad,' so popular that it went through twenty-two
editions in twenty-seven years, accused Sheridan of inflammatory
speeches among the operatives of the northern counties on the cotton
question. Sheridan retorted by saying that he believed Lord Rolle must
refer to 'Compositions less prosaic, but more popular' (meaning the
'Rolliad'), and thus successfully turned the laugh against him.

It was Grattan, I think, who said, 'When I can't talk sense, I talk
metaphor.' Sheridan often talked metaphor, though he sometimes mingled
it with sense. His famous speech about the Begums of Oude is full of it,
but we have one or two instances before that. Thus on the Duke of
Richmond's report a