l admit that a man has a right to take his wine by his own
fireside.' But Sheridan was only drowning care, not disregarding it. The
event was really too much for him, though perhaps he did not realize the
extent of its effect at the time. In a word, all he had in the world
went with the theatre. Nothing was left either for him or the principal
shareholders. Yet he bore it all with fortitude, till he heard that the
harpsichord, on which his first wife was wont to play, was gone too.
Then he burst into tears.

This fire was the opening of the shaft down which the great man sank
rapidly. While his fortunes kept up, his spirits were not completely
exhausted. He drank much, but as an indulgence rather than as a relief.
Now it was by wine alone that he could even raise himself to the common
requirements of conversation. He is described, _before_ dinner, as
depressed, nervous, and dull; _after_ dinner only did the old fire break
out, the old wit blaze up, and Dick Sheridan was Dick Sheridan once
more. He was, in fact, fearfully oppressed by the long-accumulated and
never-to-be-wiped-off debts, for which he was now daily pressed. In
quitting Parliament he resigned his sanctuary, and left himself an easy
prey to the Jews and Gentiles, whom he had so long dodged and deluded
with his ready ingenuity. Drury Lane, as we all know, was rebuilt, and
the birth of the new house heralded with a prologue by Byron, about as
good as the one in 'Rejected Addresses,' the cleverest parodies ever
written, and suggested by this very occasion. The building-committee
having advertised for a prize prologue Samuel Whitbread sent in his own
attempt, in which, as probably in a hundred others, the new theatre was
compared to a Phoenix rising out of the ashes of the old one. Sheridan
said Whitbread's description of a Phoenix was excellent, for it was
quite a _poulterer's description_.

This same Sam Whitbread was now to figure conspicuously in the life of
Mr. Richard B. Sheridan. The ex-proprietor was found to have an interest
in the theatre to the amount of L150,000--not a trifle to be despised;
but he was now past sixty, and it need excite no astonishment that, even
with all his liabilities, he was unwilling to begin again the cares of
management, or mismanagement which he had endured so many years. He sold
his interest, in which his son Tom was joined, for L60,000. This sum
would have cleared off his debts and left him a balance sufficient to
secure