comfort for his old age. But it was out of the question that any
money matters should go right with Dick Sheridan. Of the rights and
wrongs of the quarrel between him and Whitbread, who was the chairman of
the committee for building the new theatre, I do not pretend to form an
opinion. Sheridan was not naturally mean, though he descended to
meanness when hard pressed--what man of his stamp does not? Whitbread
was truly friendly to him for a time. Sheridan was always complaining
that he was sued for debts he did not owe, and kept out of many that
were due to him. Whitbread knew his man well, and if he withheld what
was owing to him, may be excused on the ground of real friendship. All I
know is, that Sheridan and Whitbread quarrelled; that the former did
not, or affirmed that he did not, receive the full amount of his claim
on the property, and that, when what he had received was paid over to
his principal creditors, there was little or nothing left for my lord to
spend in banquets to parliamentary friends and jorums of brandy in small
coffee-houses.

Because a man is a genius, he is not of necessity an upright, honest,
ill-used, oppressed, and cruelly-entreated man. Genius plays the fool
wittingly, and often enough quite knowingly, with its own interests. It
is its privilege to do so, and no one has a right to complain. But then
Genius ought to hold its tongue, and not make itself out a martyr, when
it has had the dubious glory of defying common-sense. If Genius despises
gold, well and good, but when he has spurned it, he should not whine out
that he is wrongfully kept from it. Poor Sheridan may or may not have
been right in the Whitbread quarrel; he has had his defenders, and I am
not ambitious of being numbered among them; but whatever were now his
troubles were brought on by his own disregard of all that was right and
beautiful in conduct. If he went down to the grave a pauper and a
debtor, he had made his own bed, and in it he was to lie.

Lie he did, wretchedly, on the most unhappy bed that old age ever lay
in. There is little more of importance to chronicle of his latter days.
The retribution came on slowly but terribly. The career of a ruined man
is not a pleasant topic to dwell upon, and I leave Sheridan's misery for
Mr. J. B. Gough to whine and roar over when he wants a shocking example.
Sheridan might have earned many a crown in that capacity, if
temperance-oratory had been the passion of the day. Debt, diseas