Poor corpse! was it worth L500--diseased, rotting as it was, and about
to be given for nothing to mother earth? Was it worth the pomp of the
splendid funeral and the grand hypocrisy of grief with which it was
borne to Westminster Abbey? Was not rather the wretched old man, while
he yet struggled on in life, worth this outlay, worth this show of
sympathy? Folly; not folly only--but a lie! What recked the dead of the
four noble pall-bearers--the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale,
Earl Mulgrave, and the Bishop of London? What good was it to him to be
followed by two royal highnesses--the Dukes of York and Sussex--by two
marquises, seven earls, three viscounts, five lords, a Canning, a lord
mayor, and a whole regiment of honourables and right honourables, who
now wore the livery of grief, when they had let him die in debt, in
want, and in misery? Far more, if the dead could feel, must he have been
grateful for the honester tears of those two untitled men, who had
really befriended him to the last hour and never abandoned him, Mr.
Rogers and Dr. Bain. But peace; let him pass with nodding plumes and
well-dyed horses to the great Walhalla, and amid the dust of many a poet
let the poet's dust find rest and honour, secure at last from the hand
of the bailiff. There was but one nook unoccupied in Poet's Corner, and
there they laid him. A simple marble was afforded by another friend
without a title--Peter Moore.

To a life like Sheridan's it is almost impossible to do justice in so
narrow a space as I have here. He is one of those men who, not to be
made out a whit better or worse than they are, demand a careful
investigation of all their actions, or reported actions--a careful
sifting of all the evidence for or against them, and a careful weeding
of all the anecdotes told of them. This requires a separate biography.
To give a general idea of the man, we must be content to give that which
he inspired in a general acquaintance. Many of his 'mots,' and more of
the stories about him, may have been invented for him, but they would
scarcely have been fixed on Sheridan, if they had not fitted more or
less his character: I have therefore given them. I might have given a
hundred more, but I have let alone those anecdotes which did not seem to
illustrate the character of the man. Many another good story is told of
him, and we must content ourselves with one or two. Take one that is
characteristic of his love of fun.

Sheridan is a