the public. Fox
was an enormous ower, his financial maxim being that a man need never
want money if he was willing to pay enough for it. Fox called the outer
room at Almack's, where he borrowed on occasions from Jew lenders at
exorbitant premiums, his "Jerusalem Chamber." Passion for play was his
great vice, and at a very early age it involved him in debt to an
enormous amount. It is stated by Gibbon that on one occasion Fox sat
playing at hazard for twenty hours in succession, losing L11,000. But
deep play was the vice of high life in those days, and cheating was not
unknown. Selwyn, alluding to Fox's losses at play, called him Charles
the Martyr.

Sheridan was the hero of debt. He lived on it. Though he received large
sums of money in one way or another, no one knew what became of it, for
he paid nobody. It seemed to melt away in his hands like snow in summer.
He spent his first wife's fortune of L1,600 in a six weeks' jaunt to
Bath. Necessity drove him to literature, and perhaps to the stimulus of
poverty we owe "The Rivals," and the dramas which succeeded it. With his
second wife he obtained a fortune of L5,000, and with L15,000 which he
realized by the sale of Drury Lane shares, he bought an estate in
Surrey, from which he was driven by debt and duns. The remainder of his
life was a series of shifts, sometimes brilliant, but oftener degrading,
to raise money and evade creditors. Taylor, of the Opera-house, used to
say that if he took off his hat to Sheridan in the street, it would cost
him fifty pounds; but if he stopped to speak to him, it would cost a
hundred.

One of Sheridan's creditors came for his money on horseback." That is a
nice mare," said Sheridan. "Do you think so?" "Yes, indeed;--how does
she trot?" The creditor, flattered, told him he should see, and
immediately put the mare at full trotting pace, on which Sheridan took
the opportunity of trotting round the nearest corner. His duns would
come in numbers each morning, to catch him before he went out. They were
shown into the rooms on each side of the entrance hall. When Sheridan
had breakfasted, he would come down, and ask, "Are those doors all shut,
John?" and on being assured that they were, he marched out deliberately
between them.

He was in debt all round--to his milkman, his grocer, his baker, and his
butcher. Sometimes Mrs. Sheridan would be kept waiting for an hour or
more while the servants were beating up the neighbourhood for coffee,
bu