Fred. Every 1839 SHERIDANIANA; OR, ANECDOTES OF THE LIFE RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN; HIS TABLE-TAL K, AND BON MOTS. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. NOTICE. THE title of the following Volume sufficiently explains its object: it is intended to comprehend all that is most interesting and piquant about the late RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN - a person so eminently qualified to form the subject of such a work, that it seems somewhat singular that the present should be the first collection of SHERIDANIANA. In the selection of materials for this Volume, the Editor has not only carefully searched every work in which he was likely to find any reliques of Sheridan, in order to bring together in one the essence of many expensive volumes, and extracted from his parliamentary speeches such fragments of wit and eloquence as could, without injury to their lustre, bear, as it were, a separate setting, but he has collected many brilliant sayings of that eminent person, which, like the congealed words in Rabelais, were floating about unheard in society, till a late Life of Sheridan called them into voice. Had Mr. Moore's work at all answered the expectations of the admirers of wit and of Sheridan, who looked on the annonce of his life by Mr. Moore, as a promise of the opening of a rich mine of wit, the present Volume would not have been published. When the "Life" appeared, therefore, the disappointment was propor tionate to the expectation-the anecdotes and the bons mots were equally few and familiarand, throughout the work, Mr. Moore seems to be far more anxious to prove that he can say fine things, than to show that Sheridan was in the habit of saying them. The Sheridaniana are intended to supply this deficiency in Mr. Moore's work. In the selection of anecdotes, the Editor has not confined himself to such as do exclusive honour to Sheridan; but among those of another description, there will be found little that may not be charitably ascribed rather to a reckless gaiety of disposition, than to looseness of principle. Many of the anecdotes prove the tenderness of his heart to have been as remarkable as the brilliancy of his imagination. |