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M. SHERIDAN in the Character of CATO. Eternity! thou pleasing dreadful Thought

English Language and Public Speaking to large and respectable audiences. I was often in his company, and heard him frequently expatiate upon Johnson's extraordinary knowledge, talents, and virtues, repeat his pointed sayings, describe his particularities, and boast of his being his guest sometimes till two or three in the morning. At his house I hoped to have many opportunities of seeing the sage, as Mr. Sheridan obligingly assured me I should not be disappointed.

When I returned to London in the end of 1762, to my surprise and regret I found an irreconcileable difference had taken place between Johnson and Sheridan. A pension of two hundred pounds a year had been given to Sheridan. Johnson, who, as has been already mentioned, thought slightingly of Sheridan's art, upon hearing that he was also pensioned, exclaimed, "What! have they given him a pension? Then it is time for me to give up mine." Whether this proceeded from a momentary indignation, as if it were an affront to his exalted merit that a player should be rewarded in the same manner with him, or was the sudden effect of a fit of peevishness, it was unluckily said, and, indeed, cannot be justified. Mr. Sheridan's pension was granted to him, not as a player, but as a sufferer in the cause of government, when he was manager of the Theatre Royal in Ireland, when parties ran high in 1753. (1) And it must

(1) Boswell, in his tenderness to the amour propre of Dr. Johnson, cannot bear to admit that Sheridan's literary character had any thing to do with the pension, and no doubt he endeavoured to soften Johnson's resentment by giving, as he does in the above passage, this favour a political colour; but there

also be allowed that he was a man of literature, and had considerably improved the arts of reading and speaking with distinctness and propriety.

Besides, Johnson should have recollected that Mr. Sheridan taught pronunciation to Mr. Alexander Wedderburne, whose sister was married to Sir Harry Erskine, an intimate friend of Lord Bute, who was the favourite of the king; and surely the most outrageous Whig will not maintain, that, whatever ought to be the principle in the disposal of offices, a pension ought never to be granted from any bias of court connection. Mr. Macklin, indeed, shared with Mr. Sheridan the honour of instructing Mr. Wedderburne (1); and though it was too late in life

seems no reason to believe that Sheridan's pension was given to him as a sufferer by a playhouse riot. It was probably granted (et hinc illa lacryma) on the same, motive as Johnson's own, namely, the desire of the King and Lord Bute to distinguish the commencement of the new reign by the patronage of literature. Indeed, this is rendered almost certain by various passages of the letters of Mrs. Sheridan to Mr. Whyte: e. g. "London, Nov. 29. 1762. Mr. Sheridan is now, as I mentioned to you formerly, busied in the English Dictionary, which he is encouraged to pursue with the more alacrity as his Majesty has vouchsafed him such a mark of royal favour. I suppose you have heard that he has granted him a pension of 200l. a year, merely as an encouragement to his undertaking, and this without solicitation, which makes it the more valuable. -White's Misc. Nova, p. 104. 107. 111.- CROKER. [Perhaps Johnson may have been a little annoyed at the notion of Sheridan's Dictionary being encouraged in the same way in which his own had been rewarded.]

(1) This is an odd coincidence. A Scotchman who wishes to learn a pure English pronunciation, employs one preceptor who happens to be an Irishman, and afterwards another, likewise an Irishman. -and this Irish-taught Scot becomes -and mainly by one of the chief ornaments of the English senate, and the first subject in the British empire. -C.

his oratory

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Engravd by I. Corner from a Model by M.Lochee, Lossession of M. Machlin.

Publish'd by J.Sewell 32 Cornhill,1 Dec 1787.

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