Sheridaniana: Or, Anecdotes of the Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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H. Colburn, 1826 - 334 pages

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Page 64 - ... duodecimo phaeton, she desired me to write some verses on her ponies; upon which, I took out my pocketbook, and in one moment produced the following : " Sure never were seen two such beautiful ponies ; Other horses are clowns, but these macaronies : To give them this title I'm sure can't be wrong, Their legs are so slim, and their tails are so long.
Page 95 - Hasting's ambition to the simple steadiness of genuine magnanimity. In his mind all was shuffling, ambiguous, dark, insidious, and little : nothing simple, nothing unmixed : all affected plainness, and actual dissimulation ; — a heterogeneous mass of contradictory qualities ; with nothing great but his crimes ; and even those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster.
Page 229 - Opera), the best farce (the Critic— it is only too good for a farce), and the best Address (Monologue on Garrick), and, to crown all, delivered the very best Oration (the famous Begum Speech) ever conceived or heard in this country.
Page 85 - No man admired more than he did the abilities of that Right Honourable Gentlemen, the elegant sallies of his thought, the gay effusions of his fancy, his dramatic turns and his epigrammatic...
Page 63 - Then, behind, all my hair is done up in a plat, And so, like a cornet's, tuck'd under my hat. Then I mount on my palfrey as gay as a lark, And, follow'd by John, take the dust * in High Park. In the way I am met by some smart macaroni, Who rides by my side on a little bay pony — No sturdy Hibernian, with shoulders so wide, But as taper and slim as the ponies they ride ; Their legs are as slim, and their shoulders no wider...
Page 196 - Paull was his opponent, he found himself in company with two Westminster electors. In the course of conversation one of them asked the other to whom he meant to give his vote ? When his friend replied, " To Paull, certainly; for though I think him but a shabby sort of fellow, I would vote for any one rather than that rascal Sheridan!" " Do you know Sheridan ?" asked the stranger. " Not I, Sir," answered the gentleman, " nor should I wish to know him.
Page 62 - Cheeks of rose, untouch'd by art? I will own the colour true, When yielding blushes aid their hue. Is her hand so soft and pure? I must press it, to be sure ; Nor can I be certain then. Till it, grateful, press again. Must I, with attentive eye, Watch her heaving bosom sigh? I will do so, when I see That heaving bosom sigh for me.
Page 174 - ... incredible as it may appear, until the end of the fourth act, neither Mrs. Siddons, nor Charles Kemble, nor Barrymore, had all their speeches for the fifth ? Mr. Sheridan was up-stairs in the prompter's room...
Page 2 - With the aid of a scribe I sit down to fulfil my promise about Mr. Sheridan. There was little in his boyhood worth communication. He was inferior to many of his school-fellows in the ordinary business of a school, and I do not remember any one instance in which he distinguished himself by Latin or English composition, in prose or verse.* Nathaniel Halhcd, one of his school-fellows, wrote well in Latin and Greek.
Page 93 - The late Mr. Logan, well known for his literary efforts, and author of a most masterly defence of Mr. Hastings, went that day to the House of Commons, prepossessed for the accused and against his accuser. At the expiration of the first hour he said to a friend, All this is declamatory assertion without proof:' — when the second was finished, 'This is a most wonderful oration:' — at the close of the third, 'Mr.

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