The Critic was produced on Oct. 29, 1779, The School for Scandal meantime continuing to draw larger houses than any other play every time it was put on the stage. In The Critic the laughable infirmities of authors, actors, patrons and audience are touched off with the lightest of hands ; the fun is directed, not at individuals, but at absurdities that grow naturally out of the circumstances of the stage. It seems that he had accumulated notes for another comedy to be called Affectation, but his only other play was Pizarro, produced in 1799—a tragedy in which he made liberal use of the arts ridiculed in the person of Mr. Puff. He also revised for the stage Benjamin Thompson's translation, The Stranger, of Kotzebue's Menschenhass and Reue.
He entered parliament for Stafford in 1780, as the ally of Charles James Fox. He is said to have paid the burgesses five guineas each for the honour of representing them. His first speech in parliament was to defend himself against the charge of bribery, and was well received. Congress recognized his services in opposing the war in America by offering him a gift of 120,00o which, however, he refused. Under the wing of Fox he filled subordinate offices in the short-lived ministries of 1782 and 1783. He was under-secretary for foreign affairs in the Rockingham ministry, and a secretary of the treasury in the Coalition ministry. In those heated days of parliamentary strife he was almost the only man of mark that was never called out, and yet he had no match in the weapon of ridicule.
Sheridan found his great opportunity in the impeachment of Warren Hastings. His speeches were by the unanimous acknowl edgment of his contemporaries among the greatest delivered in that generation of great orators. The first was on Feb. 7, 1787, on the charges brought against Hastings with regard to the begums or princesses of Oude. Sheridan spoke for more than five hours, and the effect was such that it was unanimously agreed to post pone the final decision till the House should be in a calmer mood. Of this, and of his last great speech on the subject in 1794, only brief abstracts have been preserved ; but the second, the four days' speech delivered in his capacity of manager of the trial, in Westminster Hall, on the occasion so brilliantly described by Macaulay, is given in Gurney's verbatim reports of the speeches on both sides at the trial, published at Sir G. Cornewall Lewis's instigation in 1859. There are passages of gaudy rhetoric, loose ornament and declamatory hyperbole ; but the strong common sense, close argumentative force and masterly presentation of telling facts enable us to understand the impression produced by the speech at the time.
From the time of the break-up of the Whig party on the seces sion of Burke he was more or less an "independent member," and his isolation was complete after the death of Fox. When Burke denounced the French Revolution, Sheridan joined with Fox in vindicating the principle of non-intervention. But when it became apparent that France under Napoleon would interfere with the affairs of its neighbours, he employed his eloquence in denounc ing Napoleon and urging the prosecution of the war. One of his most celebrated speeches was delivered in support of strong measures against the mutineers at the Nore. He was one of the few members who actively opposed the union of the English and Irish parliaments. When the Whigs came into power in i8o6 Sheridan was appointed treasurer of the navy, and became a mem ber of the Privy Council. After Fox's death he succeeded his chief in the representation of Westminster, and aspired to succeed him as leader of the party, but this claim was not allowed, and thenceforward Sheridan fought for his own hand. When the
prince became regent in 1811 Sheridan's private influence with him helped to exclude the Whigs from power. Throughout his parliamentary career Sheridan was one of the boon companions of the prince, and his champion in parliament in some dubious matters of payment of debts. But he always resented any impu tation that he was the prince's confidential adviser or mouthpiece. A certain proud and sensitive independence was one of the most marked features in his parliamentary career.
His last years were harassed by debt and disappointment. At the general election of 1807 he stood again for Westminster and was defeated, but was returned as member for Ilchester, at the expense apparently of the prince of Wales. In 1812 he failed to secure a seat at Stafford. As a member of parliament he had been safe against arrest for debt, but now his creditors closed in upon him. It may be regarded as certain, however, that the descrip tion of the utter destitution of the last weeks of his life given in the Croker Papers (i. pp. ed. L. J. Jennings) is untrue. It was not without reason that his grand-daughter Mrs. Norton denounced the unfairness of judging the real man from unauthen ticated stories ; and against reports of his reckless management of his affairs we must set the facts that he had no source of income but Drury Lane theatre, that he bore from it for thirty years all the expenses of a fashionable life, and that the theatre was twice rebuilt during his proprietorship. Enough was lost in this way to account ten times over for all his debts. The records of his wild bets in the betting book of Brooks's Club date from the years after the loss, in 1792, of his first wife, to whom he was devotedly attached. He married again in 1795, his second wife being Esther Jane, daughter of Newton Ogle, dean of Win chester. He died on July 7, 1816, and was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey.
Sheridan's only son by his first marriage, THOMAS SHERIDAN (1775-1817), was a poet of some merit. He became colonial treasurer at the Cape of Good Hope.
Sanders in the "Great Writers" series and W. Fraser Rae, Sheridan: a Biography (2 vols., 1896). The Life of R. B. Sheridan by Walter Sichel (1909) is the best account now available.
Among the numerous modern editions of Sheridan's plays, of which only The Rivals was published by the dramatist himself, may be men tioned: Sheridan's Plays now printed as he wrote them (1902), edited by W. Fraser Rae; The Plays of R. B. Sheridan (Iwo), edited by A. W. Pollard ; and Sheridan's Comedies (Boston, U.S.A., 1885) , with a valuable introduction by Brander Matthews. For further details consult the bibliography by J. P. Anderson in the Life by Lloyd C. Sanders.