want, and in misery? Far more, if the dead could feel, must he have been
grateful for the honester tears of those two untitled men, who had
really befriended him to the last hour and never abandoned him, Mr.
Rogers and Dr. Bain. But peace; let him pass with nodding plumes and
well-dyed horses to the great Walhalla, and amid the dust of many a poet
let the poet's dust find rest and honour, secure at last from the hand
of the bailiff. There was but one nook unoccupied in Poet's Corner, and
there they laid him. A simple marble was afforded by another friend
without a title--Peter Moore.

To a life like Sheridan's it is almost impossible to do justice in so
narrow a space as I have here. He is one of those men who, not to be
made out a whit better or worse than they are, demand a careful
investigation of all their actions, or reported actions--a careful
sifting of all the evidence for or against them, and a careful weeding
of all the anecdotes told of them. This requires a separate biography.
To give a general idea of the man, we must be content to give that which
he inspired in a general acquaintance. Many of his 'mots,' and more of
the stories about him, may have been invented for him, but they would
scarcely have been fixed on Sheridan, if they had not fitted more or
less his character: I have therefore given them. I might have given a
hundred more, but I have let alone those anecdotes which did not seem to
illustrate the character of the man. Many another good story is told of
him, and we must content ourselves with one or two. Take one that is
characteristic of his love of fun.

Sheridan is accosted by an elderly gentleman, who has forgotten the name
of a street to which he wants to go, and who informs him precisely that
it is an out-of-the-way name.