"The selfish vanity of the father appears in all these letters--his
sending the copy of a letter for his sister.--His object was the praise
of his own mode of education.--How much more noble the affection of
Morni in Ossian; 'Oh, that the name of Morni,' &c. &c. [Footnote: "Oh,
that the name of Morni were forgot among the people; that the heroes
would only say, 'Behold the father of Gaul!'" Sheridan applied this,
more than thirty years after, in talking of his own son, on the hustings
of Westminster, and said that, in like manner, he would ask no greater
distinction than for men to point at him and say, "There goes the father
of Tom Sheridan."]

"His frequent directions for constant employment entirely ill founded:
--a wise man is formed more by the action of his own thoughts than by
continually feeding it. 'Hurry,' he says, 'from play to study; never be
doing nothing'--I say, 'Frequently be unemployed; sit and think.'
_There are on every subject but a few leading and fixed ideas; their
tracks may be traced by your own genius as well as by reading_:--a
man of deep thought, who shall have accustomed himself to support or
attack all he has read, will soon find nothing new: thought is exercise,
and the mind, like the body, must not be wearied."

These last two sentences contain the secret of Sheridan's confidence in
his own powers. His subsequent success bore him out in the opinions he
thus early expressed, and might even have persuaded him that it was in
consequence, not in spite, of his want of cultivation that he succeeded.

On the 17th of January, 1775, the comedy of The Rivals was brought out
at Covent-Garden, and the following was the cast of the characters on
the first night:--