that I did not keep a copy of them. Milton, you may remember, recommends
what I attempted.

"I saw much of Sheridan's father after the death of Sumner, and after my
own removal from Harrow to Stanmer. I respected him,--he really liked
me, and did me some important services,--but I never met him and Richard
together. I often inquired about Richard, and, from the father's
answers, found they were not upon good terms,--but neither he nor I ever
spoke of his son's talents but in terms of the highest praise." In a
subsequent letter Dr. Parr says: "I referred you to a passage in the
Gentleman's Magazine, where I am represented as discovering and
encouraging in Richard Sheridan those intellectual powers which had not
been discovered and encouraged by Sumner. But the statement is
incorrect. We both of us discovered talents, which neither of us could
bring into action while Sheridan was a school-boy. He gave us few
opportunities of praise in the course of his school business, and yet he
was well aware that we thought highly of him, and anxiously wished more
to be done by him than he was disposed to do.

"I once or twice met his mother,--she was quite celestial. Both her
virtues and her genius were highly esteemed by Robert Sumner. I know not
whether Tom Sheridan found Richard tractable in the art of speaking,--
and, upon such a subject, indolence or indifference would have been
resented by the father as crimes quite inexpiable. One of Richard's
sisters now and then visited Harrow, and well do I remember that, in the
house where I lodged, she triumphantly repeated Dryden's Ode upon St.
Cecilia's Day, according to the instruction given to her by her father.
Take a sample:

_None_ but the brave,