Whenever the noble lord found himself closely pressed in argument, or fact, it was his known practice to get rid of the question by a joke. His manner was no less curious than his matter; when he was half asleep, or seemingly quite asleep, he collected a store of wit and humour, from Æsop, Phædrus, or Joe Miller, or some other book equally distinguished for such species of drollery; and, instead of reasoning, was sure to treat the House with a laugh (_The Parliamentary History of England ... to the Year 1803_ [compiled by William Cobbett], 1806-20, XIX, 1388). [23] John Taylor, _Records of My Life_, 1832, I, 144. [24] _Last Journals_, II, 206. [25] _Altercation; Being the Substance of a Debate ... on a Motion to Censure the Pamphlet of Anticipation_ [1778], p. 10; _The Pamphleteer_, XIX, 1822, 310. [26] MS. note in Horace Walpole’s copy of _Anticipation_. [27] Thomas Moore, _Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence_, ed. Lord John Russell, 1853-56, IV, 34. [28] “Reminiscences.—No. IV. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, &c.,” _Blackwood’s Magazine_, XX, 209. [29] _The Royal Gazette_, 17 March 1779. [30] Though Johnson had disapproved of _The Project_, he thought _Anticipation_ “a mighty fine thing.” So Boswell told Tickell at a dinner-party in April 1779 (_Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle_, ed. Geoffrey Scott and F. A. Pottle, Mount Vernon, N.Y., 1928-34, XIII, 232). [31] XLVII, 1778, 566. [32] Garrick, _Private Correspondence_, II, 322-323. [33] _Biographia Dramatica_, I, 714. [34] _Hobby-Horses. Read at Batheaston_, 1780, pp. 13-14. [35] Ernest Law, _The History of Hampton Court Palace_, 1890-91, III, 318, 464. [36] W. Fraser Rae, _Sheridan_, New York, 1896, I, 357. [37] Walter Sichel, _Sheridan_, 1909, I, 442n. [38] Clementina Black, _The Linleys of Bath_, 1911, p. 162. [39] Thomas Moore, _Memoirs of ... Sheridan_, 2nd ed., 1825, II, 62. [40] See Romney’s diary, as given in Humphry Ward and W. Roberts, _Romney_, 1904, II, 157-158. Romney painted three portraits of the second Mrs. Tickell, the best-known of which is reproduced in Sichel’s _Sheridan_, II, facing p. 264. [41] British Museum Add. MSS. 29,194, f. 152; 29,173, f. 44. [42] I, 13. There is a circumstantial account of Tickell’s death and the conduct of his widow in [William Smyth] _Memoir of Mr. Sheridan_, Leeds, 1840, pp. 53-55. [43] _The London Magazine_, XLVII, 1778, 566. [44] _The Croker Papers_, ed. L. J. Jennings, 1884, I, 245-246. [Illustration: _Reduced from the original by one third_