Sheridan came naturally by his aptitude for the theatre. His father was an actor and declamation master and had been manager of the Theatre Royal in Dublin. His mother had written novels and plays. Her unfinished comedy, “A Journey to Bath,” furnished a few hints towards “The Rivals,” the scene of which, you will remember, is at Bath, the fashionable watering place which figures so largely in eighteenth century letters: in Smollett’s novel, “Humphrey Clinker,” in Horace Walpole’s correspondence, in Anstey’s satire, “The New Bath Guide,” and in Goldsmith’s life of Beau Nash, the King of the Pumproom. Histrionic and even dramatic ability has been constantly inherited. There are families of actors, like the Kembles and the Booths; and it is noteworthy how large a proportion of our dramatic authors have been actors, or in practical touch with the stage: Marlowe, Greene, Jonson, Shakespeare, Otway, Lee, Cibber, the Colmans, father and son, Macklin, Garrick, Foote, Knowles, Boucicault, Robertson, Tom Taylor, Pinero, Stephen Phillips. These names by no means exhaust the list of those who have both written and acted plays. Sheridan’s career was full of adventure. He eloped from Bath with a beautiful girl of eighteen, a concert singer, daughter of Linley, the musical composer, and was married to her in France. In the course of this affair he fought two duels, in one of which he was dangerously wounded. Now what can be more romantic than a duel and an elopement? Yet notice how the identical adventures which romance uses in one way, classical comedy uses in quite another. These personal experiences doubtless suggested some of the incidents in “The Rivals”; but in that comedy the projected duel and the projected elopement end in farce, and common sense carries it over romance, which it is the whole object of the play to make fun of, as it is embodied in the person of Miss Lydia Languish.