It was Sheridan who said that easy writing was sometimes very hard reading. Nevertheless, whatever he did had the air of being dashed off carelessly. All his plays were written before he was thirty. He was a man of the world, who was only incidentally a man of letters. He sat thirty years in the House of Commons, was Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs under Fox, and Secretary to the Treasury under the coalition ministry. He associated intimately with that royal fribble, the Prince Regent, and the whole dynasty of dandies, and became, as Thackeray said of his forerunner, Congreve, a tremendous swell, but on a much slenderer capital. It is one of the puzzles of Sheridan’s biography where he got the money to pay for Drury Lane Theatre, of which he became manager and lessee. He was a shining figure in the world of sport and the world of politics, as well as in the world of literature and the drama. He had the sanguine, improvident temperament, and the irregular, procrastinating habits of work which are popularly associated with genius. The story is told that the fifth act of “The School for Scandal” was still unwritten while the earlier acts were being rehearsed for the first performance; and that Sheridan’s friends locked him up in a room with pen, ink, and paper, and a bottle of claret, and would not let him out till he had finished the play. This anecdote is not, I believe, authentic; but it shows the current impression of his irresponsible ways. His reckless expenses, his betting and gambling debts resulted in his arrest and imprisonment, and writs were served upon him in his last illness. I do not think that Sheridan affected a contempt for the profession of letters; but there was perhaps a touch of affectation in his rather _dégagé_ attitude toward his own performances. It is an attitude not uncommon in literary men who are also—like Congreve—“tremendous swells.” “I hate your authors who are _all_ author,” wrote Byron, who was himself a bit of a snob. When Voltaire called upon Congreve, the latter disclaimed the character of author, and said he was merely a private gentleman, who wrote for his own amusement. “If you were merely a private gentleman,” replied Voltaire, “I would not have thought it worth while to come to see you.”