The fashion for weeping heroines was at its height, when, in 1761, Mrs. Francis Sheridan published _The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph_. The story is written in the form of letters, in which the heroine reveals to a friend of her own sex all the secrets of her heart. All London rejoiced over the virtues of Sidney Biddulph, and wept over her sorrows. She had been educated "in the strictest principles of virtue; from which she never deviated, through the course of an innocent, though unhappy life." It was so pathetic a story that Dr. Johnson doubted if Mrs. Sheridan had a right to make her characters suffer so much, and Charles James Fox, who sat up all night to read it, pronounced it the best of all novels of his time. The book, as first written, was in three volumes. The author had brought the story to a most fitting close. Both Sidney's husband and the man whom she had really loved were dead, and the widow could have spent her days in pleasing melancholy, contented with the thought that she had never done a wrong. But the public demanded a continuation of the story. In 1767, two volumes were added, giving the history of Sidney's daughters, who seem to have inherited from their mother the enmity of the fates, for their sufferings were as great as hers. Authors are prone to draw upon their own history for the emotions they depict. But Mrs. Sheridan's life did not furnish the tragic elements of _Sidney Biddulph_, although it was not without romance. Before her marriage, she wrote a pamphlet in praise of the conduct of one Thomas Sheridan, the manager of the Theatre Royal in Dublin, during a riot that occurred in the theatre. Sheridan read these words in his praise, sought the acquaintance of their author, and before long married her. History furnishes a long list of women of talent whose sons were men of genius. Mrs. Sheridan's second son, Richard Brinsley, the author of the light and sparkling _Rivals_, inherited his mother's talents without her gloom. But Mrs. Sheridan also had some ability as a writer of comedy, and the most famous character of the _Rivals_ was first sketched by her. In a comedy, _A Journey to Bath_, declined by Garrick, one of the characters was Mrs. Twyford, whom Richard Brinsley Sheridan transformed into that famous blundering coiner of words, Mrs. Malaprop.