that all his censures of the Prince had been blown sky-high.

It has been my fortune to recover from many sources in-
formation as to passages in Sheridan's life which have hitherto!
been obscure. For instance, scarcely anything has been written
of the events of 1806, but I have discovered in the Birmingham
Reference Library Sheridan Eulogium on the Death of Mr.
Fox, now reprinted for the first time from an unrecorded
pamphlet, and by the kindness of Mr. Percival F. Hinton I
have availed myself of a History of the Westminster Election,
which places him at the hustings, the central figure in a picture
of Hogarthian vigour. Again, at the William Salt Library,
Stafford, I have found, among other documents, the draft of his
furious manifesto against the electors of Stafford who deserted-
him in 1812 -- which now appears for the first time in print,
faithfully reproducing his spelling, his punctuation, and his
incomplete sentences. From some MSS. notes made by John
Graham on a set of Sheridan's Speeches I have found a few lively-
touches, such as his account of Sheridan recovering, after a
quarter of a century, his MS. of the Begum speech in Westmin-
ster Hall. Mr. T. P. Lefanu, the great-grandson of Sheridan's
elder sister, Alicia -- Mrs. Joseph Lefanu -- has generously
placed at my disposal the letters written to her between 1784.
and 1790 by her younger sis+t+͡er, Elizabeth -- Mrs. Henry
Lefanu. To this Journal of Betsy Sheridan, as it is called, I owe
a great deal of "background," many quotations, and above all,
the account of Mrs. Sturt's ball at Hammersmith which gives
so lively a picture of "the raree show of the great world" in
1789. Other acknowledgments are made in detail elsewhere.

It has been my object to work de novo over the mass of con-
temporary material: to place evidence before comment: and to
seles+t+͡ such details, without falsifying the whole, as will pre
sent in the compass of a single volume the mos+t+͡ graphic illus-
trations of Sheridan's career.

R. CROMPTON RHODES.
February 15th, 1933.

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