Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard...

Richard Brinsley [Footnote: He was christened also by the name of Butler,after the Earl of Lanesborough.] Sheridan was born in the month of September,1751, at No. 12, Dorset Street, Dublin, and baptized in St. Mary's Church, asappears by the register of the parish, on the fourth of the following month.His grandfather, Dr. Sheridan, and his father, Mr. Thomas Sheridan, haveattained a celebrity, independent of that which he has conferred on them, bythe friendship and correspondence with which the former was honored by Swift,and the competition and even rivalry which the latter so long maintained withGarrick. His mother, too, was a woman of considerable talents, and affordsone of the few instances that have occurred, of a female indebted for ahusband to her literature; as it was a pamphlet she wrote concerning theDublin theatre that first attracted to her the notice of Mr. Thomas Sheridan.Her affecting novel, Sidney Biddulph, could boast among its warm panegyristsMr. Fox and Lord North; and in the Tale of Nourjahad she has employed thegraces of Eastern fiction to inculcate a grave and important moral,—puttingon a fairy disguise, like her own Mandane, to deceive her readers into ataste for happiness and virtue.