The satire is
strong and instructive, and marks the great advance in social decorum over
the former age.
In 1779 appeared _The Critic_, a literary satire, in which the chief
character is that of Sir Fretful Plagiary.
Sheridan sat in parliament as member for Stafford. His first effort in
oratory was a failure; but by study he became one of the most effective
popular orators of his day. His speeches lose by reading: he abounded in
gaudy figures, and is not without bombast; but his wonderful flow of words
and his impassioned action dazzled his audience and kept it spellbound.
His oratory, whatever its faults, gained also the unstinted praise of his
colleagues and rivals in the art. Of his great speech in the trial of
Warren Hastings, in 1788, Fox declared that "all he had ever heard, all he
had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished
like vapor before the sun." Burke called it "the most astonishing effort
of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or
tradition;" and Pitt said "that it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient
or modern times.
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