Thomas Sheridan and Swift
1980; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/sec.1980.0008
ISSN1938-6133
Autores Tópico(s)Scottish History and National Identity
ResumoThomas Sheridan and Swift JAMES WOOLLEY Thomas Sheridan (1687-1738), a classicist, schoolmaster, translator , priest, poet, essayist, and wit, was Swift’s closest Irish friend, his partner in language games and metrical jeux cTesprit, and his col laborator in the Intelligencer. Some scholars have suggested that he was merely a jester, with whom Swift regrettably wasted a great deal of time; others, taking a similarly theatrical view, remember that this was the grandfather of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and see him as a genial but improvident Charles Surface, more lovable by far than the Dean of St. Patrick’s. The difficulty is to get beyond the half-truth of such stereotypes to a balanced yet sympathetic understanding of what Swift saw in Sheridan and his writings. To this end it may be useful to survey Sheridan’s life and to show how his humor func tioned within his larger experience, balancing against serious hopes and anxieties and momentarily transforming or escaping them. Of Sheridan’s early life we know nothing more than is recorded in the muniments of Trinity College, Dublin. He was born in County Cavan in 1687, the son of Patrick Sheridan, a farmer (colonus) about whom no reliable information seems to exist.1 Thomas studied under the Dublin schoolmaster Dr. John Jones, the same John Jones who had been Swift’s college classmate and who had been punished for writing a notorious “Tripos.”2 From Dr. Jones’s school Sheridan 93 94 / JAMES WOOLLEY went to Trinity College, perhaps after some delay, for he entered as a pensioner (the ordinary tuition-paying student) in his twentieth year, three or four years older than the usual entering student. At Trinity he would have met such important future members of Swift’s circle as Dr. Richard Helsham, then Physic Fellow, and Dr. (then Mr.) Patrick Delany, then a Fellow of T. C. D., whom Sheridan him self later introduced to Swift.3 Sheridan distinguished himself suf ficiently that in his third year he was elected to one of the “Native” Scholarships.4 He received his B.A., according to the College rec ords, on February 9, 1710/11, and it is probable that he immediately took holy orders as a deacon in the Church of Ireland. Archbishop William King ordained him as a priest in January 1711/12. A bishop’s license was required in order to teach, and it may be that Sheridan sought this license in 1713, since a testimonium of his B.A. was issued to him on May 25, 1713.5 Before taking his M.A. in 1714, he seems to have begun his career as a teacher, in what were known as classical schools—schools which emphasized the Latin classics and prepared boys to be gentlemen. He published a Latin grammar in 1714 (“by Thomas Sheridan M.A.”), the preface of which suggests that he already had been teaching for some time: “The hasty Performance of this Work . . . proceeded from my Zeal to Rescue young Boys from that miserable Toil and Trouble which I saw the reading of a Latin Gram mar involv’d them in.”6 A student of Sheridan’s intelligence might ordinarily have expected to compete for a fellowship at Trinity, and having won it, to stay on indefinitely. But College statutes did not permit married Fellows.7 Perhaps as early as 1710, while still an undergraduate, Sheridan had married Elizabeth, daughter and sole heir of Charles and Anne McFadden of Quilca (Cuilcagh), near Virginia in County Cavan.8 We have Sheridan’s word that it was a supremely unhappy marriage from the very first week. Sheridan calls his wife “a clog bound to me, by an iron chain, as heavy as a millstone,” and says, “How terrible a thing it is yt a man should suffer all his life, for the phrenzy of Youth. I was in the mad years of life when [I] marryed &. mad to marry, & almost mad after I had marry[ed].”9 A fair example of Swift’s esteem for Mrs. Sheridan is his poem “A Portrait from the Life”: Thomas Sheridan and Swift / 95 Come sit by my side, while this picture I draw: In chatt ring...
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