gossips, the intended marriage was, however,
suddenly broken off. The poor girl, deserted
apparently by all her friends, threw herself on the
generosity of her old suitor, and begged him to
release her from the engagement. Mr. Long was
noble and generous. He not only released her
from the promise, but took upon himself the
blame of the separation. Disgusted Linley
brought an action for his money, but it was
untenable. Mr. Long, patient under the anger
of disappointed greed, handed over the sum;
and afterwards, in admiration of Miss Linley's
candour and amiability, actually settled upon her
the sum of three thousand pounds as a small
compensation for the pain and persecution which
his suit had caused her. The cruel London wits
made great fun of this broken-off marriage, and
Foote wrote a vulgar farce founded upon that
latest bit of Bath scandal.

Among the lovers who now again began to
flutter round the Beauty of Bath was Charles
Sheridan, the son of an Irish teacher of elocution,
who had been an actor and manager in
Dublin, and had been driven from the city by
theatrical riots. The elder Sheridan seems to
have been pedantic, dogmatic, and quarrelsome,
and in Dr. Johnson's opinion—the doctor being
indignant at a ruined actor being pensioned by
the government—"a vain man and a liar." He
had boasted that he had once routed the doctor
in argument, and that was an unpardonable
offence. Boswell had taken a malicious pleasure
in relating this boast to the doctor, of
whose older friends he was always envious.
The Sheridan family had been long a
distinguished one, for the father of the elocution-
master, an Irish clergyman and schoolmaster—a
fiddling, punning, and doggerel-writing divine,
thoughtless and extravagant to a marvel—had
been one of Swift's special cronies. The
elocution-master's wife, an amiable and clever
woman, who wrote Sidney Biddulph, a novel
now forgotten, was a favourite of Dr.
Johnson, and is described by Dr. Parr and
Tom Moore as "quite celestial," both for her
virtues and her genius. The Sheridan family
had been three or four years in Bath, and had
from the first been very intimate with the
Linleys. Charles Sheridan did not, however,
advance very much in the affections of the belle
and toast of the city. He was grave and
studious, and Miss Linley professed merely to
regard Charles with esteem as the brother of her
bosom friend, Miss Sheridan. She preferred
Richard Brinsley, the younger brother.

Richard, then just twenty, had been educated
at Harrow under Dr. Parr, who had pronounced
him lazy and unambitious. He was fond of
poetry; but, to use the awful doctor's words, had
"never distinguished himself in Latin or Greek
composition." The boy was, however, prompt
and acute, and there were vestiges of an
original and daring mind. He spoke fervidly and
with eloquence. His pranks and his vivacity
were the delight of the school. Even then
Dr. Parr thought his eyes, countenance, and
general manner striking. At twenty he was
already a poet, and, what was better at that
juncture, an excellent rider, fencer, and
dancer, and a chivalrous gallant young fellow,
full of wit and romance, liked by everybody
but his father, whose fantastic rules of
elocution he tacitly contemned.

Another of Miss Linley's pertinacious
admirers at this time was Nathaniel Halhed, a
clever young man, who had been Sheridan's
friend at Harrow, and since that time a
collaborateur with him in embryo farces,
newspaper work, and translations. Halhed, soon
daunted by the number and pretensions
of the fair young singer's lovers, started
for India, became a judge, rich, yellow,
blessed with endless rupees and an enlarged
liver. The field gradually thinned, for Charles
Sheridan finding his passion daily increase and
his chances of success hourly diminish, also withdrew
from the contest. He dared not continue,
and wrote Miss Linley a solemn and affecting
farewell—which his youngest sister no doubt
laughingly delivered—and withdrew into exile in
a farm-house about eight miles from Bath. That
siege was raised, the enemy beaten off with
great discomfiture from "the fort they call a
heart." More talk for the Pump-rooms, more
remarks from painted tabbies, that "if there ever
was a heartless flirt—and how people could—
and as to eyes and complexion, &c.—eh, what
do you say? " On many of these occasions
Richard Sheridan stood forward bravely (and
disinterestedly) for the slandered lady whom his
brother Charles had loved and lost. This tattle
and the sneers of these gossips made it necessary
for Miss Linley frequently to meet her defender
and adviser (nothing more) in a damp but sequestered
grotto in Sidney-gardens, a grotto sheltered
by a friendly weeping willow, and in which
Sheridan wrote sentimental and graceful verse
after the fashion of lovers and aspirants in that
artificial age—this sort of Shenstone verse not
unfamiliar to readers of old albums and lady's
magazines circa 1771:

Yet oh! if indeed I've offended the maid,
    If Delia my humble monition, refuse,
Sweet willow, the next time she visits thy shade,
    Fan gently her bosom, and plead its excuse.

And thou, stony grot, in thy arch may'st preserve
    Two lingering drops of the night-fallen dew,
And just let them fall at her feet, and they'll serve
    As tears of my sorrow entrusted to you.

No doubt the beautiful young lady with
the powdered hair rising mountainously over
her gentle and sensitive face, turned rose
colour when she found those verses in the
well-known hand lying on the mossy seat of the
indubitably rheumatic grotto, and perhaps, while
the pretty flushes still played upon her cheeks,
two large dark eyes met hers through the trailing
willow branches, and the next moment a
sword tinkled against the stone seat as Richard
sprang into the cave and pressed her hand,
begging pardon (wicked hypocrite!) for his
cruelty and mistrust at their last meeting.

Long before this, an lago, the evil genius