just as at Harrow every one thought Richard a dunce and he disappointed
them; so at Bath no one thought Richard would fall in love, and he _did_
disappoint them--none more so than Charles, his brother, and Halhed, his
bosom friend. As for the latter, he was almost mad in his devotion, and
certainly extravagant in his expressions. He described his passion by a
clever, but rather disagreeable simile, which Sheridan, who was a most
disgraceful plagiarist, though he had no need to be so, afterwards
adopted as his own. 'Just as the Egyptian pharmacists,' wrote Halhed, in
a Latin letter, in which he described the power of Miss Linley's voice
over his spirit, 'were wont, in embalming a dead body to draw the brain
out through the ears with a crooked hook, this nightingale has drawn out
through mine ears not my brain only, but my heart also.'

Then among other of her devotees were Norris, the singer, and Mr. Watts,
a rich gentleman-commoner, who had also met her at Oxford. Surely with
such and other rivals, the chances of the quiet, unpretending,
undemonstrative boy of nineteen were small. But no, Miss Linley was
foolish enough to be captivated by genius, and charmed by such poems as
the quiet boy wrote to her, of which this is, perhaps, one of the
prettiest:

'Dry that tear, my gentlest love;
Be hush'd that struggling sigh,
Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove
More fix'd, more true than I.
Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear;
Cease boding doubt, cease anxious fear:
Dry be that tear.

'Ask'st thou how long my love will stay,