since been hunting for Aristaenetus, whom I found this day, and
therefore send to you, together with a Greek grammar. I might have
dispatched at the same time some numbers of the Dictionary, but not
having got the last two numbers, was not willing to send any without the
whole of what is published, and still less willing to delay
Aristaenetus's journey by waiting for them." The work alluded to here is
the Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, to which Sheridan had subscribed,
with the view, no doubt, of informing himself upon subjects of which he
was as yet wholly ignorant, having left school, like most other young
men at his age, as little furnished with the knowledge that is wanted in
the world, as a person would be for the demands of a market, who went
into it with nothing but a few ancient coins in his pocket.

The passion, however, that now began to take possession of his heart was
little favorable to his advancement in any serious studies, and it may
easily be imagined that, in the neighborhood of Miss Linley, the Arts
and Sciences were suffered to sleep quietly on their shelves. Even the
translation of Aristaenetus, though a task more suited, from its amatory
nature, to the existing temperature of his heart, was proceeded in but
slowly; and it appears from one of Halhed's letters, that this impatient
ally was already counting upon the _spolia opima_ of the campaign,
before Sheridan had fairly brought his Greek grammar into the field. The
great object of the former was a visit to Bath, and he had set his heart
still more anxiously upon it, after a second meeting with Miss Linley at
Oxford. But the profits expected from their literary undertakings were
the only means to which he looked for the realizing of this dream; and
he accordingly implores his friend, with the most comic piteousness, to
drive the farce on the stage by main force, and to make Aristaenetus
sell whether he will or not. In the November of this year we find them
discussing the propriety of prefixing their names to the work--Sheridan