Concentred there, I liv'd for her alone;
To make her glad and to be blest was one.

* * * * *
* * * * *

Adieu, my friend,--nor blame this _sad_ adieu,
Though sorrow guides my pen, it blames not you.
Forget me--'tis my pray'r; nor seek to know
The fate of him whose portion must be woe,
Till the cold earth outstretch her friendly arms,
And Death convince me that he _can_ have charms."

But Halhed's was not the only heart that sighed deeply and hopelessly
for the young Maid of Bath, who appears, indeed, to have spread her
gentle conquests to an extent almost unparalleled in the annals of
beauty. Her personal charms, the exquisiteness of her musical talents,
and the full light of publicity which her profession threw upon both,
naturally attracted round her a crowd of admirers, in whom the sympathy
of a common pursuit soon kindled into rivalry, till she became at length
an object of vanity as well as of love. Her extreme youth, too,--for she
was little more than sixteen when Sheridan first met her,--must have
removed, even from minds the most fastidious and delicate, that
repugnance they might justly have felt to her profession, if she had
lived much longer under its tarnishing influence, or lost, by frequent
exhibitions before the public, that fine gloss of feminine modesty, for
whose absence not all the talents and accomplishments of the whole sex
can atone.

She had been, even at this early age, on the point of marriage with Mr.