eyes of those most interested in discovering it. Even his brother
Charles was for some time wholly unaware of their rivalry, and went on
securely indulging in a passion which it was hardly possible, with such
opportunities of intercourse, to resist, and which survived long after
Miss Linley's selection of another had extinguished every hope in his
heart, but that of seeing her happy. Halhed, too, who at that period
corresponded constantly with Sheridan, and confided to him the love with
which he also had been inspired by this enchantress, was for a length of
time left in the same darkness upon the subject, and without the
slightest suspicion that the epidemic had reached his friend, whose only
mode of evading the many tender inquiries and messages with which
Halhed's letters abounded, was by referring to answers which had by some
strange fatality miscarried, and which, we may conclude, without much
uncharitableness, had never been written.

Miss Linley went frequently to Oxford, to perform at the oratorios and
concerts; and it may easily be imagined that the ancient allegory of the
Muses throwing chains over Cupid was here reversed, and the quiet shades
of learning not a little disturbed by the splendor of these "angel
visits." The letters of Halhed give a lively idea, not only of his own
intoxication, but of the sort of contagious delirium, like that at
Abdera described by Lucian, with which the young men of Oxford were
affected by this beautiful girl. In describing her singing he quotes
part of a Latin letter which he himself had written to a friend upon
first hearing her; and it is a curious proof of the readiness of
Sheridan, notwithstanding his own fertility, to avail himself of the
thoughts of others, that we find in this extract, word for word, the
same extravagant comparison of the effects of music to the process of
Egyptian embalmment--"extracting the brain through the ears"--which was
afterwards transplanted into the dialogue of the Duenna: "_Mortuum