quondam ante aegypti medici quam pollincirent cerebella de auribus unco
quodam hamo solebant extrahere; sic de meis auribus non cerebrum, sed
cor ipsum exhausit lusciniola, &c., &c._" He mentions, as the rivals
most dreaded by her admirers, Norris, the singer, whose musical talents,
it was thought, recommended him to her, and Mr. Watts, a gentleman
commoner, of very large fortune.

While all hearts and tongues were thus occupied about Miss Linley, it is
not wonderful that rumors of matrimony and elopement should, from time
to time, circulate among her apprehensive admirers; or that the usual
ill-compliment should be paid to her sex of supposing that wealth must
be the winner of the prize. It was at one moment currently reported at
Oxford that she had gone off to Scotland with a young man of L3,000 a
year, and the panic which the intelligence spread is described in one of
these letters to Sheridan, (who, no doubt, shared in it) as producing
"long faces" everywhere. Not only, indeed, among her numerous lovers,
but among all who delighted in her public performances, an alarm would
naturally be felt at the prospect of her becoming private property:

"_Te juga Taygeti, posito te Maenala flebunt
Venatu, maestoque diu lugebere Cyntho.
Delphica quinetiam fratris delubra tacebunt._"

[Footnote: Claudian. De Rapt. Proserp. Lib. ii. v. 244.]

Thee, thee, when hurried from our eyes away,
Laconia's hills shall mourn for many a day--
The Arcadian hunter shall forget his chase,
And turn aside to think upon that face;
While many an hour Apollo's songless shrine