elegant love-verses, which are so well known and so often quoted. The
lines "Uncouth is this moss-covered grotto of stone," were addressed to
Miss Linley, after having offended her by one of those lectures upon
decorum of conduct, which jealous lovers so frequently inflict upon
their mistresses,--and the grotto, immortalized by their quarrel, is
supposed to have been in Spring Gardens, then the fashionable place of
resort in Bath.

I have elsewhere remarked that the conceit in the following stanza
resembles a thought in some verses of Angerianus:--

And thou, stony grot, in thy arch may'st preserve
Two lingering drops of the night-fallen dew,
Let them fall on her bosom of snow, and they'll serve
As tears of my sorrow entrusted to you.

_At quum per niveam cervicem influxerit humor
Dicite non roris sed pluvia haec lacrimae._

Whether Sheridan was likely to have been a reader of Angerianus is, I
think, doubtful--at all events the coincidence is curious.

"Dry be that tear, my gentlest love," is supposed to have been written
at a later period; but it was most probably produced at the time of his
courtship, for he wrote but few love verses after his marriage--like the
nightingale (as a French editor of Bonefonius says, in remarking a
similar circumstance of that poet) "qui developpe le charme de sa voix
tant qu'il vent plaire a sa compagne--sont-ils unis? il se tait, il n'a
plus le besoin de lui plaire." This song having been hitherto printed
incorrectly, I shall give it here, as it is in the copies preserved by