of a measure of this nature, that the account of the meeting already
given was drawn up by Mr. Barnett, and deposited in the hands of Captain
Wade. Though Sheridan refused to join in legal proceedings--from an
unwillingness, perhaps, to keep Miss Linley's name any longer afloat
upon public conversation--yet this revival of the subject, and the
conflicting statements to which it gave rise, produced naturally in both
parties a relapse of angry feelings, which was very near ending in a
third duel between them. The authenticity given by Captain Paumier's
name to a narrative which Sheridan considered false and injurious, was
for some time a source of considerable mortification to him; and it must
be owned, that the helpless irresolution of this gentleman during the
duel, and his weak acquiescence in these misrepresentations afterwards,
showed him as unfit to be trusted with the life as with the character of
his friend.

How nearly this new train of misunderstanding had led to another
explosion, appears from one of the letters already referred to, written
in December, and directed to Sheridan at the Bedford Coffee-house,
Covent Garden, in which the writer expresses the most friendly and
anxious alarm at the intelligence which he has just received,--implores
of Sheridan to moderate his rage, and reminds him how often he had
resolved never to have any concern with Mathews again. Some explanation,
however, took place, as we collect from a letter dated a few days later;
and the world was thus spared not only such an instance of inveteracy,
as three duels between the same two men would have exhibited, but,
perhaps, the premature loss of a life to which we are indebted, for an
example as noble in its excitements, and a lesson as useful in its
warnings, as ever genius and its errors have bequeathed to mankind.

The following Lent, Miss Linley appeared in the oratorios at Covent