LITTLE She also proved a few points in stirpiculture. She was 

 JOURNEYS a most beautiful girl of seventeen when Sheridan led 

 her to the altar, or I should say to a Dissenting Par- 

 son's back door by night. She could sing, recite, act, 

 and impersonate in pantomime and Greek gown, the 

 passions of Fear, Hate, Supplication, Horror, Re- 

 venge, Jealousy, Rage and Faith. 



Romney moved down to Bath just so as to have Miss 

 Linlay and Lady Hamilton for models. He posed Miss 

 Linlay as the Madonna, Beulah, Rena, Ruth, Miriam 

 and Cecilia; and Lady Hamilton for Susannah at the 

 Bath, Alicia and Andromache, and also had her illus- 

 trate the Virtues, Graces, Fates, and Passions. 

 When the beautiful Miss Linlay, the pride and pet of 

 Bath, got ready to announce her marriage, she did it 

 by simply changing the inscription beneath a Romney 

 portrait that hung in the ante-room of the artist's 

 studio, marking out the words "Miss Linlay," and 

 writing over it "Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan." 

 QThe Bath porchers who looked after other people's 

 business, having none of their own, burbled and chor- 

 tled like siphons of soda, and the marvel to all was 

 that such a brilliant girl should thus throw herself 

 away on a sprig of the law. "He acts, too, I believe," 

 said Goldsmith to Dr. Johnson. And Dr. Johnson said, 

 "Sir, he does nothing else," thus anticipating James 

 McNeill Whistler by over a hundred years. 

 But alas for the luckless Linlay, the Delsarte of his day, 

 poor man ! he used words not to be found in Johnson's 

 Dictionary, and outdid Cassius in the quarrel scene 

 134 



