Yes, to complete the fiction-like aspect of the affair, there was even a ‘captain’ in the matter—­as good a villain as ever shone in short hose and cut doublet at the ‘Strand’ or ‘Victoria.’  Captain Matthews was a married man, and a very naughty one.  He was an intimate friend of the Linleys, and wanted to push his intimacy too far.  In short, ’not to put too fine a point on it’ (too fine a point is precisely what never is put), he attempted to seduce the pretty, innocent girl, and not dismayed at one failure, went on again and again.  ‘Cecilia,’ knowing the temper of Linley pere, was afraid to expose him to her father, and with a course, which we of the present day cannot but think strange, if nothing more, disclosed the attempts of her persecutor to no other than her own lover, Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Strange want of delicacy, undoubtedly, and yet we can excuse the poor songstress, with a father who sought only to make money out of her talents, and no other relations to confide in.  But Richard Brinsley, long her lover, now resolved to be both her protector and her husband.  He persuaded her to fly to France, under cover of entering a convent.  He induced his sister to lend him money out of that provided for the housekeeping at home, hired a post-chaise, and sent a sedan-chair to her father’s house in the Crescent to convey her to it, and wafted her off to town.  Thence, after a few adroit lies on the part of Sheridan, they sailed to Dunkirk; and there he persuaded her to become his wife.  She consented, and they were knotted together by an obliging priest accustomed to these runaway matches from la perfide Albion.

The irate parent, Linley, followed, recaptured his daughter, and brought Her back to England.  Meanwhile, the elopement excited great agitation in the good city of Bath, and among others, the villain of the story, the gallant Captain Matthews, posted Richard Brinsley as ’a scoundrel and a liar,’ the then polite method of expressing disgust.  Home came Richard in the wake of Miss Linley, who rejoiced in the unromantic praenomen of ‘Betsy,’ to her angry parent, and found matters had been running high in his short absence.  A duel with Matthews seems to have been the natural consequence, and up Richard posted to London to fight it.  Matthews played the craven—­Sheridan the impetuous lover.  They met, fought, seized one another’s swords, wrestled, fell together, and wounded each other with the stumps of their rapiers in true Chevy-Chase fashion.  Matthews, who had behaved in a cowardly manner in the first affair, sought to retrieve his honour by sending a second challenge.  Again the rivals—­well represented in ‘The Rivals’ afterwards produced—­met at Kingsdown.  Mr. Matthews drew; Mr. Sheridan advanced on him at first:  Mr. Matthews in turn advanced fast on Mr. Sheridan; upon which he retreated, till he very suddenly ran in upon Mr. Matthews, laying himself exceedingly open, and endeavouring to get hold of Mr. Matthews’ sword.  Mr. Matthews received him at point, and, I believe, disengaged his sword from Mr. Sheridan’s body, and gave him another wound.  The same scene was now enacted, and a combat a l’outrance took place, ending in mutual wounds, and fortunately no one dead.