Poor little Betsy was at Oxford when all this took place.  On her return to Bath she heard something of it, and unconsciously revealed the secret of her private marriage, claiming the right of a wife to watch over her wounded husband.  Then came the denouement.  Old Tom Sheridan rejected his son.  The angry Linley would have rejected his daughter, but for her honour.  Richard was sent off into Essex, and in due time the couple were legally married in England.  So ended a wild, romantic affair, in which Sheridan took a desperate, but not altogether honourable, part.  But the dramatist got more out of it than a pretty wife.  Like all true geniuses, he employed his own experience in the production of his works, and drew from the very event of his life some hints or touches to enliven the characters of his imagination.  Surely the bravado and cowardice of Captain Matthews, who on the first meeting in the Park is described as finding all kinds of difficulties in the way of their fighting, objecting now to the ground as unlevel, now to the presence of a stranger, who turns out to be an officer, and very politely moves off when requested, who, in short, delays the event as long as possible, must have supplied the idea of Bob Acres; while the very conversations, of which we have no record, may have given him some of those hints of character which made the ‘Rivals’ so successful.  That play—­his first—­was written in 1774.  It failed on its first appearance, owing to the bad acting of the part of Sir Lucius O’Trigger, by Mr. Lee; but when another actor was substituted, the piece was at once successful, and acted with overflowing houses all over the country.  How could it be otherwise?  It may have been exaggerated, far-fetched, unnatural, but such characters as Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Lucius, Bob Acres, Lydia Languish, and most of all Mrs. Malaprop, so admirably conceived, and so carefully and ingeniously worked out, could not but be admired.  They have become household words; they are even now our standards of ridicule, and be they natural or not, these last eighty years have changed the world so little that Malaprops and Acreses may be found in the range of almost any man’s experience, and in every class of society.

Sheridan and his divine Betsy were now living in their own house, in that Dull little place, Orchard Street, Portman Square, then an aristocratic neighbourhood, and he was diligent in the production of essays, pamphlets, and farces, many of which never saw the light, while others fell flat, or were not calculated to bring him any fame.  What great authors have not experienced the same disappointments?  What men would ever be great if they allowed such checks to damp their energy, or were turned back by them from the course in which they feel that their power lies?

But his next work, the opera of ‘The Duenna,’ had a yet more signal success, and a run of no less than seventy-five nights at Covent Garden, which put Garrick at Drury Lane to his wit’s end to know how to compete with it.  Old Linley himself composed the music for it; and to show how thus a family could hold the stage, Garrick actually played off the mother against the son, and revived Mrs. Sheridan’s comedy of ’The Discovery,’ to compete with Richard Sheridan’s ‘Duenna.’