"Ask'st thou how long my love will stay, When all that's new is past? How long, ah! Delia, can I say How long my life will last? Dry be that tear, be hush'd that sigh; At least I'll love thee till I die. Hush'd be that sigh. "And does that thought affect thee too, The thought of Sylvio's death, That he who only breath'd for you Must yield his faithful breath? Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear, Nor let us lose our heaven here. Dry be that tear." For some eighteen years the Sheridans lived together,--Elizabeth never sang in public again after her marriage,--and then their union was broken by death. The devoted wife to this brilliant, but selfish, unreliable, and extravagant genius died in 1792, of consumption. "Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory," and surely during the years of life left to Richard Brinsley Sheridan, he must often have recalled the happy days when he listened in delight to the music of his loved one's voice. [Illustration: Sheridan at the Linleys. From painting by Margaret Dicksee.] Sir Joshua Reynolds painted her as St. Cecilia in a lovely picture which he sent to the Royal Academy exhibition in 1775,--the year of "The Rivals." It remained in the artist's possession till 1790, when Sheridan bought it for one hundred and fifty guineas. It is now owned by the Marquis of Lansdowne. HAYDN. In 1790 Haydn had been capellmeister at Esterhaz, the magnificent palace which Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy had created in imitation of Versailles. For nearly a quarter of a century, Esterhaz, though built on an unhealthy site, was the favourite residence of the prince, who never tired of altering, extending, and improving the palace and grounds, and whose greatest ambition was to make the musical and theatrical entertainments given there the best of their kind. In many ways Haydn was most happily situated at Esterhaz, and though his isolated position there became more irksome to him as time went on, he would not, though frequently approached with flattering offers from abroad, leave his well-beloved master, of whom he wrote, in 1776, "My dearest wish is to live and die with him."